? The Selachii - Shark Race

[NightroModzz]

I'm planning to start on a selachii spear, and maybe a mage staff some time soon. I already have a base design in mind. The weapons will have a trident stile to them, but edited on a large scale.

 

The spear will have a slim ax-like stile on the bottom, a small tip at the center just for appearance, and something like a Halo energy sword at the top.

 

The mage staff will be something similar, but on a much smaller scale with a blue orb. It will have a stealthy appearance as such that it looks like you can use it for sharp shooting

 

Anybody welcome to post reference designs or links to other mods.

[Kuroyami]

27 minutes ago, NightroModzz said:

I'm planning to start on a selachii spear, and maybe a mage staff some time soon. I already have a base design in mind. The weapons will have a trident stile to them, but edited on a large scale.

 

The spear will have a slim ax-like stile on the bottom, a small tip at the center just for appearance, and something like a Halo energy sword at the top.

Well, I'd say they don't really use spears, but probably something more like a Naginata, mostly used by the guards posted in or around their Council Chambers. Not exactly sure of the design, but they don't use gold almost at all, so none of their weapons would have such details. 

[NightroModzz]

11 minutes ago, Kuroyami said:

Well, I'd say they don't really use spears, but probably something more like a Naginata, mostly used by the guards posted in or around their Council Chambers. Not exactly sure of the design, but they don't use gold almost at all, so none of their weapons would have such details. 

I'll consider doing something like that, but it's already along that line and I plan on doing all or most weapons in the long run, I'm just not inspired at the moment for the others. Yes I agree, gold is heavy. Although I have thought of gold being mixed with silver for light gold decal on high ranking weaponry.

[Kuroyami]

4 hours ago, NightroModzz said:

 Yes I agree, gold is heavy. Although I have thought of gold being mixed with silver for light gold decal on high ranking weaponry.

It's not so much about the gold adding unnecessary weight to the blade, as it is the availability of silver for them, and how much they value it beyond the Empire's gold. Otherwise, my thoughts on high-ranking weapons would go more for perhaps blackened steel for blades, and the higher tier armors would be black with red/white details(though for some the colors might be switched a bit, and white is the dominant color). Though this is meant to be the technical standard, not meaning this is an absolute requirement - so you could see some variation. Though still, the use of gold, either for things like the handguard or other smaller details, would be the rarity.

[Blaze69]

7 hours ago, NightroModzz said:

I'm planning to start on a selachii spear, and maybe a mage staff some time soon. I already have a base design in mind. [...]

Great to hear, and certainly looking forward to what you can come up with. Having custom gear instead of simply using vanilla weapons (mostly Blades/Akaviri stuff) would be nice.

 

That being said, spears in particular may be a problem, because there are no animations or support for them in the game so they can only work as one of the vanilla weapon types (sword, greatsword, battleaxe, etc). I think I've seen mods with spear animations at some point, but I assume they use the FNIS Alternate Animation system or something like that, so using it would require either a dependency to that mod or duplicating their entire setup.

 

So keep that in mind when working on the design. In this case, what Kuroyami suggests could be a bit more feasible animation-wise because naginatas have a blade at the tip so they wouldn't look as weird as standard spears when using greatsword or battleaxe animations (I mean, it would still be weird, but at least you would be slashing the enemy with a blade instead of just hitting them with the pole).

[NightroModzz]

Well I already noticed that spears already have animations like staffs as well. Pretty much like waking them. That is why the bottom end is a bit like an ax. I do have animations in mind, FNIS is pretty much a standard anyways. Color schemes can be worked out later after the model is done.

[Blaze69]

1 hour ago, NightroModzz said:

I do have animations in mind, FNIS is pretty much a standard anyways. 

It's not so much FNIS itself that worries me, but rather the Alternate Animations system. Not only would I need to gather all the required animation files and set them up, but I would also have to set up scripts that swapped animation profiles whenever a spear is equipped and reverted them back when unequipped (something I find wonky and a bit dangerous, as equip and unequip events can happen in a very quick sucession during combat and I don't know how heavy or bug-prone the swapping could be).

 

That being said, it may just be me being excessively paranoid, so if you have settled for spears, we can give it a try and see how it goes.

[NightroModzz]

6 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

Not only would I need to gather all the required animation files and set them up,

I don't think I ever had any spear animation or spear specific mods installed. I'm not sure what mod it is, but at the start of a game I always have a spear/staff in my inventory. If I were to use Alternative Start to begin as a khajiit guard, I would have that weapon equipped by default. So other than having FNIS, I don't think you would need to script anything other than the weapon being labeled correctly. I have those default animations in mind which mostly acts like a staff or naginata. Jabs or bashing, either will work with the design.

[Bad Dog]

More feet. Still have seam work to do.

Spoiler

 

 

[TheLastKhajiit]

That looks very nice, the seam isn't really all that noticable 

[Blaze69]

31 minutes ago, Bad Dog said:

More feet. Still have seam work to do.

Looking pretty good indeed. The seams do need some more work, though.

[Bad Dog]

Final version, unless you mooks have any suggestions. Females to follow.

 

Spoiler

  

   

 

[TheLastKhajiit]

A fin on the forearms maybe? Seriously though it looks great, imma buy you a beer one of these days

[MadMansGun]

2 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

 

  Hide contents

 

 

 

(screams in terror) NOOO! NOT THE OLD SWIMMING ANIMATIONS!!! ANYTHING BUT THEM

https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/5570-slightly-less-crappy-swimming-animations/

[Bad Dog]

And the ladies. 

Spoiler

 

[Blaze69]

5 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

Final version, unless you mooks have any suggestions. Females to follow.

Don't think I have any suggestions, looks pretty good to me. Will check them out ingame and get back at you if I have any comments, but I'd say that's a keeper. Thanks again. 

3 hours ago, TheLastKhajiit said:

A fin on the forearms maybe?

I'm not against the idea, but it would be difficult to pull off. Only way to do it properly would be to create a custom SOS body with the fins added to it (to make them seamless), but they would disappear as soon as you equipped any torso item. Otherwise, I guess they could be added as separate meshes included in the tail nif, or maybe even as "head parts" (probably Facial Hair) so you could choose to have them or not during chargen, but then it would be harder to blend them to the body.

 

Still, in the end it's up to Bad Dog; if he wants to look into it, I'll be more than happy to add it to the mod. 

[NightroModzz]

56 minutes ago, Blaze69 said:

I'm not against the idea, but it would be difficult to pull off. Only way to do it properly would be to create a custom SOS body with the fins added to it (to make them seamless), but they would disappear as soon as you equipped any torso item. Otherwise, I guess they could be added as separate meshes included in the tail nif, or maybe even as "head parts" (probably Facial Hair) so you could choose to have them or not during chargen, but then it would be harder to blend them to the body.

 

Still, in the end it's up to Bad Dog; if he wants to look into it, I'll be more than happy to add it to the mod. 

Although it's still a long ways off until I start the full body meshes, I don't mind doing that as optional in the future. But yeah, trying to do that now without a high poly full body mesh with the fins part of it for normal map baking, it may be difficult to get rid of any obvious seams. Of course the fins do not need to be part of the low poly body mesh though, so pretty much the same thing we did with the new head.

 

 

For those unaware, it's not difficult to do so long as you have a quad (not triangulated) body to work with.

This is how I do it for seamless results.

 

Have low poly body and high poly body>

Have low poly fins and high poly fins>

Delete section of topology, such as around the elbows/forearms>

replace section with low poly elbow/forearm fins with matching topology at the borders and stitch/snap points/vertices>

Subdivide to high poly, project detail from high poly models, then smooth the borders and you have a new high poly mesh for normal map baking>

Duplicate new mesh, delete all high subdivisions, separate fins again>

Make sure the seam borders match unedited low poly body before editing for the fins, and rematch borders or sink into the un-edited body mesh>

Triangulate and make UVs for the fins>

Bake normal maps and create other textures like a color map>

[Kuroyami]

6 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

Don't think I have any suggestions, looks pretty good to me. Will check them out ingame and get back at you if I have any comments, but I'd say that's a keeper. Thanks again. 

I'm not against the idea, but it would be difficult to pull off. Only way to do it properly would be to create a custom SOS body with the fins added to it (to make them seamless), but they would disappear as soon as you equipped any torso item. Otherwise, I guess they could be added as separate meshes included in the tail nif, or maybe even as "head parts" (probably Facial Hair) so you could choose to have them or not during chargen, but then it would be harder to blend them to the body.

 

Still, in the end it's up to Bad Dog; if he wants to look into it, I'll be more than happy to add it to the mod. 

Not exactly a bad idea, but this loading screen text exists already, and I think it is one already in the mod? I'm not sure. 

 

At one point, the Selachii may have had fins on their arms. It is unknown, even to them, when they may have lost them, or if they had them at all.

 

That isn't say that text absolutely as to stay - if something can be made to work, and it looks good, I would have no issue with that. Otherwise, I do like how these feet look, and It seems like they look okay without the digigrade skeleton, if that is what the second of the first male images shows.

[TheLastKhajiit]

Are the new legs going to be a part of the next update?

[Blaze69]

1 hour ago, TheLastKhajiit said:

Are the new legs going to be a part of the next update?

Yup, already got them ingame and working. Haven't found any issues, so I'd say they are good to go (though I'll have to play around a bit more, just in case).

 

The race will include the plantigrade feet by default, with the digitigrade legs/skeleton being an optional download with an extra plugin. I also did some tweaks to the paw UVs and texture files so they should still be compatible with human feet meshes. This means if you equip any footwear that shows the feet and includes feet meshes, those should load the proper textures and work fine as well (unless you are using the digitigrade addon, in which case the feet will look weird and distorted due to them not being built for the digi skeleton, but there ain't much to do about that). Same goes for manually replacing the beast feet with human feet if you prefer the latter over the former for some reason.

 

It's all pretty much done, as I don't think I'll be adding anything else unless something comes up all of a sudden. Just need to run some tests and do some cleanup, and the update will be release-ready.

 

...that being said, I dunno when the actual release will happen. On the one hand, RL is being a pain lately, so to be honest, spending what little free time I have packing up files and rewriting the description with the changes and so on doesn't sound exactly appealing. On the other hand, I do want to get it out ASAP so people can finally play around with it and I can get it off my plate already. So I'll do my best to post it soon, but no promises. Sometime during the weekend sounds like a reasonable ETA, but don't get your hopes up. 

[Blaze69]

Alright, new version is out at last! Check the changelog to see what's new, but pretty much everything has been listed in the thread already.

 

Only addition I may not have mentioned is the new Slit addon, but I'll admit it's because I was testing it and forgot to remove it from the release files so redoing everything again just to clean it up was too much work. This also means there could be some weirdness with it like textures not matching and such, so keep that in mind.

 

Pics not updated, because that's too much work as well. Check Bad Dog's screenshots in the last few pages if you want to see the new beast feet in action before trying them out ingame.

 

As always, let me know if you come across any bugs, chances are I screwed something up while packing and missed it during testing, yadda yadda yadda. Enjoy.

[ASlySpyDuo]

Seems to be working fine so far, haven't encountered anything unintentionally abnormal I think.

 

 

And here's some footpics for those curious how they look ingame, aside from the examples posted earlier.

 

Spoiler

 

And for those wondering why these shots are always from her left side...

Spoiler

Because the hair I chose kinda hides her face from the right, even at very slight angles.

 

And last but definitely not least, some nightmare fuel with the new eye size slider.

Spoiler

 

[TheLastKhajiit]

Everything seems to work fine, aside from the digitigrade boot issue, but that doesn't really bother me I just won't wear boots

[Raydric]

1 hour ago, TheLastKhajiit said:

Everything seems to work fine, aside from the digitigrade boot issue, but that doesn't really bother me I just won't wear boots

but you could use selachii light boots

only has armor on his ankles

[NightroModzz]

@ASlySpyDuo What ENB is that? It looks really good, although it seems to be a bit heavy on the blue.

 

@Blaze69 Probably should make the bottom of the feet white like other parts of the skin, except more pale. It currently seems out of place.

 

An option for white claws may be good too. If we are going by a species that came from the ocean, any bones, teeth, poisonous spikes, and potential claws were either white or translucent. The black does look good and can pass as nail polish, but reminds me too much of a velociraptor, especially with the new feet.