new race Windsifter/Change Race Concepts

[GDelscribe]

Oh yeah! That really feels good actually. Bird anatomy is kinda wierd as all hell.

[Bad Dog]

Okay, so this is very much an early look, but:

 

Spoiler

 

Goddamn, he's dorky.

 

It's going to take me a while to get the hang of making a bird head look good. On this guy, I don't know why the eyes seem so small--I'm using the standard beast eye position and overall head volume, for compatibility with vanilla headgear. But the eyse ended up looking tiny. Maybe because there's so much patterning on the head. And the overall shape is not making me happy--maybe those constraints aren't letting me make it as long and thing as it should be.

 

I think I'm going to let him rest and have a go at the raven guy I posted upthread. That's a very much less dorky head shape and maybe I'll be able to get that one looking better. 

 

There's going to be a bunch of playing and trying different things before I'm ready to start on a real head.

[GDelscribe]

Dorky yet oddly incredibly endearing??? I like it anyway hahah

 

I feel like a couple mild variations on this could make for a very nice head to work with for somethijg like the Talis concept

 

Also tbh bird eyes are p small at times so I wouldnt worry too much

[Bad Dog]

Spoiler

Very early progress on the raven. Already less dorky. Because anything worth doing is worth overdoing he gets ears, horns, and a crest. But all those parts will be available as separate headparts so you can mix and match when you're creating your character.

[Bad Dog]

Raven with more head parts. Whatchay'all think?

Spoiler

 

[GDelscribe]

I think it looks pretty classy!

[KestrelSky]

It looks great! I love the long feathers/horns. My only suggestions would be a little definition between the beak and the head across the bridge of the "nose".

[Bad Dog]

1 hour ago, KestrelSky said:

My only suggestions would be a little definition between the beak and the head across the bridge of the "nose".

Yeah. The normal map will help with that but I may well want to build more of a break into the mesh.

[Bad Dog]

First cut at expressions. This is anger:

 

https://vimeo.com/260154595

 

Lots of room for tuning, but that's basically what I'm going for. There is movement at the corner of the mouth which is pretty much invisible right now. I'll have to exaggerate it some.

 

The pattern is just a cartoon drawn on in blender so that when I do the real texture I can see where the parts lie, e.g. how far down the beak the feathers come.

[KestrelSky]

13 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

First cut at expressions. This is anger:

 

https://vimeo.com/260154595

 

Lots of room for tuning, but that's basically what I'm going for. There is movement at the corner of the mouth which is pretty much invisible right now. I'll have to exaggerate it some.

 

The pattern is just a cartoon drawn on in blender so that when I do the real texture I can see where the parts lie, e.g. how far down the beak the feathers come.

That looks awesome, I love the flaring of the feathers.

[GDelscribe]

I adore the animation of the back ruff honestly. And its nice to see the crows so nicely done~!

[Bad Dog]

Spoiler

Here's the raven, textured up, angry face.

 

Plan is to do a few more expressions then load the whole thing up in game and see how it looks.

[GDelscribe]

They look pissed and Im very fine with that

[KestrelSky]

Looks great so far BD. The feather texture make a huge difference in the expression! I'm excited to see what you'll do for the schlong ;P

[Bad Dog]

Progress report, FYI: I got the head loaded up in game and it looks pretty good. But I'm stymied by two things: The wrong normal map is being loaded and I can't figure out why. It's got to be a fairly basic configuration issue but I haven't nailed it down yet. More importantly, the expressions aren't working. I've got them all defined though I haven't done all the morphs yet, but I do have the morphs for aah and blink and moodanger. And they aren't playing in game at all. So there's something there I'm not understanding....

 

More as it happens.

[Bad Dog]

Here's a shot of the Ulri in game.

 

Spoiler

Needs cleanup; still hard to believe those are full-size eyes. Birds' eyes are round round round and I'll have to do something to reflect that.

 

Mostly though I still don't have the tris working. I've now got a very small twitching happening on the Aah and BigAah, but that's all. And I don't know what mechanism would recognize the tri but make it way too small. 

 

Edit: Whoop, scaling the tri mesh up by 10 did it, no idea why. We might be in business.

[KestrelSky]

That looks awesome, especially the feathers. I agree if there's anything you can do about the size/shape of the eye that would make a difference

[Bad Dog]

Here's the head recolored into a more hoopoe/golden eagle type look, depending on the crest. Imma do a hoopoe/blue jay style crest that relaxes back into a spike shape. Note the re-set eyes. Note that we actually have expressions for both head and mouth. (He blinks!) Now it's just the grind of working through all the expressions and phonemes for all the parts. 

 

Spoiler

 

 

[KestrelSky]

The eyes look much more natural!

[Bad Dog]

Got my man loaded up with a working mouth. Added "hair" -- crest and horns. Crest isn't animated yet. Still need to do the ears. 

 

A few different expressions:

 

Spoiler

 

There's no real texture on those horns yet, just a quick & dirty color and normal map. 

 

Expressions and phonemes are done for the mouth. Since there's not a lot of articulation in a beak, I made sure the tongue did different things for the different phonemes. Maybe it will be noticeable in game. 

 

Expressions probably need to be made more extreme. 

[KestrelSky]

That is looking awesome. When you make expressions does it allow you to set what the crest will do? That could add a lot of emphasis.

[Bad Dog]

Yes, I'm just not there yet.

[Bad Dog]

Spoiler

 

[Bad Dog]

Okay, here we go. Loaded up and animated. I think the speaking looks fairly convincing, despite the restrictions of only having a beak. I decided I was being way too cautious with the crest and increased the size by a bunch. Much more convincing this way, I think.

 

https://vimeo.com/262908505

 

Note that the bodies haven't been touched yet.

 

Does anyone really understand hair and extra parts? I've implemented this as a hair -- the top crest -- with two extra parts -- the side crest and horns. Top and side crests have tris and as you can see they work. 

 

Problem is when I save and reload, the game forgets what part it's supposed to be showing. It switches back to horns only, generally. (Horns and side crests are available as head parts of their own, not just as extra parts for the full crest.) I can go into racemenu and set it back to what it should be, but after a save and reload it reverts.

 

With my mercenary follower there, the problem is that some of the head parts aren't showing. He's also defined to have the full crest but only the main part shows. If I do a facegen on him, the generated nif has what you see--the top crest but no horns or side crest. Horns and side crest don't show up in the Creation Kit preview either. But as you see, the same parts work fine on the PC. (Except I can't save and reload them--but the part that sticks for the PC is the horns, not the top crest.) 

 

Also too I'm trying to set up the horns so they don't pick up the body color (or hair color). Based on how the khajiit hair with rings work, I thought I could do that by setting the vertex color to 0 on them--but that doesn't work on these. Any ideas there?

 

Edit: Dunno if that video is working. Here's a still:

 

[GDelscribe]

Honestly looks hella.

 

Is there any way to change each hairstyle to be like, a single piece for both elements?