Plastic surgery for Morrowind
Ok, to quote Cartman from South Park-
"Ohmygod, you guys, you guys- you're never going to believe this!"
Ahem, today has been yet another big day on the project front- sorting out the armour problem definitely set things going in the right direction annnnd it let very handily led onto more Morrowind research (just to double check that I had the technique correct).
Anyway, searching for that armour stuff led me onto an alternative way of making armour in the game called “Better Bodies”. This is basically a marvellous plugin that's been made by yet more genius modders and it replaces the original body meshes that come with the game for much much MUCH better ones that have bend/blend points etc. The main page of the mod is here anyway.
The difference between the two mesh sets is unbelievable in terms of functionality & poly count. Anyway, its main purpose may be for a visual tweak so why would this be of any relevance to my project I hear you ask? Well, one of the goals of BB's creators was to change the way that clothing was created in Morrowind.
Basically, using the old system, characters on screen are just a collection of disjointed limb parts... as in a leg consists of a foot with is attached to a ball (ankle) which is attached to a shin which is attached to another ball for the knee and so on. This system makes creating armour very difficult as it's really hard to maintain coherency between all of the different bits and it's also really hard trying to put everything together in the editor (for example- if you want to make a single armoured leg you'd have to make individual armour parts for all of the limb parts & interconnecting spheres etc., define the parts as body parts AND define them as armour parts AND assemble them... basically a hell of alot of work). You can see the old disjointed meshes (the ones on the top) compared to the new seamless meshes (the ones on the bottom) in this pic:
The new BB system is absolutely brilliant in that it lets you construct clothes in their proper form- i.e., as garments that you drape over a base model... this appeals to me very much. Basically, instead of me having to make about 10 completely seperate meshes with individual particle emitters and trying to link them together, I can work on a single, coherent mesh (which can be literally as thin a a sheet of material) that will sit on the surface of the entire player mesh... basically there's ALOT less work and the whole thing is alot more likely to succeed... in my humble opinion. Besides- the results of this system are blooming amazing!:
... schhhtunning! :-)
SO!!! I'm gonna give it a try... or at least some investigation- stay tuned!!!
Oh- in other news (with such great & typical timing of course) I did manage to get my first armour piece (the one that uses the original Morrowind mesh system) working... well, it kinda works anyway- the texturing on the particles is having some "issues"- no worries though, I'm gonna search the net to find some way of bashing it into submission.
"Ohmygod, you guys, you guys- you're never going to believe this!"
Ahem, today has been yet another big day on the project front- sorting out the armour problem definitely set things going in the right direction annnnd it let very handily led onto more Morrowind research (just to double check that I had the technique correct).
Anyway, searching for that armour stuff led me onto an alternative way of making armour in the game called “Better Bodies”. This is basically a marvellous plugin that's been made by yet more genius modders and it replaces the original body meshes that come with the game for much much MUCH better ones that have bend/blend points etc. The main page of the mod is here anyway.
The difference between the two mesh sets is unbelievable in terms of functionality & poly count. Anyway, its main purpose may be for a visual tweak so why would this be of any relevance to my project I hear you ask? Well, one of the goals of BB's creators was to change the way that clothing was created in Morrowind.
Basically, using the old system, characters on screen are just a collection of disjointed limb parts... as in a leg consists of a foot with is attached to a ball (ankle) which is attached to a shin which is attached to another ball for the knee and so on. This system makes creating armour very difficult as it's really hard to maintain coherency between all of the different bits and it's also really hard trying to put everything together in the editor (for example- if you want to make a single armoured leg you'd have to make individual armour parts for all of the limb parts & interconnecting spheres etc., define the parts as body parts AND define them as armour parts AND assemble them... basically a hell of alot of work). You can see the old disjointed meshes (the ones on the top) compared to the new seamless meshes (the ones on the bottom) in this pic:
The new BB system is absolutely brilliant in that it lets you construct clothes in their proper form- i.e., as garments that you drape over a base model... this appeals to me very much. Basically, instead of me having to make about 10 completely seperate meshes with individual particle emitters and trying to link them together, I can work on a single, coherent mesh (which can be literally as thin a a sheet of material) that will sit on the surface of the entire player mesh... basically there's ALOT less work and the whole thing is alot more likely to succeed... in my humble opinion. Besides- the results of this system are blooming amazing!:
... schhhtunning! :-)
SO!!! I'm gonna give it a try... or at least some investigation- stay tuned!!!
Oh- in other news (with such great & typical timing of course) I did manage to get my first armour piece (the one that uses the original Morrowind mesh system) working... well, it kinda works anyway- the texturing on the particles is having some "issues"- no worries though, I'm gonna search the net to find some way of bashing it into submission.
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