vometia

Kinda surprised that after a year of mostly lockdown, wherever we are, there aren't more pictures; this topic definitely needs more love! I mean speaking as someone who's just doing the occasional drive-by these days (my modding isn't what it was; in recent years it's just been some conversion of stuff I did a decade ago to what little is amenable nowadays, currently Baldur's Gate 3). And this isn't it either. I've found to my surprise that I don't hate webcams quite as much as phones but I'm still not a fan. Still, it makes me actually bother to brush my hair and put on some make-up. So here is a sequence of me not being able to force myself to smile for the camera, a lifelong problem, so I made faces at it instead. Also a lifelong problem. Hopefully I was perceived as being a bit more sensible during the actual video call in question! Oh, talking of hair, I have just joined the chamber of horrors that is The Lockdown Haircut™. Years ago the drunken octopus coat hook thing was a meme. Fast forward to today: I trimmed off some loose ends yesterday afternoon and promptly forgot about it. Until I washed my hair this morning, caught myself in the mirror and wondered why I seemed to have a drunken octopus sitting rather askew on my head. Sigh. Well if it doesn't polish out I guess at least it'll grow back. Eventually.

I'm still playing older games and have recently settled into the Dragon Ages which have the added bonus of being much more modder-accessible than they were (even including Inquisition to a limited extent, but not there yet). I've only realised after the event that I should've perhaps come here first and asked for help before trying to mod Dragon Age 2 as in some ways it's less straightforward than Oranges but happily I have it figured out, finally. Well, for values of "figured out" as it's a laborious progress to get from Blender to in-game model, but it seems to work correctly.

I have a bit of an odd relationship with older games; in theory I like them and often find I enjoy them more than I might expect, e.g. VtM: Bloodlines, Divine Divinity and so on. My main difficulties are that pretty much anything from the '90s gives me the migraine from hell (possibly related to me also having extremely bad motion sickness, but it can take days to recover) and tiredness means my concentration wanders off too often during Ye Olde Wall o'Text. Which is a real shame as I used to really enjoy some of the text-only adventure games in my youth: interesting that they had among the best graphics of any game I played! It's amazing what a youthful imagination can do with an imaginative enough description of the environment. So if I was a more sensible and less difficult person they would be good suggestions; however, I a neither! I think I'm looking for stuff that is more or less contemporary, i.e. last 10 years or so. RPGs, though I like adventure; stuff that involves more exploring and meeting people than it does combat or strategy (though combat in particular is a staple so unavoidable, so as long as it isn't impossible!) and playing a female lead. Things I've enjoyed a lot are TES and all the recent Fallouts; Mass Effect and Dragon Age; the Divinities (not including Beyond Divinity: too alien-looking for me; nor Dragon Commander, which was pretty much entirely strategic); Kingdoms of Amalur; and in spite of the male leads, The Witcher, the Bioshocks, and even the much-maligned Two Worlds. Mostly stuff that's as challenging as I want it to be but also somewhere I can just go and soak up the environment. If it can be modded, so much the better, but I guess that's just taken as read given present company. But having just written all that I really need to go and check out your recommendation. Why do I always do things in the wrong order? "Because it's 5am" is a compelling excuse, but sadly I'm just as disorganised at any other time of day!

Whole lotta lurking going on by the look of things. I'm still checking in once in a while but as with everywhere it seems that forum traffic has really plummeted; I guess that "golden age" from the post-Usenet days of the early '00s to perhaps five years back is largely over. AFAICT a lot of it is because people migrated more to social media and other things that were more accessible on their wireless telephones; where more in-depth discussion was needed it seems that meta-forums have become the thing instead, so Steam for gaming etc. Which is really kinda sad given that there were formerly so many awesome communities, but places like TESF and BSN are very much yesterday's news. Dunno if Bethsoft foresaw The Way Of Things or not but their revamp accelerated the process, and BSN... well, Bioware didn't know what it was doing and didn't really understand what it had. At least before ME3, anyway. The quieter places like Larian are now quieter still where there's often just the occasional tumbleweed that rolls through on its jolly adventure to the next ghost forum, though we are having a flurry of activity with the upcoming Baldur's Gate 3. So what was the point of this? Er, dunno really. Actually I'm in one of my "I need something to play!" moods and I think that's what I was going to write originally. And I dunno what. I feel I've done the TES and Fallout thing to death; ESO I liked but I'm way too "argh other people!" for online stuff; Dragon's Dogma was awesome, but three times in quick succession was probably all I could eke out of it; Assassin's Creed Odyssey was a lot of fun though after 100+ hours I think I wore it out by too much aimless mooching about instead of having any purpose (such is the risk of free-roaming); Andromeda was way better than its reputation suggests but I'm not ready for another go with it; the Divinities I've done again and thoroughly enjoyed Original Sin II just now but it's done; tried some of the little indie things like A Plague Tale which was awesome enough to do it twice but it's now done; tried The Occupation which was fun in that it's a kinda sorta political thriller Bioshock set in '80s Britain but it has timed missions, so no. And now I dunno where to look. Something interesting and engaging without being too hard; something where I can RP a female lead because I've spent way too much time RPing a male, so while I'll make exceptions for Geralt and Booker and Strelok I'd generally rather not. So I dunno. Right now I'm gameless again and while Greedfall promises much, that's (at least) two months off. But I need something now because my doctor has ordered me to play more video games to relax! Which is true, btw.

Just my least favourite bit of it! At least if ESO is anything to go by, which it may or may not be.

Wrothgar? D:

I think a lot of it depends on my mood at the time! I often start the day in a better mood so I don't mind the grinding so much and can ignore the idiots; but by the end of the day my mood is invariably much worse at which point the grinding is boring but unavoidable, competition for resources is annoying and "look at meeeeee!" type players make me want to hurl my computer out of the window. Perhaps unfortunately I chose the wrong time to write this post! Cyrodiil certainly seems to be controversial. I did ask on the official forums about etiquette and it seems that there's two distinct flavours of PvPers: the ones who are there for actual meaningful competition and who seem helpful and generally respectful, who take a live-and-let-live approach to people who are minding their own business and say that the PvE types are quite easy to spot; and the other sort who basically view anyone as fair game and will do what they please. It was very interesting to see the significantly divided groups of players and the sort of delivery of their respective opinions. I have invitations to show me around and I feel incredibly rude for not taking people up on their kind offers; I'm just so incredibly nervous, so it seems that I'm destined to learn the hard way! But I do have three main characters now: effectively three facets of my usual character but I figured it was good to have one in each alliance, so my Covenant type is a Breton DK (my original and most experienced character: certainly the weakest hitter, but probably the most durable), a Bosmer sorcerer who's quite adept at zapping things but squishy if she's not quick enough, and a Nord assassin who surprised me by being the most lethal of the lot and is middling in terms of squishiness. I know that I probably didn't exactly choose the ideal careers for their given races, I seem to enjoy being random which might explain some of my difficulties! Sometimes I seem to spend most of my time doing writs and farming for resources but that requires less brain power than questing...

Been playing ESO for a while now and I must admit I'm still slightly undecided about it. I guess my opinion is largely that of an SP gamer who's largely unfamiliar with MMOs. Pros: there's certainly lots of it and it's nice to have more Elder Scrolls, especially for someone who thought that Skyrim was a bit of a damp squib, which leaves quite a large gap. Cons: it's very grindy. I never really knew what the much-complained-about grinding of MMOs was. Now I do. Also other players: Cyrodiil is the worst, which is a shame as I wanted to explore (though as it turns out, it's not like the Cyrodiil in Oblivion: it's very, very barren) but for reasons best known to themselves, Zenimax decided to make it both a PvP and a PvE area. PvPers being what they are tend to take the "it's my ball and you can't play with it" approach and will attack any PvEers on sight. Admittedly they're not all like that but there's enough to make it a no-go zone. Outside of the PvPvE areas, fighting outside wayshrines, fighting in the middle of town, murdering all the townsfolk, not dismissing your pet bear but instead parking it on something other players need to interact with and refusing to move, competition for scant resources, shouting obscenities into the chatbox, jumping around and casting very visible spells constantly, mudballing other players to stop them doing what they're doing, loads of other "looook at meeeeeeeee!" makes it quite tedious. I know they're a minority but as usual they're a minority who make a gigantic noise. And also having to compete for scant but essential resources: there seems so much that's designed to cause conflict. I dunno. Maybe MMOs just aren't for me. For a relaxing pastime, ESO has been very stressful: maybe I should look at my gaming habits to understand why the past month has been a bad one.

It's awesome that you've got the mesh together properly; especially sorting out the weights, as that's something I often struggle with a lot. Skirt physics in particular are awful to do, but even straightforward weighting I've historically lacked very much aptitude for. With the cuffs or rather seams, my usual approach is usually to select the end ring on one side, scale it up by just the tiniest amount, do a face fill and pull it just ever so slightly so it overlaps a little with the end ring on the other. The resulting "step" may be barely noticeable in game, and hopefully less so than a gap! Texturing: must admit that's not entirely my forte either. I've learnt a fair bit while doing my recent Bioshock outfits but my level of knowledge still isn't great; I'm happy to pass on what little I do know, though. For me, use of layers has made life a fair bit easier, variously using masks and things like soft light, multiply etc to get the overall effect I'm looking for. I also found that the blender-created normalmap can give a handy guide to adding some shading to the texture to add some "depth" to it. And regarding normalmaps, I also use the same texture file for those to ensure everything stays properly lined up, and just name them accordingly so that it's easy to find the relevant layers I need to turn on or off to produce the respective dds file. One of the main differences tends to be that the ones I've prepared for normalmap generation tend to be of very much higher contrast, and are sometimes inverted depending on how the height map should look. I'm not 100% satisfied with the outcomes I've managed but generally speaking they're good enough, which is, well, good enough!

If you want to adjust it in game, you don't have to exit: save over the nif, in the console type player.unequipitem refid pcb player.equipitem refid and it should load up the new and hopefully improved version: no need to quit and restart! And I agree, OS makes life an awful lot easier and removes a lot of the faffing about that was previously required in Bethsoft games.

That's great! Nice job with the weighting, hopefully you'll find which is the best to use for the thingy in question. Regarding the gloves, I tend to just make a slight overlap between the sleeves and gloves/hands to disguise any unwanted seams, so maybe that might be one approach? I know by definition that isn't seamless (!) but perhaps a small cuff would look better than an occasional gap.

Just had a look at one of my NIFs, and these are the bits you need to be looking at: Other bits are the Shader Flags: the ones I have set here are Specular, Skinned, Cast Shadows, Own Emit and ZBuffer Test. "Skyrim Shader Type" I'm not totally sure about, I normally have it set to Environment Map for this type of model. The flags are different for e.g. human skin but as your model doesn't seem to require that I wouldn't worry about it right now (though I'm happy to go into detail if you want!) I'm not actually that convinced how important the flags are anyway and I mostly just use them to make sure that stuff shows up properly in NifSkope itself: I think FO4 normally uses the bgsm files for all those settings, at least as I recall. Apologies for the vagueness, it's been a while since I've experimented! Things to not bother with: alpha settings, unless your model specifically needs them, and BSShaderTextureSet which you can leave empty: I think it's better not to set this because it can get out of sync with changes to the bgsm file which is just confusing...

Oh, yeah, I'm much the same: I find it much easier to work interactively than to do all the preparation behind the scenes and have it "just work"! I've known people who can work effectively like that but I'm not one of them. And seriously, reviewing your progress, this is all your work: all I've done is provide a little encouragement and moral support but really credit goes to you for figuring out how to get things together. I agree with you about this site though, I've found people here to be most helpful where others often aren't, and I've been pointed in the right direction and given useful hints and tips several times now, including FO4 modelling itself.

Yay, awesome! Congratulations on getting this far. If you haven't already done so we'll figure out the textures tomorrow but this is really great progress.

Oh, yeah, that sounds familiar: I had problems with that too. I think it's to do with materials not being assigned so that'll be the next thing you need to work on. It looks complicated but really isn't, and if anything is probably easier to deal with than previous Bethsoft games once you've got the hang of it. ISTR the two things you need to define in the NIF are the material file (the one with the bgsm suffix: just use an existing file as a template in the material editor and substitute your own textures) and something to define the wetness effect. I apologise for the vagueness, I'm tired and have terrible motion sickness after too much gaming so I'm going to bed and will get back on it tomorrow! Edit: it's also worth bearing in mind that the CK is extremely fussy and stuff that can crash CK often works perfectly well in the game itself. I must admit I just used FO4Edit for the most part but it's probably sensible to get it in a state that both FO4 and CK are happy with!

Not that I'm aware of. In my case I didn't do anything special at all: I started off loading the "donor" model into OS, exporting the obj, importing it into Blender with the default options and doing whatever was required to rework it; exported again using the default options as we both detailed in our respective screenshots, imported into OS to transfer weights and finally exported it to a NIF. All of them just using very standard, basic options so I'm at a bit of a loss. There's the other option I mentioned which is if you want to send me the blend file (and absolutely no pressure, I fully understand if you're less than keen to send your work to other people) to see if I can get it into a NIF successfully so we can try to see if we can home in on what's causing the problem. Alternatively you could try the LoversLab forum (which I hope is okay to mention since it hosts some nsfw stuff) which has more in-depth discussion from people who are much more familiar with OS and the other tools.

That shouldn't be the case: I just did a test import and export when I did those screenies earlier and NifSkope seemed quite happy even with no texture/material being assigned. I also assume you're using a recent version of Outfit Studio?

Oh, it just occurred to me, which version of NifSkope are you using? Mine is 2.0.0-pre-alpha-6. I dare say there are newer versions by now but anything significantly older will probably not properly understand the format. Edit: oops, says in the title bar of your screenies, 2.0.0.pre-alpha-4, so it's probably not that either; though it may still be worth updating just to be on the safe side.

Just had a quick look: seems your export settings are the same as mine except that I also tick "selection only" which conceivably could be the significant bit: not sure, though, I think previously when I've forgotten to tick that it just imports a whole bunch of stuff. From there, importing it into Outfit Studio should give you something like the following. I mean in the spoiler tags!

I've seen that message before, but can't quite remember what caused it. The good news is that whatever it was, I worked past it, and I am "that person" who usually manages to make a mess of it! I'll spend a bit of time looking at what I did later today to refresh my memory: it's been a few months since I've done any modelling so I really need to get back up to speed. If we can't figure it out on the forum (sadly, I am not awesome at explaining things: so many of my friends are teachers, a job I am eminently ill-suited for) you could send me the blend file and I'll try shouting at it for you, and document what I do with screenshots for future reference.

Awesome. I've just realised there will be a couple of minor complications with the weighting, though absolutely nothing insurmountable. One is that you're doing to have to rig the gloves separately: you can either mask them so they don't take on the weights from the body reference, then invert the mask and do a second copy loading the hands (or another glove model) as the reference; or to separate them and have them as a different model. Probably best to look at the other outfits in the game to see which approach suits you best. The other is that you'll probably have to do some manual tidying of the collar thingy: I must admit I absolutely loathe manual weight-painting but your mileage may vary and you'll very likely be better at it than I am. And have you experimented with the material editor at all? It has a lot of options but fortunately it's fairly straightforward and gets most of the texture-related configuration out of the NIF.

Oh, and I assume you've already done this, but also load up the body reference in OS, export it as an obj and load that into Blender to make sure that your model conforms to it properly. Unlike Oblivion etc, the model will be horizontal rather than vertical which I found took a bit of getting used to.

Yeah, just export it as a basic obj from Blender: you don't need to do anything else with it, just the mesh and UV map. I seem to recall it's much more straightforward if it's done as a single mesh, too. At that point you can import it into Outfit Studio and load a reference. For something that's basically human-shaped, the standard body as a reference will be ideal. I usually use a distance of 0 when doing a bone weight copy which I presume does a sort of "best guess": I never checked officially, but it always seemed to end up with the best weights for my models. Anything that requires physics or something that's significantly outside the bounds of a human body shape will require some advanced techniques such as masking and multiple references but I'm guessing you probably don't need to worry about that sort of stuff. You can also assign the textures while you're in Outfit Studio, which is reasonably straightforward: just make sure for any special types e.g. skin you select the correct one from the drop down. It may require a little tidying up in NifSkope, but I usually do any final bits with the game loaded up: if I want to change something, the usual trio of player.unequipitem, pcb and player.equipitem is a quick and easy way of reloading it to check that the changes have properly taken effect. I can go into more detail as required but hopefully that's enough to point you in the right direction.

Export to an obj and use BodySlide/Outfit Studio to do all the rigging and other assorted gubbins. Although by no means an expert, I'm happy to advise based on my own experiences either here or by PM. Edit: sorry, didn't quite read your post properly (sadly, this is not a first for me!) but normally I copy from a suitable reference in OS before exporting as a NIF and only use NifSkope for any final tidying.

That's definitely the impression I'm getting, and also explains some of the rather confusing information I was seeing; in essence, "SSDs still have reliability problems... but are way more reliable than HDDs." The one thing I'm still not certain about is how "catastrophic" that failure will be: I'm assuming a bad SSD will have bad sectors rather than being a total write-off; whereas an HDD may be victim to either.