Elf Children, Yes, I'm working on that again. Options

[ghastley]

Over the weekend I started making some progress on this again. My hold-up had been creating the normal map for the revised head, but I've got the tools working at last, and producing the wrong results

I still have a bunch of work to do getting all the settings right. The normal map generator needs .obj format, and it appears that the exporter settings are critical. Unfortunately, the tutorial sends everything through MAX, and the settings for the Blender export aren't given. So far I've had the map flipped in two different ways. In one case, the kids looked like the light was coming from under their chins, and in the other, the ridges became dents, as the height got inverted. There aren't all that many things I can change. One of the combinations must be the right one!

I've made the elf head separate from the human one, even though it's really a morph, just moving the vertices. It could become part of a .tri at some point, but I can test it all in isolation from the base mesh this way, and not mess up the human kids. The human one uses a _n (tangent normals) rather than _msn (model space normals) so it should also be less work if they're separate.

I found out that the hair is saved when you do a CTRL+F4, so my issues with Sephiah (elven Sophie) getting her hair crooked was all due to saving a bad version. She's looking better now, but I still need to fix a few gaps/clipping issues with the hairstyle itself, as well as making some more. A single pony-tail for the girls, and a mohawk for the boys should be relatively easy to adapt from the adult styles.

I downloaded the Orc child mod, to see if I can figure out how to use the Orc teeth. Argonians and Khajiit are on the distant horizon, if at all.

This was where I left off - tangent normals, ears and chin more pointed, female hair off the ears.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Jul 7 2015, 03:03 PM

[ghastley]

I'm always rolling up new characters to run though my mods with a fresh game, and some of them become "sticky". My latest Orc has run around the Strongholds rather than visiting the walled cities, and she's just started building Lakeview, before even setting foot in Riverwood. So she wants to adopt an Orc kid, and there isn't one.

I'd pulled down Urshug - Adoptable Orc a while back to see what it did, and all that was different from what I'd been doing for the elves was to use the female Orc's teeth. Except that I'd reshaped the elven kids heads, and the Orc needed the same. Urshug's teeth bite into her lips, and with her mouth closed, she just looks like a sick human. She doesn't even have an Orc's ears, since a hairstyle was chosen to hide them. I think that's why there's no boy Orc in the mod.

So now I'm working on remodelling the head. I have it almost convincing, just needs a bit more widening of the bridge of the nose, I think. The lips have been moved out of the way of the teeth, the chin is broader (like the elven one was narrower) and the ears are the same as the elves'. She needs an Orcish hairstyle that shows them, but not a shaved one, as the same head is used for boys, and the hair is a major gender clue. A fur/hide outfit is also called for. Looks like I have a lot more work on the ticket.

Edit: I checked the Nexus, and it looks like some of the head issues may have been addressed already. The images show a different one than I downloaded. It's still not quite the face I had in mind...

Uzgash now adopted by Marghak. See the screenshopts thread.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Dec 7 2014, 03:36 AM