So I'm making a Morrowind mod...

[Data4]

Great timing, no? Actually, I've wanted to do this since the damn game came out, but never got around to it. I figured better late than never. Besides, this is more of a stimulus to get me back into 3d modelling than anything else. I figure I might as well release the fruits of my labor while I'm at it-- that is, if it even gets that far.

Rather than just rehash what I already said at the ESF modding forum, here's a link:

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/inde ... pic=248697

Flame on, bitches!

-D4

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

The renders look really nice. The ES toolset always seemed powerful enough to be able to sustain very detailed projects. Never got around to tinker with it, my best was 10 minutes of looking at the toolset and drooling.

If you're going ahead with this then I wish you good luck.

 

[Data4]

Thanks! I at least plan on tinkering with it until I get bored.

Just in playing with it so far, I've found out that interior cells with high polys where it counts can sustain pretty decent framerates, so I plan on modelling as much as I can get away with before I have to use texturemaps to fill in the details. There's really no reason why I couldn't get it to look like Oblivion's dungeons (based on the screens we've seen), minus the shader effects.

I have to say, walking down a little corridor in the game using meshes I built from scratch got me all giddy. This is the first time I've ever made any kind of mod.

-D4

 

[Pr()ZaC]

Yes, keep tinkering. You'll need some background training for Oblivion mods

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

Looks nice!

 

[raziel014]

Yes very nice. But you really need new textures! Try using Zbrush to paint it on the model to avoid difficulties while texturing.

 

[Data4]

Yes very nice. But you really need new textures! Try using Zbrush to paint it on the model to avoid difficulties while texturing.

Check my thread on the ESF for my latest update. Originally, textures were going to be last, but I was bound and determined to teach myself how to texture a model. Usually, I use procedurals when I do renders, but this took a little more work. I think I'm getting somewhere with it.

Anyway... all night working, I'm heading for bed. Thanks, guys!

-D4

 

[golgotha]

On the ceiling it seems that vertices in spots aren't connecting properly. You should be able to weld them to fix it. It may just be an error within the engine.

http://img420.imageshack.us/img420/4632 ... opy9ll.jpg

Other than that, it looks pretty good. Like you said, the textures will make or break it, really. I'm not even sure how you UV map for Nifs.

Just for future reference, when taking screenshots for criticism on your objects, its best to pump the graphic settings all the way up (AA/AF), because a decent handful of errors you'll find in screenshots are sometimes not errors at all, just no AA and a bad angle.

 

[Zufuriin]

Looks pretty good. Reminds me of Oblivion very much; which could be a good or bad thing. :D

 

[dongle]

I have to say, walking down a little corridor in the game using meshes I built from scratch got me all giddy. This is the first time I've ever made any kind of mod.

Fun, isn't it? I don't know why I get such a charge out of that, but I do. Feels more like I've created something real, vs just doing renders.

Anyhoo, lookin' good. I like the arch shapes. Can't tell if it's a perfect vesica piscis, but that's not too important. I would have used more polys to make the curve look smoother, you can really see the sections in your first render. Although it doesn't look too bad in the in-game shots.

Remember; You can always do your procedural textures, light it to get some nice shadows, then bake it on and use that as a new MW texture. Some relief carving on your walls would look great.

(hope you don't mind suggestions )

 

[dongle]

Just for future reference, when taking screenshots for criticism on your objects, its best to pump the graphic settings all the way up (AA/AF), because a decent handful of errors you'll find in screenshots are sometimes not errors at all, just no AA and a bad angle.

Morrowind was goofy like that. If you used the built-in screenshot function, even if you had AA turned on for your video card, you got no AA in the screenshot at all. Likewise if you'd adjusted the gamma setting in-game, it did not affect the screenshot. Using a 3rd party screenshot taker, such as fraps, gets you much better results with AA and gamma adjustments included.

 

[Data4]

I have to say, walking down a little corridor in the game using meshes I built from scratch got me all giddy. This is the first time I've ever made any kind of mod.

Fun, isn't it? I don't know why I get such a charge out of that, but I do. Feels more like I've created something real, vs just doing renders.

Anyhoo, lookin' good. I like the arch shapes. Can't tell if it's a perfect vesica piscis, but that's not too important. I would have used more polys to make the curve look smoother, you can really see the sections in your first render. Although it doesn't look too bad in the in-game shots.

Remember; You can always do your procedural textures, light it to get some nice shadows, then bake it on and use that as a new MW texture. Some relief carving on your walls would look great.

(hope you don't mind suggestions )

Hope I don't mind suggestions from you? You're joking, right? :D I'd feel priveliged getting critique from you.

The first picture I made was with different meshes. I wasn't sure how detailed I could go, so I played it pretty conservative. The in-game shots are entirely different meshes, and as golgotha pointed out, there are holes in it. So, at this point, I'm rebuilding all the geometry and making sure there aren't any rogue triangles in the mesh.

As for baking textures, I know that's something the higher end programs can do, but does Milkshape do it? That's my go-between program between my modeller and Morrowind. I use Rhinoceros for modelling, then export it to Wavefront OBJ format. I then use a program called UV Mapper to make the UV template.Once I get that painted, it's on to Milkshape, where I load the model and map, then export to NIF.

Thanks!

-D4

 

[dongle]

Believe it or not I've been flamed on the ESF for offering suggestions no more critical than I did above. Pretty much anything but "Good Job :stupidsmiley:" is OT.

Anyways, I thought they looked a lot different in-game. Have to say I liked the walls of the first version, tho they could have some more details. New pillars are nice however. And the arches do look smoother. Make sure you're slicing them up on a 256 grid so they snap together easily in the CS.

Sorry, but I only have experience with exporting directly from 3Ds Max to .nif. Rhino is pretty high-end, isn't it? It may do texture baking? I'll try to explain briefly what it does, but bear with me, as I suck at explaining. What you do (in Max) is build your model. Use any kind of procedural maps, bumps, reflections, whatever. Light it so it looks killer, full shadows, anything you can throw at it. Then you render it to a texture, ie "bake" it. It's like doing a photorealistic render, then unfolding the render and pasting it onto the surfaces. It'd be like taking a head-on photograph of that wall in real life, then using the photo as the texture. In your first render you have some nice shadows where the decorative depressions are in the wall. Those would become a part of the texture mapped to that part of the wall. The process of UV mapping is done auto-magically in the bake. You end up with one texture render, in whatever size you chose, that fits your model exactly. As long as your export to .obj, and the import to/export from Milkshake preserves the UV coordinates you'll simply save the render as a .dds and use it in-game.

It's a technique that doesn't work as well for "next gen" engines, where you can have complex bump maps, and shadows in real-time. For sucky old engines like Morrowind it looks pretty good. All the metal objects in my Battlespire mod were baked textures. I'll try to dig up a screenshot in a minute.

 

[Data4]

(snipped for brevity)

I guess some people over there have too fragile egos. I have no problem with constructive criticism at all. Otherwise, I might think I'm doing great while creating garbage. Sure, it's how I feel about it that counts in the end, but with technical stuff like 3D modelling, I can use all the help I can get. :D

Rhino is a straight up modeller with a focus on NURBs. There are rendering plugins available for it that handle radiosity and advanced material creation/implementation. As-is, it just has a simple renderer that allows for procedural image mapping, if you can even call it that-- you just load an image and assign it to a surface. There is no control over it whatsoever. Back when I was doing 3d as a hobby, I'd model in Rhino and export to Bryce for renders. It's a great modelling program, and the more recent versions have a lot of advanced features. I'm just using version 1, which was free on a DVD I got with some magazine a couple of years ago.

I think I understand baking somewhat. I used to have the Personal Learning Edition of Maya and played around with it a little bit. I got rid of it because I was pissed that no matter how much work I put into what I did, the renders always looked like crap with watermarks all over them. :D I can't afford a full package, and even I could, $7000 is a little steep for a hobby.

I've been meaning to check out your Battlespire mod, but since I started this, I've fallen into the trap of modding more than playing Anyway, thanks again!

-D4

 

[Data4]

blah blah blah update blah blah...

-D4

 

[Antiphon]

I second all the positive responses here and at ESF. I think you're someone to keep an eye on for future mods.

You mentioned Maya. I had a class in Maya and have ver 6 unlimited. Actually have it for Linux too but don't know if it works since I haven't built a Linux box yet.

Can Maya be used for Morrowind or Oblivion modding? That would be nice since I don't have 3DMax. I don't have it installed right now, but I thought it could export to 3DMax anyway.

 

[dongle]

Doesn't sound like Rhino does baking. No biggie. I'll take one more stab at explaing it. This is an axe from Battlespire. What I did for the metal parts was model it in Max, add a complex procedural reflective material, with bumps for the letters, and lit it up nicely. Hit render to texture (bake) and I get this. The slicing and dicing of the texture and the UV mapping for the new texture are done auto-magically, and all ready to use in-game.

OK, on to your new problem. I think what is happening is you've got one big smoothing group and the game going all wonky figuring what to blend. In this example Look down at the bottom of the shot, right between the HUD elements. See how on the beam some of the polys are smoothed past the sharp edge between the side and the face, and some aren't? I think you're creating an impossible situation that can't be smoothed the way you're telling it to. In any case, I'd suggest having the sides of the beams one group, the face of the beams another, and the general ceiling a third. You do get a minor FPS hit the more groups you add, but three or four is by no means excessive. You may also have some polys that aren’t welded. That would cause the smoothing to go wonky too, because it can't smooth across polys that don't share an edge.

You can do smoothing groups in Rhino, right?

In Max you could weld those polys in a single click, by selecting all the points and welding within a certain threshold.

Dunno about those Oblivion tiles specifically, but gothic ceilings typically had a nice carved boss at the center where the beams meet.

Anyways, hallway looks nice and moody. Keep it up.

 

[Data4]

Dongle,

Ahh, I understand now. I used a similar technique with Poser years ago, where I'd render a straight-on, untextured shot of the head, and use that render as a foundation for a texturemap. Rhino doesn't have any sort of Render-to-texture faculties, unfortunately. I'm starting to realize why the program isn't mainstream. It's great for balls-to-the wall modelling, and damn the polycounts. I've figured out why it's so bad with polygons. It doesn't do any sort of organized tesselation when you convert from NURBs to polys. The mesh itself looks like garbage.

I've also figured out that my method for creating the arches is one of the reasons why I'm having so much trouble. Kind of complicated to describe, but the gist of it is I'm using a birail sweeped surface. I think I might have better luck using lofts. Unfortunately, Rhino 1 doesn't do smoothing groups. I think later versions do, however.

At this point, I'm thinking about shitcanning Rhino and er... seeking out a "friend with Maya". I loved the PLE.

Antiphon- AFAIK, there isn't a NIF exporter for Maya, but a search may prove me wrong. Even still, Maya's native 3D format is OBJ, which you can import into Milkshape for NIF exporting. Milkshape is cheap at $25, and the shareware version is good for 30 days before you have to register.

-D4

 

[dongle]

Personally I'd just use a cylinder primitive and apply a bend modifier. . . .

 

[Data4]

Personally I'd just use a cylinder primitive and apply a bend modifier. . . .

My hard head wouldn't let me settle for something that easy. :D Anyway, I think I've reached a happy compromise.

More pics in my ESF thread here.

-D4

 

[Zomg]

This reminds me of making Doom WADs.

I hope that the Oblivion modder community self-organizes a sort of "quality control" subcommunity this time around. I've always wished Morrowind had some kind of fan commitee that would sort of integrate and whole-game balance mod packages. Digging good mods out of the torrent of the insignificant, integrating them, balancing them, etc. always made me give up about halfway through the process, when it could be easily done as a one-to-many operation.

 

[dongle]

Fat chance. That would require someone to actually be -critical- of something over there. As it stands everything is universally praised.

 

[Drakron]

Meh.

Just like The Sims community ... *sigh*

 

[Data4]

There already is a sort of quality control thing going on, but it's a lot more subtle and takes a little more work on the part of the individual. It's the notoriety factor. Everyone knows, for example, that Better Bodies improves the looks of the characters, but not everyone is aware of an old "total *cough* conversion" someone did called The Empire of Barsils.. The reason is pretty self evident.

-D4

 

[Zomg]

It's not just a matter of separating the good and bad mods, but actually putting them together and balancing them. Like, for an example of what I tried, I wanted to assemble a "no bullshit" version of Morrowind that got rid of the shitty levelling system, repaired the economy, closed off all the enchanting and alchemy exploits, toned down armor, and so on. The problem is that it's a damn load of work finding each component mod going into that goal scattered across ten mod sites, making sure they don't interfere with or break one another, tuning the mob difficulty so MW doesn't turn into whack-a-mole (a feat beyond Bethesda, ahem), etc.

Thrown together assemblages of mods are usually awful - Morrowind is pretty deformed right out of the box, but a bowl of mod stew doesn't help matters.