It seems to be all working. That's releaving.
Thanks for the pics, lordsoulstrike. Ingame it looks even better than in NifSkope.

No, there were no head textures in the new package, only the scaly body texture alternatives and the wing membranes.
To get the proper heads you'll need to download the rest of those sets from lordsoulstrike's 4shared repository.

I was thinking about adding something to the head textures as well, but I can't seem to find something to insert there which won't mess-up or over-clutter the face layout.

Equinox, I'm sorry, but those female scaly conversions took much more time than I expected. I was busy the whole last night creating these, so there was no progress with your textures yet.
Also I don't really have a detailed picture of your Equinox in my mind yet. I can make it close to the screenshots you posted, maybe add the new scaly texture base into it, if you like. But neither the screenshots nor your animated avatar are giving me any ideas of how exactly Equinox should look in the end. Are my texture bases (the structure, ignoring all coloring) even appropriate to begin with?
I might also have to create a few new meshes for you only, because the current sets don't allow mapping different textures to different sides of the body, so your horns, spikes, blades, claws all will look the same on both sides. The same goes for the eyes btw., but for those I know there are alternatives with asymmetrical textures already.

The same goes for the saphire dragon idea either. The coloring is my least trouble. I just don't know if the current base textures will be fitting at all. Although the new "scales" are very close to looking like gems, so maybe that's a very good start. But I'm not sure if it's enough to just create a saphire blue coloration plus some occasional silvery highlights.

As for the clawing, biting or whatever, Mr Smiles, I'll take a closer look soon. I know the technique of using an invisible dagger to make some sort of hand-to-hand attack with different animations, and of course it could be used here as well, however, I've recently read you can use this certain new OBSE command to exchange animations on actors or NPCs but "not" on the player yet. So even making it use a 1h attack animation with said trick still won't enable me to give it a real clawing animation. But I have other ways I could use to get this done. Anyways, as you're well aware of, I'm currently unable to do anything of this, so I'm not yet putting too much thought into it.

edit: Thanks for the pics to you also, strupekutter. This armor seems to be very fitting.
It reminds me I wanted to create the Draconic Battle Armor from Drake's story for quite a while now. It's just that I want to redo the head mesh some time in the future which is keeping me from doing this now.

http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/7819/97701016.png

I guess I will add the head textures to your package so no one has to down load them separately.

Don't worry about it. Take all the time you need. When I made that Equinox texture it was on one of your older ones that had the complete body there instead of just one side that was mirrored across the mesh. If it is too much trouble to deal with now, then don't worry about it. I have other dragon characters I can mess with. Equinox is just my favorite.

Personally I have no preference for how you interpret Equinox's texture just as long as it's a split black-and-white color scheme with some swirlies, I'm good with it. I've changed his design so often anyway, not even I have a solid grasp on him. Some versions of him even have hair. I'm not one for opinions when it comes to this sort of thing. But if you want a more solid drawing, this is the only 'good' picture of Equinox I have drawn. http://aeolianmode.deviantart.com/art/Lord-Equinox-143413897. Sharing that blows my cover on this website, but I don't think I care anymore. Truth to be told, I'm actually a girl and I have been lying this whole time because I was pretending to be a guy on here so I forged a kind of alias for security reasons, but I'm less paranoid now. WELL. That said, I don't think people would even care to begin with anyway. O.o Carry on.

Oh, and as far as eyes go as well, I already have the eye meshes and textures that someone provided a while ago, I forgot who it was who made them for me... which makes me feel really bad. XP Would all I need to do is go into the CS and edit the race's eye mesh and put Equinox's in there? Because if that's the case then you don't need to worry abut the eyes.

I'm reuploading those textures Drake. I've included the head/eye textures for the different types of dragon's that have been done by you and myself. I thought it may save some confusion and time if they were all together.....

Now on to do battle with the CS! And hopefully your instructions will help me win!

Edit 1:
I just thought I should update. I got all those extra clothing items in the CS. Now for the fun part! Scripting. :banghead:

Edit 2:
Ran into a problem with the scn DrakeDragonRaceReplacerUpperFunction. It totally crashes the CS. I have been following all your directions in order. I guess I'll have to wait for you to see if you made a mistake or if it is just my CS does not like me. I got the newest beta OBSE and it seems to still crash. Oh well. At least I tried.

Well, the small package was intended to update the wings and provide "replacements" (or alternative choices) for existing body textures.
The meaning of replacements is you'll need the originals beforehand. But of course having all in one pack will have its benefits. Although you won't be able to use them all at once anyways, without messing with my plugin. I'm not saying it would be complex or difficult, but I know there are users for which it would be far beyond what they're willing to try.

I really very much appreciate all you're doing and your constant help with all this.

Equinox, it is actually not that complicated. The body textures all kept their layout, due to them being Robert's Male compatible. Still the whole body is covered as a whole, with seperate texture sections for every single inch.
It's just those additional things like spikes, claws, blades, etc. which all share the same area in the texture map, meaning one spike/claw/blade will look exactly the same as every other. So these having different colors on different sides of the body is the little problem I was talking about, but it is the only one either, and not a very complicated one that is. I still consider everything of this well doable without much hassle, don't worry.

No real preferences... well, then at least I shouldn't be able to mess up a lot.
I'm sorry for making you blow your cover, although I heavily doubt one has to use a disguise in this community at all. I mean we're all using our user names/char's names to adress each other here anyways, and while I don't make a secret about my identity, I prefer being Drake around here as well. I'm just too used to it I guess.
Besides, when anybody thinks he has to mess with anybody else here in my threads, I'll quickly intervene and have the offender dealt with anyways. In this regard I'm very much like Drake. I just can't stand these kinds of impolite behavior.

Basically making the race of your choice using your custom eye meshes and giving it the black&white split-colored texture option should be all you need to do in the CS, yes.
So I don't have to worry about the eyes? That's convenient. Without being able to edit an ESP I wouldn't have much possibility to do anything in this regard anyways.
Now I can concentrate on textures alone and maybe a few altered meshes for split-color texture-mapping.

I don't mind helping out one bit. I just thought about adding in the head textures so everyone does not have to download a lot of other re-textures. If you/anyone else would like an added retex of a dragon, I do know enough to do that much. Adding eye textures aren't that hard either.

That's nice to know. Thanks for your support and I'm thankful to hear that you still plan to do something with his texture. Anyway. I'm really, really easy to please. I'm sure anything you do I'll love it.

Most likely you won't have to worry about the eye. I have the mesh and texture, so I guess all I'll need to do is update the race in my CS. That's like, the only CS stuff I know how to do is editing the race.

You're going to tweak the head mesh too in the future? What kind of ideas you got going?

and thanks a million for releasing the new textures!

these all seem really good, great job drake, you got quite a talent, and to strupekutter, OMG!!!! that armour looks so good on the dragons, could you think about releasing it when it's finished, i really need some custom armour for them, but i cant find any.

To Mr Smiles

- http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=28827
- http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=28723

Well, primarily I want to fix this issue:
http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/2977/strangeneckbending.jpg

It must have been missed from Bethesda's side, but that's certainly not the point heads usually turn around (despite it being the "head" bone's pivot).
However, I can't touch the location of this particular bone in the skeleton or all animations will be messed up. So the only way to get around this would be by locating the actual head at some place else, maybe using a long snake-like neck to counteract the off placement.

I was thinking about something along this line:
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/3721/strangeneckbendingsolut.jpg

For one I wanted to make the head a bit flatter for quite some time already anyways (especially reducing the distance between the 2 red lines).
And then the actual head will be moved downwards a little, so when the troublesome bone is rotated upwards 90? it will be "in-line" with the neck-connection on the upperbody mesh.
The rigging for the long bending neck might get troublesome as well, but I think something like this "can" be rigged nevertheless.
The yaw then "hanging down" a little from the neck-line in my eyes fits perfectly into the common image of dragon heads either. So I think it might be a valuable idea to try.

lordsoulstrike, I'm sorry you're having this trouble with my script. I read this code over and over and can't find anything wrong, especially nothing which could cause the CS to crash.
I could understand there being runtime-errors ingame due to me not catching all cases which could go wrong beforehand, but on compile-time? How is that even possible?
There isn't that much complex code in this particular script. It is long, yes, but not overly difficult or complex. There are just many cases catched with if-clauses. The actual operations following these are quite basic.
I'm clueless as to where this crashing could be coming from. Maybe somebody else can see more than I do in this script?

If you end up getting a computer soon, just ask and I'll send you the esp I have been working on wit your updates. If anyone else would like to work on it please let me know and I'll gladly hand it over. I feel that the minor stuff that has already been done should not have to be done over again by someone else.

Coming back to this, I remember me and others writing about this quite some times already, but it was way in the past I admit.
My main trouble with this always was that I couldn't do much with the hand meshes without them ending up looking ugly. I was satisfied with the look of Robert's human hand mesh plus Slof's/Loth DeBonneville's/SickleYield's awesome claws for my dragon.

Actually it was last mentioned shortly before the end of the previous thread. lordsoulstrike pointed me to a http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=28587 from Fearil, I already knew though, and I answered with following post:

After this I gave it another try, attempting to make parts/sections of the digits smaller/broader to give them a shape like what you're talking about (or at least I think that's it), but I didn't have any success this time either.

However, you people seemingly not stopping to ask about this topic made me try something else today... which actually yielded very great results this time.
After failing in reshaping the actual hand mesh for the (I stopped counting long ago)'th time again, I tried adding certain meshes to it instead.

Now I'm also not using Slof's Claws anymore but my own, which is a good thing, not because they're bad or something, no of course not, but because mine are very different, and I'm all up for my dragons being different in appearance, as you might have figured out already.

Apart from creating new claws I also created some boney(sp?) appendages to the knuckles, which altogether in the end finally made the hands look "different", alien, draconic... choose whatever you prefer.
But judge for yourselves:

http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/3628/newdragonclaws.jpg

Now, what do you think? Doesn't this look way more draconic now? :dance:

Just imagine performing a claw slice with these beasts now! :toughninja:
Do you get why Drake makes use of them quite often?

I like the pic! Must have!!!!! :chaos:

I knew you'd like them.

Oh, ehm, just another teaser before I go to bed now...
I altered the texture mapping of the blades so the shine is now on the edges instead of barely noticable at the inner border.
Especially in the red-golden color-scheme this looks great me thinks.

And to further evaluate why Drake very often makes use of his "anatomical" weaponry in melee combat, here's a collection of all "weapons" he possesses. I also made him unsheath his arm blades in battle stance for your enjoyment!

http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/3268/drakesanatomicalweapons.jpg (who else is reminded of a weapons selection menu in a console game?)

Tomorrow I'll have to do this all for the females as well, then switch every single appearance of the old claws and blades in every NIF file I ever created, and then I can finally upload yet another update package for you.
Hopefully tomorrow by this time (that is in approx. 24 hours) I'll have it done and can post the link to the download here.

But now... :snoring:

This mod looks better every time I check it out.

At first it was like, that's a cool idea.

Then like... Looking better, but not a download at this point.

And then, gotta get to downloading that soon....

And now it's a IM'A DL RIGHT AWAY!!!! *DROOL*

Ahem... I mean, nice work.

OMG OMG OMG!!! THIS IS SO AWSOME! i went to work, come back and it got even more awsome. when u do the esp, can u put in the new textures? they are so awsome. and the claws are GREAT

:bowdown:

when this is eventually ready for a full release, it will become the ULTIMATE mod

Wow! That's quite an addition, Drake! O.O

So I guess the Dragon race would have an increased hand-to-hand skill?

Looks awesome! And of course you tempt us right before you go to bed. I see!

Well, I'm sorry, but when it hits this specific time of the day I definitely have to quit whatever I'm doing and go to bed. This or my day would expand to last 48 hours... not that this would be anything new to me, but still I'm trying to avoid it whenever possible.

The work on the female counterparts is almost done, but unfortunately the TFF hands never work in Bone Weight Copy attempts without me removing vertices from them. So at the moment it's still trying to copy some weights over to the new female claws, but like I didn't expect any different it repeatedly fails.

Alright, I'm now going to share a little "secret" (as in probably not as secret as it may sound) with you who attempt to alter my ESP in the CS for various things.
In the DrakeDragonRaceQuestScript there's this short block of code:

let confArray := ar_Construct StringMaplet confArray["races"] := ar_Construct StringMaplet confArray["races"]["dragon"] := DrakeDragonlet confArray["races"]["dragonblack"] := DrakeDragonBlacklet confArray["races"]["dragonredgold"] := DrakeDragonRedGold

You might have guessed already what's happening here. I'm creating a mapping between array string-indices and races' EditorIDs to create a list of supported races.
What most of you perhaps don't know yet is, everything you need to do to add another race would be to first create it of course (duplicate an existing one to be sure everything's alright, then alter what you want), then simply add a line into this creating another mapping for your new dragon race.

The following line:

foreach item <- confArray["races"]

takes care that ALL races inside the array mentioned above will receive exactly the same configurations as any others.
So whichever race you add up there will automatically be fully configured and treated as a dragon by my scripts.
Now, could it get any simpler?

edit: Uh, unfortunately this is subject to the same "updating after you already started a game as a dragon race"-troubles, as this particular block of code won't be executed again (init = 1) until you force it to (set init to 0), and forcing it comes with its very own bunch of undesired results (loosing all adapted items' references in the arrays, due to them being re-created at this point, and thus creating save game bloating from orphaned base item records. I created ways to change this, but they're only possible with the latest scripts I posted here.

No worries. Just take your time and make sure everything is how you want it.

More pictures

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/9016/35063703.png
http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/9555/26060135.png

Edit:

- http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/9140/68628868.png
- http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/4093/22185555.png
- http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/3364/73137875.png
- http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/2880/32929099.png

Woohoo, pictures, pictures, pictures!
There are really some equipment resources out there which are fitting my dragons very nicely, I must say.
Thanks for showing them to me here.

Now, as a little something for while I'm compiling the next mesh update packages, I have here a very minor update to the male Black Dragon body textures.
They were missing a feature I incorporated into the female ones already for quite a while now, and today they finally got it added as well.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TJJIWPYN

They will replace the old one automatically, and when you also installed the scaly counterparts, the one inside the "DrakeDragonScaly" folder will be replaced as well.
I hope you like this little glowy addition. I don't know why I missed it for so long.

The file is unavailable. ><