? The Selachii - Shark Race

[MadMansGun]

1 hour ago, Blaze69 said:

If you scale/edit the bone in the nif itself, does it stick and apply to other meshes pasted into it?

going by the body inside your blades armor: yes, but your body is a bit skinny so the node needs to be scaled up a little more to compensate.

[Blaze69]

32 minutes ago, MadMansGun said:

going by the body inside your blades armor: yes, but your body is a bit skinny so the node needs to be scaled up a little more to compensate.

I don't remember paying much attention to the belly node weighting in the armor, so bear in mind it may be a little wonky. Still, if that works, I guess it can be done that way.

 

Do you have the light/breastplate-only variant? Not sure if I gave you those files too. Otherwise, you should be able to replicate it by simply deleting the belly plates (there are a few pics in the previous pages for reference if needed).

 

EDIT: if you use the armor mesh altogether instead of the naked body when rebuilding/animating the load screen, that would mean you can adjust the hand placement for the armor body's belly and thus no further tweaking would be needed after that, right?

[MadMansGun]

3 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

Do you have the light/breastplate-only variant? Not sure if I gave you those files too. Otherwise, you should be able to replicate it by simply deleting the belly plates (there are a few pics in the previous pages for reference if needed).

 

EDIT: if you use the armor mesh altogether instead of the naked body when rebuilding/animating the load screen, that would mean you can adjust the hand placement for the armor body's belly and thus no further tweaking would be needed after that, right?

yes you gave me that one.

 

i think so.

[Kuroyami]

18 hours ago, MadMansGun said:

i found a baby Selachii:

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/27882555/

WARNING: far too cute, use protective eye ware or you will go blind.

I'd think they may be a little smaller in some of the proportions, but yeah, that basically is how I imagined it. 

14 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

Aww, that's adorable!

 

I haven't really given it much thought, but so far I've had the notion that Selachii pups are closer to actual sharks at birth (more "feral-like", smaller arms and legs, bigger tails or at least tail-to-body ratio, more "water-focused", etc.) and then they develop into their final, more humanoid form as they grow up. Would also explain why water births are more common and better suited for them as per the latest load screen texts (though it wouldn't make land births impossible or dangerous, only maybe not as comfortable). Kinda like Khajiit cubs looking basically like normal kittens and then developing into their corresponding subspecies (Senche and Senche-Raht remain quadruped and more feral-like, while normal Khajiits become bipeds and Ohmes eventually lose their claws, fur and tails and basically become shorter Bosmer on top of that).

Well, most of my thoughts on that subject has been from considering the background for Enkai, and as said above, the image is close to what I think they look like at that point. Maybe without really developed "hair", but that is it. 

 

But generally that load screen refers to the idea that, Selachii generally use some source of water during the birth of their children. It can range from a lake, ocean, or if perhaps within a place like the Imperial City, a tub of water(especially if there is no time to move the mother before this point). I have to imagine that Hana(Haru's father) might have kept her wife near water at all times during the later stages of the pregnancy. Though as mentioned, it isn't an absolute requirement, more a traditional thing the Selachii tend to do, even if they do not live in Southern Black Marsh. 

7 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

Yep, that's pretty much what I expected for that one.

 

About the others, though... For the one with the pregnant female standing and rubbing her belly I'm thinking it may look better with some kind of clothes. I mean, the other nude ones re fine since that's kinda the point, and the "pregnant" version of the laying one at least has the bed so it makes sense, but for the standing one it feels a bit like boobs for the sake of it, what with the belly being the actual focus and all.

What I'd suggest for that would be using the female fundoshi mesh, though I'm not sure about say doing the sarashi(the wrapped cloth around the breasts) along with it, unless it was done for the UNP or UNPBB shapes as suggested(so it could possibly be used in-game, in addition to the loading screen). Though not suggesting this be done right away, as even I've slowed down a bit on the mod, due to looking into a new system to play the game on.

[MadMansGun]

AnimatedLoadScreenFemalePreg.nif

AnimatedLoadScreenFemalePreg.max

[Blaze69]

3 hours ago, MadMansGun said:

AnimatedLoadScreenFemalePreg.nif

AnimatedLoadScreenFemalePreg.max

My original idea was to have her standing (not walking) and slowly rubbing her belly with both hands, plus some "generic body movement": tilting the head a bit, shifting weight between legs, that kind of stuff. Maybe add some more movement to the tail, like curling a bit or something (to show happiness, I guess)?

 

This one is still good, though, so if you want to leave it like this, I'm fine with it.

[TheLastKhajiit]

I'm curious, lore-wise what sort of armor would The Selachii wear given their thicker skin, would they have their own kind of armor? What would it look like?

[Kuroyami]

20 minutes ago, TheLastKhajiit said:

I'm curious, lore-wise what sort of armor would The Selachii wear given their thicker skin, would they have their own kind of armor? What would it look like?

The armor planned for the mod is based on the Blades Armor, and the idea is that there would be different tiers, matching the armor ratings of some vanilla armors, along with each possibly having different textures - mostly different base color(diffuse) textures, going for Blue(the vanilla Blades textures), Red, Silver and Black. 

 

As for it's design, you can look for images posted by Blaze, there the idea is that, due to their thicker skin, they can afford to have such gaps in the armor, for both genders. 

[Blaze69]

53 minutes ago, TheLastKhajiit said:

I'm curious, lore-wise what sort of armor would The Selachii wear given their thicker skin, would they have their own kind of armor? What would it look like?

The idea I had for them is that their thick skin provides protection already, and they kinda have been "trained" for endurance (both biologically and mentally, i.e. they can take more punishment and heal faster than other races and they also learn to carry on even when injured). Think Krogans from Mass Effect but without reaching the ridiculous level of "several redundant organs" as they do. So armor protection, while still very important, isn't nearly as critical as for a human or elf. Plus, there's the whole "aquatic" thing, so there's a high chance there will be swimming involved to a certain extent and thus they would have that in mind when designing their armor.

 

Thus, they could afford to use lighter and less covering armor (going so far as to leave many body parts exposed) in order to keep mobility and aquatic-ness as high as possible. Of course, they would still have heavy armors for situations where maximum protection is required, but they would be much more rare than for other races and even thenthe heaviest set of Selachii armor would probably still be lighter and more ergonomic than other races' standard heavy armors.

 

As for the actual design itself, that gets a little more difficult. In broad strokes it should be form-fitting and "hydrodynamic": no proturding spikey stuff unless it somehow aids in movement, doesn't hinder you when swimming, offers as little resistance and drag as possible, that kind of stuff. So far I've tried to get as close to that as possible using the Blades set as a base (because they come from Akavir so some Akaviri influence would be expected on their designs, and Blades gear is the only vanilla example of Akaviri-inspired gear).

 

I would like to give them some different designs that kept the Akaviri factor but were also unique on their own and characteristic of the race, but that would require me to be good at 1) designing and coming up with ideas for that kind of stuff from scratch and 2) creating the meshes and textures to represent those designs also from scratch. I'm good at neither, so unless something unexpected happens we'll have to make do with Blades stuff for now.

 

EDIT: if at some point you (or anyone else) come across some design or actual Skyrim armor mods or whatever that you think fits the race (even if it doesn't exactly match my description above), feel free to share them here. I'm always open to ideas and suggestions.

[TheLastKhajiit]

I don't play ESO but he Akaviri light armor looks like it might be a nice match for the Selachii

[MadMansGun]

On 7/6/2018 at 1:13 AM, Blaze69 said:

Maybe add some more movement to the tail, like curling a bit or something (to show happiness, I guess)?

i have been avoiding moving the tail too much, the weight painting is not quite right and creates a odd waviness:

[Blaze69]

2 hours ago, MadMansGun said:

i have been avoiding moving the tail too much, the weight painting is not quite right and creates a odd waviness:

Fair enough. I'll see what can be done about weighting whenever new tails are done.

[MadMansGun]

On 6/30/2018 at 10:39 AM, Blaze69 said:

Bonus points if there's an alternate version with Alduin instead. 

i replaced his load screen as well

alduinlogo.7z

[Blaze69]

3 hours ago, MadMansGun said:

i replaced his load screen as well

alduinlogo.7z

That looks great! I'd say it would be worhy of an actual release as a mod, in case you ever want to do that.

[Kardien Lupus]

Thanks for creating This Awesome Furry race.

[Taven]

Is there a way to get Selachii to not use those weird snaggle teeth argonian get when turning into a vampire? They don't look to good on selachii nor argonians. ><

[Kuroyami]

44 minutes ago, Taven said:

Is there a way to get Selachii to not use those weird snaggle teeth argonian get when turning into a vampire? They don't look to good on selachii nor argonians. ><

Not that this point, no. I did suggest that the Selachii should not get the Vampire teeth morph, due to them basically having enough teeth already, but that isn't a change that has been implemented yet(primarily due to upcoming changes in the female head mesh, and possibly the males as well - which hopefully will include more shark-like teeth), but I forget exactly what Blaze had to say about that. 

[Blaze69]

5 hours ago, Taven said:

Is there a way to get Selachii to not use those weird snaggle teeth argonian get when turning into a vampire? They don't look to good on selachii nor argonians. ><

I'll probably wait for the new heads to be done to see how vampire teeth look with them and if I'm not happy with them (because they still clip through the head or are very distorted or something like that) I'll remove the whole morph altogether; otherwise, I think it will stay.

 

Think of it as another downside of vampirism: humans and elves get those ugly bat noses, and Selachii (and Argonians) get the weird teeth. Khajiit are the best of the bunch, since their own vampire teeth don't look as bad IMO.

[NightroModzz]

With that in mind, what kind of teeth would you like to see? I can make a mesh for that, (the rest of the mouth already being done), but can't promise that I will make morphs any time soon. I can then use the new teeth as a base to make normal maps.

[Kuroyami]

1 hour ago, NightroModzz said:

With that in mind, what kind of teeth would you like to see? I can make a mesh for that, (the rest of the mouth already being done), but can't promise that I will make morphs any time soon. I can then use the new teeth as a base to make normal maps.

Well, my suggestion in the Vampire teeth morph for the Selachii was...to not have it at all. Mostly since I would have a preference for something like the teeth in these...

 

nummynumz

codeine

ldr

 

And I'd see it like the Orc's not having a morph for their teeth, just getting the Vampire eyes. Maybe the fangs for Khajiit and Argonians work for them, but on a race that already has very sharp teeth? Why add (technically)sharper ones that might just ruin their look?

[Blaze69]

1 hour ago, NightroModzz said:

With that in mind, what kind of teeth would you like to see? I can make a mesh for that, (the rest of the mouth already being done), but can't promise that I will make morphs any time soon. I can then use the new teeth as a base to make normal maps.

I'm not really sure. Obvious response would be "shark teeth", but I'm not sure if the real thing can look good when translated to anthros (and more specifically, to our design). I think Kuroyami suggested a few references on the topic of mouths a while back; I'll see if I can find them and maybe do some searching on my own as well, see what I can dig up. To be honest, the current (Argonian) reptilian teeth don't look that bad, but they get wonky with the vampire morphs and I wouldn't mind having a better alternative for them.

 

EDIT: ...aaand Kuroyami ninja'd me with the references. Well, that should make it easier to find them.

 

What I do know for sure is that the new mesh wouldn't really be of use without the morphs to match, and I'm not at a point where I can create them myself (yet, hopefully). So if you want to work on it, neat, but I wouldn't give it much priority until either of us can work on the morphs.

[Kuroyami]

4 minutes ago, Blaze69 said:

What I do know for sure is that the new mesh wouldn't really be of use without the morphs to match, and I'm not at a point where I can create them myself (yet, hopefully). So if you want to work on it, neat, but I wouldn't give it much priority until either of us can work on the morphs.

Well, thinking on it a bit, if the mesh would look anything like the first image I linked - nummynumz - then maybe two of the teeth could be lengthened a bit for the Vampire teeth morph, but hopefully not enough to be sticking out of their mouths. A slight, but noticeable difference.  

[Blaze69]

16 minutes ago, Kuroyami said:

Well, thinking on it a bit, if the mesh would look anything like the first image I linked - nummynumz - then maybe two of the teeth could be lengthened a bit for the Vampire teeth morph, but hopefully not enough to be sticking out of their mouths. A slight, but noticeable difference.  

When I said "morphs", I meant the whole .tri files: chargen sliders, facial expressions and phonemes. Doesn't matter if we remove the specific Vampire morph altogether, but the mouth still needs the .tris to move and not be static, and if new teeth are created then they obviously need new .tri files to match as well.

 

But yeah, vampire stuff aside, I'd say that would be a good option for the teeth.

[NightroModzz]

36 minutes ago, Kuroyami said:

Well, my suggestion in the Vampire teeth morph for the Selachii was...to not have it at all. Mostly since I would have a preference for something like the teeth in these...

 

nummynumz

codeine

ldr

 

33 minutes ago, Blaze69 said:

EDIT: ...aaand Kuroyami ninja'd me with the references. Well, that should make it easier to find them.

 

So basically, Dino teeth? Since they have a tongue for speech, I guess it makes sense that the teeth would dull out, and not have many smaller razor sharp teeth.

 

27 minutes ago, Blaze69 said:

What I do know for sure is that the new mesh wouldn't really be of use without the morphs to match, and I'm not at a point where I can create them myself (yet, hopefully). So if you want to work on it, neat, but I wouldn't give it much priority until either of us can work on the morphs.

 

Well yeah, my point is to just go ahead and make the teeth to have them for the future. Then I can just separate sections to match the amount of Argonian teeth to use as new normal maps, and morph the Argonian teeth to match the new shape. The new meshes might just be saved for use in TES6.

[Blaze69]

8 minutes ago, NightroModzz said:

So basically, Dino teeth? Since they have a tongue for speech, I guess it makes sense that the teeth would dull out, and not have many smaller razor sharp teeth.

Yeah, sounds good to me.

Quote

Well yeah, my point is to just go ahead and make the teeth to have them for the future. Then I can just separate sections to match the amount of Argonian teeth to use as new normal maps, and morph the Argonian teeth to match the new shape. The new meshes might just be saved for use in TES6.

Do you really think you can morph the Argonian teeth? Would remove the need to create new tris if done right, yes, but with the extremely low polycount of the mesh itself, I don't see it being exactly easy. Still, if you can pull it off, it would be great, so by all means go ahead.