1st person meshes, why? : V

» Fri May 25, 2012 11:00 pm

What are these for?

» Sat May 26, 2012 9:51 am

Leftover from Fallout where it used a higher detailed texture for the first person views and lower detail texture for 3rd person.

As far as Skyrim is concerned, they are exactly the same.

» Sat May 26, 2012 9:16 am

But why is the polycount not higher? I assume only the PC would-could equip a 1st person version.

» Sat May 26, 2012 10:33 am

By the way, you shouldn't specify a first-person mesh when you are using alternate textures, or you will trigger the bug with the female first-person view:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1356483-irritating-bug-with-1st-person-female-textures/

» Sat May 26, 2012 7:26 am

From what I can tell body 1st person meshes are often missing the torso (sparing the arms), this may be done for safe camera collision. A friend of mine likes to use a specific outfit for his character, it uses the same mesh for 1st person and 3rd person. It works fine but when you do something like Dragonrend you can see from the inside of the torso (normally harmless but in this case there is a double sided mesh on his character's chest that is visible when doing some shouts). As for why 1st person meshes exist for weapons and gloves, I do not know but from what I can tell they are exactly the same, unlike body armor.

» Sat May 26, 2012 7:59 am

But why is the polycount not higher? I assume only the PC would-could equip a 1st person version.

As i said, its left-over crap from Fallout 3. I don't know why they even use it given both the "1st person" and normal meshes are just the same model and texture.

» Fri May 25, 2012 8:04 pm

As i said, its left-over crap from Fallout 3. I don't know why they even use it given both the "1st person" and normal meshes are just the same model and texture.

Hmmm. Sounds like a worthwhile project to fixup 1st person.

» Sat May 26, 2012 3:22 am

I suspect it is an unfinished feature (like many others left out for the 11/11/11 release, see killcams). There are weapons (like the Rueful Axe) which have different models for 1st and 3rd person view. Also, when aligning weapons, I've noticed some offset between the 2.

What could be a very interesting thing to do is rehauling the hands/gloves/gauntlets/bracers in 1st person, and make them into higher-poly models. The weapons are sort of OK, but it's tough on the eye to see still hexagonal-section bracers, not even 1 year after Witcher2, but more than 10 from Morrowind...

Cheers,
PKR.
PS: good to see you around, hope all is well with you!

» Sat May 26, 2012 8:34 am

Sounds like a great thing to propose to the Static Mesh Improvement guy. Like you said, weapons shouldn't be a priority but I get the fealing that most modders would just go ahead and make both 1st and 3rd person meshes are high poly (you know, because everyone has a Nvidia Gefore GTX 680 Three-Way SLI setup [not that you would need one {although would want one (I know I do)}]).

» Sat May 26, 2012 6:20 am

So, how is it that an object can lack accurate 1st person models? For example, I was playing around with the executioner's outfit, but the arms and gloves in 1st person are completely wrong, they display the shrouded robe outfit for the most part (it's a bit screwy). Are they just unassigned, or are they missing entirely? And back to my earlier question if the latter, how?

» Sat May 26, 2012 10:26 am

So, how is it that an object can lack accurate 1st person models? For example, I was playing around with the executioner's outfit, but the arms and gloves in 1st person are completely wrong, they display the shrouded robe outfit for the most part (it's a bit screwy). Are they just unassigned, or are they missing entirely? And back to my earlier question if the latter, how?

Simple. They were never made for player use.

» Sat May 26, 2012 7:10 am

Simple. They were never made for player use.

Very easy to change in CK - but that's not the point.
I think improving those meshes is a good idea, not only fixing (or worse, downgrading) the existing ones. For lower end computers, the vanilla meshes should be fine (fixed by USKP, most of them); for the users who traded their vacation in exchange for an updated system ("good to play Skyrim on Ultra"), like me, I think high-poly 1st person could be a highly desired option... No more 6 yo console-compatible BS, really...

» Fri May 25, 2012 7:36 pm

There are two things I can say about this, 1. the reason 1rst person armor meshes are done the way they are is indeed clipping but also resource management, less poly's gives more available resources the system can use for other things that will render in the viewable space. 2. 1rst person weapon meshes are used for the inventory preview window.

» Sat May 26, 2012 7:59 am

For weapons, I think they coded it kind of wonky. First, the 1stperson and regular meshes are identical for weapons. No need for both .nif files. You could easily make the 1stperson static and the weapon reference the same nif. It also does not seem to be the case that the nif referenced by the 1stperson static is only for preview.

It all hangs together as long as you have all of the references right, but I don't think that the internal usage is at all intuitive. It looks like a case of "it works, don't touch it".

» Sat May 26, 2012 1:57 am

There are two things I can say about this, 1. the reason 1rst person armor meshes are done the way they are is indeed clipping but also resource management, less poly's gives more available resources the system can use for other things that will render in the viewable space. 2. 1rst person weapon meshes are used for the inventory preview window.

I do not think polycount makes much sense. Unless there are really machines where 3rd person view is unplayably slow?

I think it's

1. so that they did not have to worry about triangles from the third person mesh obscuring the player's view, and

2. so that they could use different animations (or at least different skeletons) in 1st person. (Though if it's only different skeletons it still doesn't make a lot of sense.)

In particular, notice how your character will hold weapons low in third person view and in front of your face in first person view. This solves the "which weapon am I holding" problem, for first person view.

» Sat May 26, 2012 3:12 am

Sadly that doesn't explain the difference in meshes, simply the difference in animations (which, anyone who's played a true 1st person mod that plays 3rd person animation in 1st person knows it's for the best to have two separate sets). They use the same animation skeleton in both sets (evident by them being interchangeable) and in even the Xbox 360 I can't believe that it's so triangle limited that they would need to trim the 1st person mesh to improve performance (although if that's the case it's impressive how well they managed to balance triangle count, like balancing a pen on a singularity).

» Sat May 26, 2012 5:42 am

2. 1rst person weapon meshes are used for the inventory preview window.

!st person and 3rd person weapon meshes are 100% the same.

» Sat May 26, 2012 5:10 am

!st person and 3rd person weapon meshes are 100% the same.

Negative. Just copy both in the same Nifskope window for a better view. Check out the Rueful Axe, Steel Waraxe, etc.

» Sat May 26, 2012 8:15 am

As i said, its left-over crap from Fallout 3. I don't know why they even use it given both the "1st person" and normal meshes are just the same model and texture.

Fallout 3 doesn't have "1st person" meshes for armor.

» Fri May 25, 2012 7:38 pm

Negative. Just copy both in the same Nifskope window for a better view. Check out the Rueful Axe, Steel Waraxe, etc.

I think the haft on pretty much all of the 1st two-handed hammers and axes are horrid. Beth couldn't afford another 150 tri's (or less) to smooth these out? Again... if you're going to bother to dup all the meshes at least do it for some viusal appeal or function reason.

PS: Glad you and Echonite are still around too. You do good work.

» Sat May 26, 2012 6:37 am

I think the haft on pretty much all of the 1st two-handed hammers and axes are horrid. Beth couldn't afford another 150 tri's (or less) to smooth these out? Again... if you're going to bother to dup all the meshes at least do it for some viusal appeal or function reason.

PS: Glad you and Echonite are still around too. You do good work.

So do you, old friend!

I do agree with you 100% that most of 1st person vanilla meshes could use some love (somehow to me the armor meshes are more bothering than the weapons, although I am aware they are less visible)... I really don't care much about consoles, I paid quite a hefty sum for my new video card, so it can actually handle a horde of 1st person meshes, not just a pair of arms, a weapon and (maybe) a shield... If you could do some smoothing in Max or something like that, I think you will make happy hordes of owners of 21st century, 2nd decade generation video cards...

» Sat May 26, 2012 1:52 am

Something like SMIM but for amours (possibly weapons, though they might not need it) and shields would be amazing. The steel shield's lack of actual roundness is particularly noticeable, and poor.

» Fri May 25, 2012 10:31 pm

They are not leftovers. They are actually used. They have a higher polycount than the standards, giving them smoother curves.

Claims otherwise indicate that one did not actually look at the meshes.

» Sat May 26, 2012 9:35 am

They are not leftovers. They are actually used. They have a higher polycount than the standards, giving them smoother curves.

Claims otherwise indicate that one did not actually look at the meshes.

I concur (hey there, MadCat, good to see you!): take the Scimitar mesh, for instance. The world model shows in NifSkope 438 vertices, while the 1st person mesh goes up to 791 - a significant increase, noticed in many other weapon models.
What still suffers the most and would, indeed, need a sort of SMIM treatment are the 1st armor models. Hel, should you undertake this difficult task, it would be a great day in the PC gamer's life!

» Sat May 26, 2012 4:43 am

They are not leftovers. They are actually used. They have a higher polycount than the standards, giving them smoother curves.

Claims otherwise indicate that one did not actually look at the meshes.

I also concur after looking at a few others. The only one I checked was keening.nif. Sorry.