ResolveThatChord

With regards to deserts, I saw somewhere someone had experimented with a Saharan sand kind of retexture for snow in Skyrim. The results were extremely promising.

Everything is filthy in Skyrim, and I do want to be conisitent with the visual design. The amount of filth caked onto the clothes may not be entirely realistic, but it does communicate the character of the world. I'd say that good design is more important than realism, and look: The dirt has broken up the flatness that was bothering me so much. I think I can accept the quality of this texture now. I'd rather move on and do it better next time than continue tweaking this one. Well, maybe I'll put some more wear on those boots. Feel free to make any more observatinos or criticisms. If anyone has questions about the process, I'd be happy to oblige. Next up is the tedious stuff: making the other three mesh shapes, vertex weighting all four, and testing in-game. Thanks once again everyone for your help. This will be released here on TESA as a modder's resource; you'll all be free to retexture it into whatever covert, snow-based suit of armour you please. Stay tuned for whatever the next thing will be. I've got my eye on the costume designs from A Game of Thrones, maybe that will be next.

[color:red]Character Name: Zrikt [color:red]Character Type: Secondary character [color:red]Character Age: Not quite as old as time itself. [color:red]Character Race: Daedra [color:red]Character Description: Zrikt stands roughly 7 feet tall (discluding horns). For the most part, he resembles a very tall Bosmer, though the elvish aspects of his face (pointed ears, almond-shaped eyes, ridged forehead) are thoroughly de-emphasised. His height, coupled with his wiry muscles, gives him the appearance of unnatural thinness. His body is not adorned with any decoration or clothing (aside from, perhaps, the obligatory, fur loin-garment). In places his bones are developed beyond those of a normal humanoid, most notably on his head, back, fingers and toes: he has short claws in the place of nails, antlers sprouting from his forehead, and from his spine armour-like plates of bone are formed along his upper back. His eyes are an unremarkable dark brown. Zrikt's behaviour is baffling to many, mostly because he is not driven by human impulses or desires. He habitually creates mischief and chaos for their own sake; in this way he validates himself. He is equally pleased by his own acts of creation, though these are rarer, as he has no need for shelter, clothing, or food. Unlike most daedra, Zrikt fears death: in dying, he is cast back to oblivion, and closer to the reach of Hircine, his enemy and master. In combat, Zrikt tends to fight hand-to-hand, with horns and teeth thrown into the mix. He may also fight with enchanted spears, carved from sticks. Centuries in Hircine's realm have made him constantly wary; as such he is always trying to outmaneuver potential threats. He goes to great effort to go unnoticed by the Princes of Oblivion, especially Hircine. To this end he avoids moonlight, or being observed by wild animals. He flees from werebeasts outright. [color:red]Abilities: Highly resistant to common weapons: He cannot be cut by iron or steel. Observant. Telekinetic: he can easily manipulate many smaller objects without needing gesture or incantation, but more massive objects are all but completely beyond his control (for example, he could open a door if it wasn't too heavy, but cannot use telekinesis to disarm of force choke someone). Enchanter. Ferocious fighter. Sneaky. [color:red]Weaknesses: Fears death, or otherwise returning to oblivion. Tied to mundus by conjuration; he requires a summoner. Weak against elemental magic, enchanted weapons and fire. Limited martial discipline. [color:red]Background: During the creation of Mundus in the Dawn Era, mighty spirits were destroyed or crippled, and many lesser spirits were formed. Zrikt was formed from an eddy of power in the wake of far greater births, existing only as a formless, bodiless whisper. Nameless, and unable to affect the physical world in any way, he wandered creation as a mindless observer. Thus Zrikt remained for time beyond counting, until he happened to drift through a living creature; a progenitor to many animal species of Tamriel. He found that he could affect the creature's intentions, and thus indirectly affect the world. In this he discovered his first emotion: delight. Frustration and anger followed, as he explored the limits of his influence to find that he was rendered powerless in the face of the creature's primal urges, to eat and hunt and flee, to nurture and protect, to hate and kill. All these sensations and desires were incomprehensible to Zrikt, and he quit the creature's mind in disgust. The experience pronounced a great change in him. Suddenly, he could affect the world, and in doing so, the world affected him. He drifted from creature to creature, delighting in the chaos he could create, the ripples of cause and effect he could set in motion. He lusted for more control, more power to vandalise the world. Slowly he gained more influence as he came to understand these animals' alien senses and imperatives. Eventually he found the mind of a human(oid); an ancestor to the races of mer. This new creature's mind was unlike any Zrikt had encountered before. He had found a being with self awareness. In it he found treasures he had never imagined: language, culture, faith, crime, revenge, justice, shame, honour. In time he learned that this elf had a name. He also found that it had a name for him: it was aware of him. Time passed again beyond counting, but now Zrikt had a purpose. He needed more influence. He needed to crystallise his identity, to discover his name. He had no tongue to speak one, nor ears to hear one. He roamed the earth, preying on malleable minds to feed his addiction to mischief. In the latter half of the Second Era, a Wild Hunt was called. Over a thousand Bosmer performed the ritual, submitting themselves to the power of Y'ffre. Transformed, they stampeded across the land, leaving ruin and death in their wake. When the task was done, the horde of monsters found themselves in a dense forest. The ritual of the Wild Hunt ended with the monsters turning on one another. For months the horrible beasts fought, every one for itself. Few fled, and when it was over, the forest floor was littered with the corpses of unspeakable terrors, and a black cloud of carrion nearly blocked the skies. Amid this destruction, one beast stood victorious, feasting on its fallen foes. Its form had stabilised as an unnaturally tall, antlered humanoid, possessed of terrifying strength and speed. Hircine, Daedric prince of the hunt, had watched the mad battle with keen interest, and was delighted by the clear, sole victor. He sent his followers and minions to catch it, and take it to the plane of the Hunting Grounds, so that he may personally hunt it. They were unsuccessful; all were either killed or driven off. Hircine was further intrigued, and set about manifesting himself in Mundus, to personally test this beast. Appearing as a fleet-footed elk, Hircine played the role of the prey, tempting and fleeing from the beast. He found it had some cunning, but its mad fury made it easy to outwit. It was much as He expected, and He was inspired to create a worthy beast for His own hunt. Abandoning the forest and the chase, he began to hunt for a guileful mind for his creation. Of course, it was Zrikt he found. Zrikt had been terrorising a small Valenwood settlement, who's residents had come to know him as a spirit of madness. He observed with interest as they committed crimes against one another of their own accord, absolving themselves of guilt by blaming him for their actions. He was unaware that his antics had drawn the attentions of other spirits. When Hircine pinned him to the earth with an enchanted spear, it was the first time a physical object had affected, let alone harmed him. He has feared and hated Hircine ever since. Hircine trapped Zrikt in the beast's mind, and forced the two to fight until one was destroyed. Zrikt was victorious, and claimed the prize of a powerful body of his own, at the cost of his freedom to wander unseen, unaffected by the world; all exactly as Hircine had planned. For hundreds of years Zrikt was trapped in Hircine's realm, forced to hunt and be hunted. Between attempts at escape, he went about eliminating his body's mortal needs, such as to sleep or eat, which he saw as an affront to his own nature. Over time, he became far more Daedra than beast. When Uriel Septim was murdered, and the dragon fires failed, Zrikt saw a chance for escape from Hircine. From a fallen branch he carved a staff of summoning. Its enchantment was designed to bind Zrikt himself, but was subtly flawed to work to Zrkit's advantage; Though he could not subvert the enchantment's nature of mastery over him, he could allow himself far more freedom than any mortal-made spell. One essential difference was that dismissal would only work if Zrikt consented. Fleeing to Mundus, pursued by hunters, Zrikt hid the staff before being caught and dragged back to Oblivion. He resumed his life in Hircine's wilderness; fleeing, hunting, killing, surviving, and waiting for his staff to be uncovered, so he could be called to Mundus. There, he was sure, he could win back his freedom.

I know. In Blender it's easier to use a separate texture for each effect you apply to a material. I've added the second normal map and combined it in Blender. Still dissatisfied with the result, I'm not sure if I prefer it with the extra shadow detail. I've rendered it next to the Redguard outfit for comparison, I think it does a good job of illustrating what's missing. Clearly, more dirt is called for. So far I've been overlaying dirt textures with varying strength, but it seems that I ought to have been really caking it on. I think an opaque blend will give better results. If I do this so that the knees of the trousers and the skirts of the tunic are dirtiest, it may give the contrast I think the two garments need to be readily distinguishable. I tried to achieve this by changing the tunic to darker, more contrasting shades, but that turned out to undermine the design and just look kind of ugly. Literal dirt textures are quite flat; usually a uniform shade of brown. For this I think I need something with more variation within the brown spectrum. Just as we use concrete as a base for metal textures, I think something else for the dirt... Does anyone have any ideas?

Ah, I see. The whole suit of armour currently uses only one texture space (so three files; only one each of diffuse, normal and specular maps). Currently the resolution is 2048x2048, but it will be reduced to 1024x1024 for release. I've tested for loss of detail from reducing the texture, and found it mostly unchanged at the kind of distances we see in-game. I haven't yet exported anything to .nif or .dds; everything is still in the Blender/Photoshop stage. I'm currently working on a normal map made from a modified version of the diffuse texture, to be combined with the baked texture. Hopefully that will give the fabric the extra bit of detail that it needs. And, incidentally, if anyone noticed the weird shadow around the feet, I've discovered that it was caused by Blender's limit on raytracing distance. I've fixed that up so future renders will display the lighting properly; I'll put one up once I've sorted out this normal map.

Hana, shall I pm you the .psd? It's 88MB compressed, that may be a bit too big. Basically what I did was start with a concrete texture for higher-frequency brightness variation. Then every material (metal, leather, tunic, trousers) has it's own, slightly transparent base texture, as well as a hue/saturation adjustment layer for colour, a grungy texture for dirty or darker areas (overlay blend), another hue/saturation layer for lighter areas, and usualy a layer that decreases colour variation on areas that are worn. Ambeint occlusion is overlaid over the top of everything. Most layers are masked to constrain the effect to where I want them. Basically I just applied the methods from this tutorial, which is a good one I think. IS, I haven't yet made a normal map from the diffuse texture. I'll try your suggestion. As for stronger normal maps, it seems blender can bake stronger maps by applying the map to the material more than once. This may be limited to creating discreet multiples of the normal map's effect, I'll have to experiment a little. I've discovered that blender had been using the Spec map's alpha channel in those renders, so the specular strength was uniform. Here's a new one with proper specular and doubled normal strength. Looking at it now, I think the normals on the embossing are inverted. Must fix that. I'll also look for some workable worn fabric textures. Thanks a million once again for the help, guys!

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! Hana, when I said "photos" I actually meant "photo textures", rather than textures from filters or procedural generation. Looking at the vanilla textures, I found that fabrics' weave was detail that the texture's resolution could barely pick up. It looked more like softened noise. The fabric parts here all already have a weave texture (your link didn't work but I found the category it was in) which is considerably more visible than the vanilla ones. The consensus seems to be that the weave texture is still not visible enough. Is there some way to make it more visible, perhaps with specular and normal maps, without scaling it up and making it appear coarser? _echo, what do you mean by "matted"? I'm really not familiar with texturing technique or jargon. StarX, now that you say that I can see that the tunic may be a bit too similar in shade to the trousers. They should be immediately distinguishable; do you guys think they should be contrasted more? Having made it from scratch I may not be the best judge. Also you're right on the money: it is from Hammerfell, though the breastplate is based on a design from Imperial Austria. WillieSea, I see what you mean about the mustard colour of the armour. I was going for Dwemer metal, not entirely sure what I got wrong. Suggestions anyone? I'll also try changing the spec map as you suggested. greenwarden, I agree that it could use more personality in the texture. The textures you linked look excellent, but how should I apply them? This is one of my first attempts; I've done metal before but for the fabric I was pretty much making it up as I went along. With metal you can add scratches and grunge because it's a hard surface, but cloth flows, so the only thing I could think of was that coffee stain on the left trouser leg. Thanks again for your help everyone, and please keep it coming. Explanations of methods are extremely welcome.

I present to you my foray into Photoshop! I'm not satisfied with the results, and would appreciate any criticism, advice or feedback you can offer. Normal map was created with blender and Nvidia's Photoshop plugin. Embossing on the armour was generated from a displacement map made in Illustrator. Leather details and the folds in the tunic, trousers, scarf and sash were baked from high-poly floating geometry. Diffuse map is almost entirely made from photographs, using layer masks to specify which areas have dirt or wear. I feel that the tunic, scarf and sash textures are too flat, lacking realistic detail. I'm uncertain how to proceed. Mesh has 4690 triangles; more than I would prefer, but I think still within the acceptable range.