Let's make WEAPON mods!

[KrisCrash]

Wow, I'm drooling! I've really got to improve my Nifskope and Blender skills. Even seemingly simple items like books are a challenge for me right now.

the last thing I posted is PURE image editing work though

Kriscrash, given your crazy-busy RL schedule, I'm amazed you've made so much progress.

yeah well, I do these things instead of what I OUGHT to do

And I wanted to ask: would you be interested in having someone skilled like InsantiySorrow develop an Adamantium armor set in parallel with your weapon set? From other forums I've seen that there's a lot of interest in a complete Adamantium set, but it appears no Oblivion Adamantium weapons exist, and the only armor set I could find--in Vvardenfell Imports--I frankly wasn't all that impressed with.
Of course I'm asking this selfishly, as I'd love to use both the armor and weapons in WEPON, but that's your decision.
Thanks!

I have no plans to create armour (cause of the technical aspect), so I think you guys should just do it if you want to. We can colour the weapons to match afterwards. Are you asking 'cause you want my input on armour design?

a little normal map test of the grip, the rest isn't textured right, so don't worry about that x3
1250 tris, so it should be ok for oblivion specs now.


I wonder if I should just make the axe after this, or continue with giving everything unique shapes.

[BFG]

I have no plans to create armour (cause of the technical aspect), so I think you guys should just do it if you want to. We can colour the weapons to match afterwards. Are you asking 'cause you want my input on armour design?

I was thinking about it the other way actually, that you could create the weapons the way you want to and the armor design would be adjusted to fit. That said I'll need to see if anyone's actually interested first. And you're always welcome to provide input on the armor design.

For what it's worth, your design is A LOT like I imagined Adamantium. I love the heavy, dark and lustrous, functional yet fancy look of them.

[KrisCrash]

Hmm well, I started by looking at the Helm of Tohan/adamantium helm from Morrowind for inspiration (thanks for reminding me, now I remember how I wanted to texture these more clearly) so generally a morrowind style armour would apply. I do think most of the armour design for that was a bit dull (like steel but darker), but I never got around to sketching. Ideally I imagine a:
Light armour: leather with adamantine plating/rivets/scalemail/stuff. Think "dark assassin" - not as plated looking as current light armours.
Heavy: quite segmented, giving it perhaps a dragonscale look with some blades here and there. A medium look or a very heavy look?
Cloth: yes, a cloth set that fits in the style, armour-like pieces for decoration only, or practically placed reinforcement such as leather on the hands.
Look: well, dark, and glossy. I can't quite see if platinum has slightly violet hints, but that could help make it less monochromatic. Also, pale gems (is that unique to helm of Tohan or general for adamantium helms?), but whether they should be opals or saphires I can't spot.

For myself, if I finish this, I would add the weapons as a step beyond Daedric (but lighter), perhaps beginning to drop at lvl 25 (30?). Oblivion kind of STOPS giving you new stuff at 20. Conceivably the same could be done with armour, making it lighter and more durable. Since armour is capped at 85 any way, there may be no point to adding more - unless you want to give the benefit of reaching 85 without a shield. But weight and health is always worth editing. Heh now you've got me all thinking about it again.

I know you want to add it as a lower quality, but I think there's lots of armours and weapons already, taking up nearly the same rank. You can make your own ESP for that to avoid conflict, one can be somewhat recoloured and take up different names (cleaver vs axe, etc.)

The last thing I want to change-

The first use of the term adamantium in Marvel Comics was in Avengers #66 (July 1969) as part of Ultron's outer shell. The noun/adjective has long been used in standard English to refer to the embodiment of impregnable, diamondlike hardness, or to describe a very firm/resolute position (i.e. He adamantly refused to leave). It, along with its rhetorical form adamantine, occurs in works such as the Aeneid, The Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost, Gulliver's Travels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Lord of the Rings, and the film Forbidden Planet, all of which predate the use of adamantium in Marvel's comics.

this makes me think of renaming it to adamantine! More fantasy RPG like

[BFG]

The way your weapons are looking, kris, I could buy that they are higher quality than Daedric Yes, I would like to put them one notch below Ebony in quality in the WEPON mod, simply because that's where they were in both Arena and Daggerfall (and possibly Morrowind? I need to check). But as a standalone they'd work great as a level 25 or even level 30 drop. If you want me to do any ESP work just let me know!

Regarding the color of platinum - I looked it up and the "official" color is an RGB value of 229, 228, 226. That would give it a very slight yellow tinge, which is a bit more apparent in this photo: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... atinum.jpg
That said, I like the idea of giving Adamantium an ever-so-slight violet, blue or green tinge, since both Elven and Ebony already have yellow colorations.



When I asked on BethSoft forums if anyone had interest in Adamantium armor, a guy named Ghogiel posted the following. He's talking way over my head so I have NO IDEA if any of it is helpful:

The UV mapping will get better. Just make them distortion free, maximise the UV space, and keep UV islands the same pixel density(well more or less, along seams especially, some times you can increase an islands size to just fill up part of the map, but this can lead to unrealistic look, it can be quite sharp to the eye seeing different pixel density on the same mesh.

This quote is kinda wrong "So a polygon has 3 normals, one for each corner. That's fine." faces have 1 normal, which is perpendicular to the face. She means vertex normals not face normals. And that when you make hard edges you are creating extra vertex normals.(which is also why when baking, you must split UV islands at the hard edges, if you do not then there is only 1 vertice in the UV. where as the mesh geometry counterpart has what it considers 2 vertices, and if the shells are stitched you get missed rays when baking any normal maps. She mentions this in relation to normal mapping. To render tangent space normal maps, you need tangent space calculation, in addition to the vertex normals, you need their tangents, and bi tangents(binormals). These 3 vectors (3 way axis, ie vertex local xyz) + pixel color (RGB=XYZ) on the normal map will be used determine the direction any lighting offset is to have.

anyway that's close enough. You don't even need to know how or why they work tbh. But that will make sense to her I expect.

I assume she uses photoshop. make her DL this: http://www.cgted.com/
I want to say bad things about the normal work flow and how hard, time consuming, and inaccurate that method she is using actually is. that plugin should change everything for her. :hubbahubba:

Oh and 255:255:128 RGB is not neutral value for normal maps. That's backwards, I think she mixed it up. It should technically be 127:127:255 RGB. But it usually isn't in games, normal maps in games are unsigned normal maps, and the mid point would be 127.5, but you can't store integers, so 0 is stored as 128. and the normal always has a slight bend to it.
ZB and crazy bump use 127:127:255 as neutral normal value. Max uses 128:128:255. Oblivion normal map shader is based on max's version. I have actually tested fo the neutral value in Fallout3, and it is indeed 128..

While I am waffling, DXT compression cannot save values of 128 in either the R or B channel, It can in the G channel. This is because the bit depth of the channels are 5:6:5.
and this will always give you a slight seam at UV seams.

[KrisCrash]

Why is Ghogiel saying that when you asked about armours? :/ that's texture stuff, and you have misquoted me on a lot, gee thanks :/ I knew those things already.
Look, I appreciate that you want to help, but don't go around asking like that when you don't know what I need to know, and saying I said things I didn't say.
-
slashing type shortsword, there's a stabby one as well on the sketch

[BFG]

Kriscrash, here's the original post to which the Ghogiel guy responded:

Spoiler:

In previous posts, some of you may have seen me lamenting that no complete Adamantium weapon sets exist for Oblivion. And there's only one Adamantium armor set, in Vvardenfell Imports. I think this is a glaring omission considering Adamantium was a "major" set in Arena and Daggerfall, and was in an expansion for Morrowind.
I'm happy to report that Kriscrash, who created the awesome Madness weapons in the WEPON mod, is designing a beautiful Adamantium weapon set. It's still in the early stages with no projected release date, and may or may not be included in WEPON (that's up to her).
So, I would like to recruit one or two people to assist with her efforts:
1. We need someone who would be willing to design a new set of Adamantium heavy armor to match Kriscrash's weapon designs, or (with permission) retexture the version in Vvardenfell Imports to match her color scheme.
2. Kriscrash is highly skilled in most aspects of weapon design but has in the past wanted help with some phases, such as unwrapping/rewrapping and collision boxes. Anyone who is a capable weapon designer would be encouraged to contact her and see if they can help in any way.

You can view the in-progress designs here: UESP

I honestly didn't think anything I said up there was out of line or a misquote - particularly since I linked to the original thread so people could see what you've really said, and since during WEPON you were frustrated by some aspects of Oblivion weapon design and the fact I failed to find someone to help you. (The unwrap on the Madness Warhammer, and collision box work, come to mind.) I assumed, wrongly, that you'd appreciate a few pointers for your future projects. But, you requested the help in WEPON, not here; and so I can see why you find this annoying. So I apologize and will edit the post. My exuberance for the awesome work you've done, and envisioning that being in Oblivion some day, got the better of me.

[Ghogiel]

Please not blame or be mad at BFG for anything I wrote. I take responsibility. It's my head you are wanting to bite off.

I was only replying to things I read and saw in this thread written by yourself, KrisCrash. It's not pertinent to the request of armor modelling. If you didn't find anything I wrote in repy useful, please never mind me. Just trying to help where I can

[KrisCrash]

Well now I feel stupid too, I did indeed write the 255,255,128 right under a picture where the colour is 128,128,255. I thought you had misquoted me for that, but it was my bad for making a typo, sorry.

This is the best article ever on normal mapping: http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap
so I took the UV knowledge from there, and know the seam thing now. Problem with the madness warhammer is it's so complicated I don't know how to unwrap it. I haven't made anything that difficult before, or since. Simply lacking any suitable technique. It's not flat anywhere or allows seams any where. So, I know what a good UV is but it's still a lot of work to do.

Ghogiel: Thanks. Well it looks like you had only some general requests to respond to so... you couldn't do much with that.

So the problem with armour is mainly it's a LOOOOOT of work (this is my main beef with UVs too). A weapon is complicated enough for me, what with collision, UV, diffuse/normal/specular(/glow), scaling and placement. With armour .. well it has a lot more parts, and has to be rigged on top of that, and a male and female version. I really don't want to get into it.
My nexus thread "Exporting with skin modifier -> CRASH" highlights another problem.. I don't have a good pipeline for this. Everything I do has to go through stupid roundabouts before it can hit the game. This was exceptionally frustrating during the Madness weapon stuff, but the problem hasn't gone away.

[KrisCrash]

this is how I envision the light armour, in part at least
leather (shown red) plated with adamantine (shown medium grey), and then go with a hood - I just like hoods and they fit light armour nicely to me, I put a little mask in there too to add the metal.
Then over that I would put some loose fitting sleeves and pants in leather or cloth (dark grey), they'd overlap the knee and elbow and fold back under themselves, basically not be OVERLY puffy and princess like
And then over that I would put some more armour, which I don't have ideas for yet as far as looks go. Tassets that protect the hips and side of the thigh, a pauldron or two (I like asymmetry and some classic armours have less armour on the arm you'd cover with a shield any way), and something on the chest.
Maybe overlapping parts like large scales. But I haven't drawn any of the torso armour yet, so it looks.. a bit silly
Inspiration is Drows ;D

The result is not going to look as protective as Elven or Glass, they look more like medium armour to me but that's okay in its own, I just felt like having a more acrobatic, soft and sneaky looking light armour.
We can pilfer parts from elven boots and dark seducer gloves, they're both clawed and I happen to think that is super neat.
no colours are final, 'cept the metal I suppose. A shame Oblivion can't do specular colour, I think the nicest would be to make the metal slightly purplish, and put that proper platinum yellow in the highlights.

If anyone here feel like taking a stab at doodling their own armour I might as well share the mansketch for a base http://kriscrash.dk/art/2011/jan/manbase.png I tried drawing armour on front/side views as they make better references, but it also seems for getting a comfortable look it's better to use a natural angle while sketching.

Sorry for causing a fuss earlier, I guess sometimes my aggression is just higher than your disposition

edit:

[KrisCrash]

edit:

Light front & back - man of the cloth - priestess armour - heavy armour
have fun

[BFG]

edit:
Light front & back - man of the cloth - priestess armour - heavy armour
have fun

Cool...and here I thought you only liked to design weapons
I love the idea of a "lighter adamantium" armor set!

[KrisCrash]

Glad you liked it then!
Well... a WIP, with real baked normal maps this time, made a high poly model first, see http://tigr3ss.deviantart.com/art/Two-c ... -200006608 the green one.. I havent taken the time to make a low poly version.

Gotta figure the collision
Any ideas where I could put it in the game?

(Turned it into a claymore instead, it just doesn't look good small!)
oh and this I made last month as well

[KrisCrash]

Well in case someone missed it, I released those 2 last ones + a machete thinger and they are up here http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37880

now I'm trying to paint some good textures to make this blade interesting
My plan:

So far:

I'll have to change the hilt up since this still has the old design on the normal map.I think it comes better together now. Might get rid of that ridged hilt stuff entirely and just paint a leather wrap.