Narmix

The key is balancing poly count with detail. It's best to get as much detail as real polygons where you can (areas that seriously effect sillhouette) while leaving smaller details for normals. I'll do that, I'm just not there yet, haha. I've taken a break from making things for Skyrim in order to practice on some bigger projects. That way, when I come back to Skyrim, I'll be better suited to make things the right way the first time. Also, poly count is based on the game engine in question. I try to keep my polycount in an average of what the other items in the said game are. For instance, I exported all the staves and checked their poly counts. The average is ~1,800 polys. So I'm actually trying to hit around 2,000 (which I haven't done yet with the staff I made, as it's low poly currently) so that it's higher quality than the in-game items. People tend to prefer higher quality, and most PCs are easily capable of handling more than the console port Bethesda gave us. That's why so many people download higher quality items to replace in game assets. I'm going to try to make all of my items for Skyrim at about ~25% more polys than the game has by default on average. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do, texture-wise. I don't consider myself much of a texturer and had originally planned to just make UV-mapped models for people to texture themselves (because I'm sure they'd be better than anything I'm capable of texturing myself). However, I may. Regarding the staff: Actually, people have bent wood for a very long time by just soaking the piece until it's plyable, and then letting it dry out while clamping it into shape. But a magic tree works Regarding the axe: Honestly, I know skulls are really corny. I even named my original picture of it "corny.jpg". I did it primarily for practice. I wasn't yet using Sculptris and I wanted to push myself to make an organic shape without sculpting tools. Regarding sculptris: You can both sculpt *and* paint (and make normals). It's awesome and it's the only reason I might attempt texturing this myself. A friend of mine got me a program called Filter Forge as well, which lets you create patterned textures really quickly. I intend to make brushes in the program to be used in Sculptris for texturing the stuff. Right now though, like I said, I'm working on some bigger Skyrim-unrelated projects as practice. That way, in about a week or so, I can start working on Skyrim things. And I hope I can work on things with other people! Happy holidays

I guess my introduction thread is also becoming the place for me to post non-Elderscrolls-related stuff I'm working on. Just so you guys know I'm practicing. Yesterday's project was to become more comfortable with the process of UVW mapping, texturing, normal mapping, combining normal maps, sculpting... pretty much everything. I was listening to Deltron 3030 (futuristic sci-fi hip hop from Del the Funkee Homosapien) and decided a good project that I would enjoy doing would be making the official logo of the band as a 3D model scene. It's not totally done, but real life called and said "I don't care that you're not done, you have to do things." The original: My version: Click Link for 1080p Version The term "hiphop" might turn you off, but I seriously recommend putting aside any notions you might have and giving them a shot. It's intelligent rhyming mixed with post-apocalyptic themes and a totally unique sound. P.S. If I should not use my introduction thread to post general practice stuff I'm working on, please let me know. I don't want to break the rules. I just thought an introduction topic is kind of off the Elder Scrolls topic to begin with, and this all is kind of an introduction to myself, anyway.

Hi, everyone. New here and this is my first post in a thread not made by me (the others being my introduction thread and my WIP models thread). When the CK goes live, I plan to quickly integrate my models as mods in the cleanest way I can. I also want to get my hands dirty and would love to help out on any large mods that TESA has plans for. First and foremost, I'm modeling, but I wouldn't mind using the CK to make some new destinations/quests/etc. I'd just have to learn how to use it. My favorite mods in Oblivion were the mods that added content to every aspect of the game, not just locations. That is, adding extra food, weapons, armor, and especially miscellaneous items to the loot lists so that this new content can be found and played with regardless of where you are. Adding to that same idea, new creature types are a must as well. Skyrim's code has provided us with a lot of new facets for enjoyable creations and I had my eye out for them as soon as I began installing the game. One of these that interests me are the AI driven, animated, moving ingredients like butterflies and fireflies. When I first saw them in the game, I was really impressed (and am still impressed) and I'm trying to think of ways to expand that. I couldn't be more excited to mod for Skyrim Regarding your fear of overcrowding or, worse, overLAPPING content locations; I think you're absolutely right. I've already seen this as an issue in the modding community: Lack of communication or awareness of what others are doing. Right now, the people in the modding community seem to be lone-wolfing it, and many people are unfortunately reinventing the wheel when someone else has already made it. Now, I'm not talking about different takes on the same armor (like multiple but different reskins of the dark brotherhood gear, for instance), I'm talking about multiple people retexturing the same food with high detail textures and such when there's no real appreciable difference between them. This is wasted man-power. Communication is going to be KEY for the modding community, and I think at least on TESA, that won't be so hard. We have a good group here it seems and I hope to see a lot of collaborative effort. Treating the modding community like one big development studio I think would go a long way in producing some fantastic things for Skyrim. Workflow, workflow, workflow! Even if one wants to be a lone wolf, it would do everyone a huge favor if one keeps an eye on what's already in the works or especially what is already finished. Reinventing the wheel is typically bad.

Thanks, that's encouraging. At first I really didn't like the idea of modelling characters or anything, but the more I think about it, the more I want to practice doing it. It'd be really cool to make a lore-friendly race, but I think I'm pretty far from being able to do that. I actually have this urge to make cute things with big eyes... that's why I ended up making that little ghost pokemon thing up above; I hoped spending just a minute or two to make something like that would get the need to do it out of my system so I could focus on practicing something useful lol (but it hasn't). Oh well, production is going to be slow this month while I suck up as many turorials/videos/guides as I can and cram my head full of neat techniques and tips. I'm following a lot of tutorials that don't produce anything that can be used in game (like this which may have been a silly waste of time because it was more of a blender scene tutorial than an object making tutorial). I'm trying not to waste too much time in my learning, but I suppose making something fun and learning is better than forcing myself to do something that's not as fun. Sure, a steam engine is useless to us, but it's practice

Well that's true. I think I went a little crazy sculpting the skull though. While the original skull is really low poly and quite boring-looking, the second skull looks too animated/personified. It clearly has angry eyebrows. I am afraid, now, that it's too WoW-looking. The skull went from trying to be realistic, to being something that looks like it was crafted for the weapon as opposed to found and attached to it.

Haha, thanks guys. I can see this place is full of really cool people. I'm trying to improve every day, so hopefully I can contribute something in the end. I hope with the advent of the construction (creation?) set, we can get some cool overhauls off the ground. I've JUST started using sculptris, and I can say it feels so much more natural to make organic things than in blender. I will *never* try to make organics in blender ever again. Sculptris (like Z-brush) WILL produce 2 million poly models, but there's a tool to reduce polys. I reduce them just enough to make blender not crap itself when I import the obj, and then retopologize a low poly mesh out of it. Then I'll bake the details of the high poly mesh into a normal map to be applied to the new, low poly, retopo'd mesh. So much easier and more natural than trying to get reasonable organic shapes out of blender (which is so clunky, mechanical, and much better for hard surface modeling). Yes, yes, yes! Edit: Invented a ghost pokemon; just messing around in sculptris. It's so cute and sad looking, like most ghost pokemon. Man, I haven't played pokemon in so long

Dang. I knew the axe was generic, but I had no idea WoW did it already. Almost verbatum! Well, I guess when they've made just about every possible artistic variant of a melee weapon, at least one of them is bound to look like something I make. I've never even seen Shadowmourne before. I googled it just now... makes me sad the two are so similar. Goat skull, check. Horns wrap around blade... check.

Lol assuming I had inspiration of any kind is giving me too much credit. My process was "Hmm... I'll open up sculptris for the first time and humor myself at how bad I make a human head." Seriously. I didn't have anything in mind except "can I make eyes?... hmm ok... Can I make a mouth? Eh, I'll try...." etc. I guess "human" was my inspiration. I was trying to make something that looked human lol.

Hi guys. I was invited over here by Khettienna over at the Nexus. I'm not sure where to begin. I guess with my relevency to the modding community. I'm starting to learn modeling and texturing, and you may have seen my Silly Level of Detail Potions/Poisons and Wine Cellar mods. I know they're down right now, but that's because of some personal issues I have with them. I'll probably bring them up again in the future. I'm focusing on modeling and texturing because eventually I want to be in video game design and unfortunately have realized this at a pretty late age (24). In fact, despite loving video games my entire life, I can't believe I didn't realize sooner that I'd like to work in game development as a modeler. I did well in high school, went to college, thought I wanted to be a cop, studied psychology to get my bachelors from which I graduated with a 4.0, can't find a job and am now unemployed, and have just decided to go into the military. Whew. Talk about eclectic and unfocused. It wasn't until last month I thought "It would be really cool to make models." Unfortunately, I have to support myself and it seems like the military is the way to go right now; pay off my loans, get a safe job that keeps me on base in the U.S., and practice modeling/texturing in my free time. I primarily want to be a prop/environment modeler. I am not very interested in making organic things (primarily because I think I have zero ability to proportion organic things). However, a weird thing happened last night. Someone showed me a program called Sculptris and I opened it for the first time and thought "well, how about I humor myself and try to make a human head." I ended up with this: Over all, it's a ton better than I had expected. It took ~20 minutes. I really expected to go to bed sad, confused and disappointed in my life, but I ended up quite surprised at what I made. So maybe witha little practice, I will be able to make organic things. But for now, I'm going to focus on weapons/environment models, haha.

Hello everyone. I've made my introduction here: I'm trying to learn how to model and texture, and I really enjoy it. I'm happy if I can get a couple useful things out of all the models I make to practice. I've got a couple WIPs here and I'll be posting more. One thing pushing me forward is that modding communities usually have a plethora of texturers but not many modelers. Revenge of Frank the Goat ( ) Generic Snake Staff (intended to be entirely wood with the exception of the gem in snake's mouth) Staff is carved from a branch with large knothole in it. It's low poly, currently. Gonna take it through a run in Sculptris, then retopo it.