OK, now I've added some underwear it should be safe to post some pics here and open up this WIP to a wider audience. The original thread with progress images on the base nvde model is on Wolflore, but in line with the forum rules (since that's obviously advlt content) there's no link here, I'm afraid. Go search if you're curious.

Here's the new guy: http://www.i-asm.com/Morrowind/male01.png and http://www.i-asm.com/Morrowind/male02.png. (AlienSlof's Bosmer hairless skin).

The rationale for this body replacer was to improve the poly count and the awful groin shape of the Better Bodies male mesh, while trying to keep within the BB envelope to reduce the risk of clothing replacers failing on it. Since it's not a working model yet, it remains to be seen whether that's been achieved... The working title came about as the starting point was putting the BB male on a crash diet with a bum tuck, which then shifted to adding more abs musculature definition as well as a minor chest reshape. At that point I discovered Blender and realised that a doubled-poly shape would be even better, while not going overboard on triangles.

IMPORTANT: the goal here is not to make a total replacement for Better Bodies, as modifying their body shape for that would break their usage rights. This should eventually be an ESP-less mesh/texture set that you can simply swap over your existing BB install and instantly get a smoother, more ripped and more attractive body upgrade. Where it proves necessary, upgrades to Better Clothes will likely follow.

(It should also be obvious that this body shape is more suited to a young, healthy, very active and not overfed MW population. It may look a bit strange on characters expected to appear older. It wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility to mod individual NPCs with more appropriate older or fatter body shapes, even with bespoke clothing meshes just like COM adds for children. Hmmmmm, now THAT's a project... :hubbahubba: )

To do the new mesh justice, I made the decision to make a brand new texture layout so that the model could be virtually seamless. By doubling the texture height the skin now runs continuously from neck to foot, so there are no horizontal seams at all. The only tricky seams are the shoulder join (although that's almost perfect) and the hand/feet edges. I'm using AlienSlof's superb muscled skins as my base resource, which are relaid in the new configuration and then edited to match seam edges (and a little for personal taste, to remove the obtrusive veins). The awful inside leg seam is COMPLETELY gone too! You can see the seamless shoulder/wrist join result and new hand detail http://www.i-asm.com/Morrowind/male03.png. Only the Bosmer skin seen in the pics has been relaid so far, the other elves will be next.

The other advantage of the bigger texture layout is that there is space so that some body variety can be dialled in with just a UV change in the mesh. (So body options could be changed on the fly with a simple mesh swap, or ESPs could be made to mod individual NPCs via a change of race). The underwear version shown here uses the same texture as the nvde model, and there are three varieties of that. Four meshes, one texture. With some more work on squeezing the layout even more options might be added (tattoos or jewellery?). It may also be possible to halve the texture height back down to 1024x1024 without sacrificing too much detail, although I haven't tried that yet. It would still be better than the 512x512 BB originals. :biggrin:

I'm not apologising for only working on the male model right now. If this eventually gets finished, I may work on the female one too. However, there will likely be many more conflicting opinions on what makes a good-looking female shape than on the current project... and I guess there are a lot more skin-tight female clothing mods around that would need updating, which wouldn't really be my thing. :teehee:

So here's the catch. This all looks fabulous in Blender right now... but in my keenness to work on it, I didn't import it right from the NIF. So this is a body shape without a skeleton attached. What I hope to do next is find the correct way either to import the BB skeleton into my blend, or to start from a brand new correct import with a skeleton, and somehow merge my new reshaped body parts back into that. Then it's got to go back into NifSkope at the correct size and orientation so the mesh works correctly with BB. All those steps are a little beyond my current Blender learning curve, unfortunately.

I know there are some talented NifSkope and Blender artists around who will be able to put me on the right track. If anyone can point me in the direction of a good and comprehensive tutorial on this process (for instance, there's nothing on the NifSkope site about exporting and reimporting working skeletons to/from Blender) that'll be extremely helpful. Any general advice on this would also be useful, as I'm guessing similar techniques may be needed for making/fixing armour/clothes etc. for this body.

Good job with the seams - I'm unclear if you started with the BB mesh as your base and then tweaked it or created a whole new mesh?

Yes, it's basically a BB mesh one-click subdivided in Blender, but then heavily edited, cleaned up, simplified and tweaked. Starting from scratch on a shape like this? Impossible.

Amazing works!!! :shocking:

Finally a realistic model of male's body and with good numbers of polygons!
thank you! :bowdown:

I don't post here much any more, but just had to break my lurking habits for this. Awesome work! Nice to see someone giving the male meshes some love!

If anyone's wondering/worrying about the poly count and density on this, then to give you an idea of the granularity the horizontal thong strap is one poly in height. This isn't a massively remodelled shape so shouldn't kill framerates if we are lucky. It seems detailed enough in normal viewing - most of the definition is in the improved texture (thanks AlienSlof!) although the mesh reinforces the muscle shapes properly. Here's the http://www.i-asm.com/Morrowind/male04.png.

Thanks for the feedback - I'm glad I'm not the only one who appreciates the difference. What I can't really understand is why PsychoDog never provided their own upgrade in all these years as graphics hardware improved substantially, or why no-one else has ever tried this successfully. I'm beginning from a total standing start here, and I know there are seriously competent Blender/NifSkope modders who could have done this easily years ago and wouldn't be stuck at the stage I am now... :shrug:

Pretty neat!
Can't wait to try it

Would this be compatible with other BB textures? For example, Westly's or Plangkye's on the off chance you do decide to do females?

Looks pretty good. I personally would love to see a more muscular female BB mesh as well (though of course, clothing mod compatibility would be a problem).

Wait, when did I make any BB skin textures? I thought I just did clothes. Have I been modding in my sleep or something?

Nope, not directly. The texture is a totally different layout.

Basically the lower leg is now joined seamlessly onto the upper so there is no more mid-knee join, and the feet upper/lower sides joined onto the bottom of that, and the hand is joined directly onto the arm, which has been rolled slightly to allow the upper/lower hands to join at the little finger side. Relaying this UV back onto an existing BB layout would be a nightmare because of the much larger number of polys. (Trust me, I know how bad it was editing it onto this one myself.)

In an ideal world people could rebuild their own textures... The key thing is making sure the "cylinder" parts like the legs and arms wrap around perfectly at the seams, which would require re-editing anyway... I'll be happy to discuss the spec with anyone interested, or make the layout available, through PM request. The beauty of this solution is that there's still space on the texture to add some different options for those artists who want to add smaller tattoos, say, as an option.


Well, never say never... :confused: Slof's got skins for it, so let's see if this gets completed.

There are still seven more skins to relay, in two or three variants (hairy/hairless, although I may make a personal decision on that like preferring hairless elves, and the vampire-colour skins). And then there's the small matter of testing and rebuilding clothes meshes. And armour, probably. Although both those offer possibilities for similar mesh upgrades in the process, in which there's currently some interest.

He's not going anywhere until he gets some bones inside him, though.

For some reason, I saw this thread topic and thought of homeless people :whistling:

Me too, after I stopped misreading it as 'better burns'.

While I'm waiting for someone to help wth my Blender import/export problem, here's a question someone must have the answer to.

NPCs have huge bounding boxes. If they are standing near an object, it's often impossible to select that object since their selection radius (collision box?) completely envelops the object, so you can't click "through" them to it. This is particularly annoying if you've tried to place an object on a table in front of an NPC (eg. a trader), and for reasons known only to itself MW ignores the table surface and puts your precious object at the NPC's feet, where it is now completely inaccessible even though they are standing game feet away from it. :verymad:

So I have to ask - is there a good reason for this excessive selection boundary, and is it configurable (and safe to configure)? And is it possible for something in this mesh edit to change it?

Ya know, I have to wonder this as well. It drive me nuts. I go to get something and some dummy is in the way.

Wait, where did you post about a blender import export problem?

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2950. (Plus help asked for in original first post.)

yea i realized that after I posted but failed to edit before you posted to answer me.

Bump for question. Anyone?

source: http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/Blender/Quick_Start

or this walthrough => http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/204001-bone-weight-copy-blender/

Looks quite good. And honestly I would prefer this one over the BB. Keep up the good work!!

Gorgeous project and screenies. I play mainly male characters and this will improve the game inmensely
The screenies I've seen are just awesome, I hope you manage to import the bones/skeleton properly for this to work.
It's too good to remain in the shelves!

Looks great, I have never had much problems with BB, but the only part that not that good is the hands. Liztail made some modifications to them and they look better but yours look almost perfect to me...hope they animate well

Great work, Ian! Can't wait for a release~

I hope you decide to give the lady models some work, too. MW has certainly needed something like this.

you models is awesome, you mentioned body shapes what about 5 different body types skinny normal fat muscled and sixy. same for females only with different cup sizes. Or though existing armor and clothes would be an issue the stock armor and clothes wouldn't as it would simply replace those parts and would look odd but would do for now. So if you were to make the bodys and not worry about the clothing issues then some one else in time can always make clothing and armor later. i could even assist with it as iv just recently learned of blenders proportional edit fall-off mode with is the best what to resize existing meshes to fit a new one. Iv always wanted to see fat npcs wondering around and skinny slaves and muscled heroes.

G-strings? Please, leave vanilla panties.