[The Doctor is in...]

Wasn't a big fan of the last series, after David Tennant left it seemed to lose a bit of the seriousness it had built up. At first I just didn't give it the time of day thinking it to comical and dumbed down. However that being said there was a few really good episodes and once I gave it a good viewing my opinion of it greatly improved.

Hopefully this new series will see Matt Smith really come into his own as the Doctor the first three episodes so far have been really good with massive improvement to the visuals (in other words not looking like a copy and paste job.) The story line they are going with has so many possibilities it could become on of the best seasons ever.

Overall big fan of Doctor Who watched them from a young child and glad to see it back on the air.

Just my two cents

[Problem with shiny textures]

Ahh yes indeed it does, played about with it a fair bit last night. Can see the benefit of using it for sure. Thanks Vince one thing about edge split can you use it on only a specific part of a mesh or does it have to be all of it, like say I just wanted to isolate the blade for use with edge split.

[Problem with shiny textures]

Wow lot's of info, trying to make sense of it all never used EdgeSplit modifier but just tried it and I can't seem to get it to work, it just sets the whole object solid. will do some reading up on it.

I will try to remodel the hilt a bit was never that happy with it's size. A lot of the info given has already improved on the sword and my knowledge. Still new to all this and seems there is always more to learn

[Problem with shiny textures]

After looking in nifskope I found what you mentioned about face normals and update tangent, I darkened texture of diffuse and normal map and for the glow made a light greyscale image of the selected areas from the diffuse map. Not to sure how it all works but it does no more shiny, I must have my other swords set for a darker normal map hence no shine and all (might have to play about making them shiny, just to test and learn)

And in blender I just set the whole mesh to set smooth from the editing(F9) window to all my meshes, I thought that was just how it looked when rendered didn't realise it had an effect outside of blender to. Which is handy Alwasy wanted the blades more solid looking

Thanks for all the help Trollf got enough info here to pick apart for a few hours now

[Problem with shiny textures]

Okay cool thanks for taking a look at it, half of what you said is new to me, like updating tangent spaces and making solid faces on the blade. Not that clued up on nifskope

Texture wise what you mentioned I can do.

What I don't get still is why it is so shiny what setting has made it like that, I test with my character in the all together to avoid any conflict of enchanted armour ect and none of my other swords shine like this one yet they all are set up the same way.

I will look into what you mentioned and how to change what needs to be changed and see if it has the desired effect. thanks

[Problem with shiny textures]

http://www.mediafire.com/?g9h4lhci3qb8y5s

That's a quick rar file with the textures and nif file (not the blend file can add if needed) any help would be great thanks

I have a glow map already made and in use. You will see what I mean when it's opened, just baffles my brain this is one of the first meshes I made for the crystal collection, so not sure what happened.

[Problem with shiny textures]

I have a slight problem with a model or maybe a texture I am not sure which, but it is a visual problem hence why I post here.

The problem is the sword has a shine to it, a glossiness that is similar to a glass weapon.

I do not know how I have this shiny texture, as in blender I did nothing to change the texture (as far as I am aware) I have made other swords the same way and no shiny weapon.

In nifskope the NiMaterialProperty is set to material: ambient is grey, diffuse whitish, spec is grey and emissive is white (so it can glow) not an EnvMap2 that produces the glass shine.

I have also checked the diffuse textures for unwanted alpha channels or something that shouldn't be. I have experimented with the normal map, made it light, dark, a mixture of the two; I even tried an unedited normal map. I have tried it with and without glow maps as well.

All through these tests the sword remains nice and shiny, I can't work out why. All paths are correct and files placed in the right folders. If anyone can help me resolve this it would be great. I may be doing something very obviously wrong but it is past my expertise.

I can post screenshots if it will help, I will also happily send the nif and texture files for anyone that might want a closer look. just pm me.

Thanks in advance

[[RELz] Kurgans Blade]

Cheers Vince will look into it, not sure why it wouldn't work on the OF just copied and pasted from this topic lol

[[RELz] Kurgans Blade]

Thanks IS nice to know I am on the right track at least, and cheers for the good info will be sure to remember and put it in my big book of Blender stuff

[Build or buy...]

I agree with everyone on the build your own. One great thing about building your own PC is it's fun and you know where to look if something goes wrong (relatively speaking) and the cost can be very cheap.

Although a fan will be more cost effective there is something very appealing (to me anyhow) about water cooling it just looks cool and since my rig can sound like a rocket ship taking off the extra cost for no noise would be well worth it.

[[RELz] Kurgans Blade]

Ah thats the one thing that still stumps me a bit is getting the uv maps right.

What is a UV island? is that the little sections of the uv map itself? I tried manipulating each cell of the uv maps on a previous test mesh and it just distorted the texture. granted it was a curve that I made straight so the lines did not match up for some reason.

Overall though do you think the unwrap was okay, I personally am never to sure if they are all that good as they can be a bit complicated to my eyes when moving them to photoshop.

Thanks for the interest and advice

[[RELz] Kurgans Blade]

New texture and mesh uploaded (mesh hasn't changed UVmap needed a tiny bit of tweaking.)

[[RELz] Kurgans Blade]

Thanks IS, was a lot of fun making this one

[[RELz] Kurgans Blade]

I am a huge fan of the original Highlander movie, my favourite character was the Kurgan played by Clancy Brown an absolutely superb actor. I always wanted to have some highlander themed weapons and armour for Oblivion but was surprised that I couldn’t find a single Kurgan sword or armour set.

So that left only one option to make it myself, this is the first new mesh I have made for release. This file contains only the Kurgans sword. I will at some point be working on a full set of Kurgan style armour to.

The texture is my first attempt at EnvMap to make it very shiny, as the Kurgan sword doesn't have any real detail, it made it quiet hard to make a decent texture. I will continue working on new textures for this sword but right now this is the best I can come up with. Although not brilliant it still looks decent enough for release.

Hope you all like and enjoy

Tools Used

Blender 2.49b

Nifskope 1.0.21

Photoshop CS3

Credits:

Bethesda Softworks

Highlander film for inspiration and original ideas.

Download:

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37712

[Hey Guys]

Welcome to TESA

[Greetings from Luxembourg]

Hello and welcome

[Request!]

Okay as you can guess by the times this was thrown together rather quickly. Just thought I would post a rough to see if you like it before going into any great detail. (it is 512x512)

[Request!]

Do you want an exact copy of it? if not I might be able to knock something up that is very similar.

Will create a similar looking one for you, if you like it have it if not no worries. Should have something up here soon.

[Collision Mesh]

Sorted seems my export options where slightly off, as was inertia settings in nifskope. It all works fine although still not 100% on how or why enough playing with what I got working will be more than enough reference.

Thanks all

[Collision Mesh]

Okay I made a new collision mesh didn't add the rigid body and added properties in f4 menu to match a steel longswords exactly. Then did not change the nif at all, the scabbard works fine. But now the sword just launches itself into the air if I enter the cell it's in (I found this out after turning collision off picking it up dropping it and watch it fly) The main problem it seems is the rolling and bouncing of the object and the lack of collision round the blade.

Out of curiosity I thought why not try a bethesda collision and although it works okayish it still rolls around on it's side. like a can (not at the crossgaurd like mine does)

To be honest I think I have completely misunderstood how to go about making the collisions for a sword. The steps in blender and nifskope that need to be taken ect. any one that might be able to guide me through this (like a step by step of how you might make collision for a sword or any good online tutorial (tried most of the cs wiki ones but to no avail)

Thanks all

I think it is important to note I have little to no idea how to use nifskope except how to add the texture dds files to it. although fairly okay at blender

[Collision Mesh]

Collision for weapons is not of rigid body type, you should leave that setting at its default no collision state.

Okay will give it a try hopefully that is the only thing that is effecting the collision, I notice the official oblivion mesh's have more than one property added and thought maybe that might contribute to the problem.

Thanks will post how it went

[Collision Mesh]

I am having some trouble understanding (and implementing) the finer points of collision mesh.

I have created a sword and can’t seem to get the physics right, the main problems include:

Blade has no collision it seems, so when dropped it spins round and round through floors and walls and is very hard to pick up again.

Initially it is hard to pick up from where it is resting only when you hover over the cross guard does the hand icon appear.

Also when I add the scabbard from the steel long sword, and then export the new sword with scab and collision. I place it in game but when you draw the sword the scabbard is still attached to the sword and not at my side where it should stay upon drawing your weapon.

I would like to know also what is the best way for collision to be implemented, would it be using blender and nifskope or can you just use one program to set it all, and what is the best way for a sword collision to be done.

The only time I got a working collision mesh was using an existing one from OB’s steel long sword (as I didn’t need to edit a thing)

So you might be better able to help I will list what I do to create the collision quickly.

I start off with adding a cube mesh. I click f7 set draw type to bounds draw extra to cylinder I rename the OB and ME to cylinder.

I then rotate the X axis to 90, and resize the mesh be pressing S (all of this in object view) I resize it so the width of the collision is a bit larger than the sword itself. Then clicking the size manipulator button I stretch it so its length cover the blade. The n I click f4 click actor, set it to rigid body set mass to 25, radius to 1 or 2 (tried both along with higher and lower numbers all with varying effects all seem to be bad) then click bounds add property change from float to string then in the box I put HavokMaterial and HAV_MAT_METAL.

I do the same thing for the cross guard except rotate the z axis instead.

Once done ctrl+a on the new collision mesh and scale to OBdata no rotation as it makes my collision a big coin shape.

In nifskope I open up the first BhkCollisionObject and alter only the mass to be 25 and the second BhkCollisionObject that appears a little further down the list under a NINode (I guess the cross guard) and change mass to 25 as well. All done I save and load into the game this however does not work in game as stated above the problems start.

I hope that someone can see what I am doing wrong and help me figure this out, right now collision mesh is the only thing stopping me knowing all the basics of creating new weapons and static objects for OB

Thanks in advance

[[WIPz] Crystal Crusaders]

Cheers Don, going to try and make the blade slightly transparent to (eventually) Still got a headache from the UV mapping but Echos video tutorial helped wonders

[[WIPz] Crystal Crusaders]

Okay completed mesh with a base texture (the blade texture is complete hilt and handle are not) here are some screenies

[[WIPz] Crystal Crusaders]

Okay a quick update

I have been playing with blender and although no where near finished, here is the first 'base' creation for a sword. I hope to make the hilt more spiky just not sure what kind of spiky yet. the blade will be wider at the top than it is.

Although not finished I hope you can get a rough idea of what I am aiming for, as this is my first attempt at making a mesh I am quiet excited about posting the results so far.