http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1071472

(not much progress as of late, yet less actually released)

The latest test-release, for playing around or help with bug-tracking, of the mod would be the semi-official v0.0.7 pre-beta, still, due to me still not having a working pc at hand to go on with modding full-scale.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=K1EKLHQH

Now also available at TES Nexus on a special pre-beta releases page:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=30094

requires http://obse.silverlock.org/, better yet beta 5, always keeping up-to-date with the latest beta can't hurt either.
A Script Effect Silencer could also come in handy, to get rid of these regular or random thumping sounds and maybe even visual anomalies like purple clouds or something.
For example http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15677.
male meshes/textures made to fit Robert's V4 (muscular)
female meshes/textures fitting TFF
(due to the nature of my scripting approach though using different bodies in general won't cause issues when all slots are under control of my scripts and fitting equipment is enforced)

For the lowerbody meshes there are quite some alternatives. Parallel to Robert's body mod there are several different underwear variants plus a mammalian and a reptilian nvde version.
All files can be found inside the folder "meshes/characters/DrakeDragon/male". For females likewise.
The names should be self-explanatory, but if you possess NifSkope, you can even open them and take a look inside to select which one you prefer.

Whichever one you prefer you simply have to create a copy of it and rename it into "DragonLegs_dcpart.nif" (that's the one the game will use).

There was an issue reported with the new foot wraps not being rigged properly. This is because I didn't have time to check it at all but just rescued everything "as it was" from my drive before cleaning it.
The following resource pack will remedy this as well of course.

Well, here is the complete package of Cloth Wraps, in all possible slot-combinations with all corresponding human-dragon-hybrid adaptations
(ranging from full-human to full-dragon, making it an actual "resource" with applicability far beyond that little race of mine).
I actually wanted to do this for quite some time already, but as you can imagine I previously didn't get the opportunity to start it.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FJ5GEKY6

You won't need my plugin to use these, but due to me being unable to create plugins currently and the nature of this resource release you will need to put them into the game as actual clothing (or armor, if you prefer) yourself.

Latest pictures (some of them might be a bit outdated mesh-wise already)

http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/3707/dragontextures.jpg (latest state textures)
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/1764/tfforiginal.jpg (latest state textures)
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/7746/tffblack.jpg (latest state textures)
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/5310/tffredgold.jpg (latest state textures)
http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/7079/newdragonwings1.jpg (latest state meshes)
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/1875/newdragonwings2.jpg (latest state meshes)
http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/651/newdragonwings3.jpg (latest state meshes)
http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/5043/newdragonwings4.jpg (latest state meshes)
http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/4858/lessglossynormalmaps.jpg (latest state textures and meshes)

This is what you get right now.

Now here is what you don't get yet. All released now apart from animations.

http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/3568/improvedwings1.jpg,
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/8449/improvedwings2.jpg

I shortened the phalanges, elongated the 2 outermost fingers, rectified the curving of the membrane's borders between the tips, and also altered the rigging pose a little by bending the wing arms one more unit. It actually increased the wing span yet again, so I think any bigger than this now won't ever happen. Anyways, I really like this result. Even those questionable forward membranes seem to look way better now, somehow "fitting in" finally without disturbing the overall shape.

This is Drake's new look, not necessarily a replacement for the red-gold theme.
The body is now (in my eyes) sufficiently armored with sturdy scales at exposed areas (which was horribly lacking before).
The whole area around the chest was completely redone from scratch and this plated chestpiece turned out way better than the last one.
I think I went a bit overboard with the sharpen-filter though.
I'm really surprised with how great my first attempt at veined membrane textures turned out, but judge for yourself:

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/8312/newscalytexturesandwing.jpg (mind the new plates on the chest),
http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/8312/newscalytexturesandwing.jpg (mind the faint see-through effect, the tail shimmering through),
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/8312/newscalytexturesandwing.jpg (slight shadows of the hands this time),
http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/8312/newscalytexturesandwing.jpg (full view of the new wing-anatomy, mind the improved phalanges)

Now the veins in the membranes are less prominent, more like "underneath" the skin.
I added another layer of flesh, giving the membranes a much more fleshy structure.
And while I was at it I also reduced the transparency further, as it was far too clear for my taste previously.
It's just getting better and better me thinks.

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/8312/newscalytexturesandwing.jpg,
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/3475/newscalytexturesandwingk.jpg
I also like it how the original "golden"-coloured areas returned once the transparency vanished.

Due to Drake being quite a young dragon still, almost a child, always walking on his hindlegs, like the others of his kind prefer to do to better blend in with human society, gets quite taxing after some time. This and him and the others having been forced to retreat into their ancestors' caves ages ago makes him prefer walking on all fours (feral-style) when not too close to humans, or anyways when he's quite exhausted.
This made me start trying to create some feral-style movement animations a while ago and my attempts at creating these 4-legged animations are turning out to yield quite fine results.
As I can't use Fraps on the netbook for capturing videos of them in NifSkope (it reduced the whole animation from 24 to just 2 frames, the first of each leg's motion cycle, which obviously doesn't make it a "movement" anymore... talking about how slow that thing is...), I just used Blender to render a full animation cycle instead and created Animated GIFs from that. They're round about 1.5 megs each, so be patient when opening them.

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/4628/runfwdanimback.gif (the most interesting point of view in my eyes),
http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/6362/runfwdanimside.gif (giving the best view of the legs' movement),
http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/9518/runfwdanimfront.gif (looking cool already?),
http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/7369/runfwdanimtop.gif (mind the fluid bending of the spine with each step)

Next I made it a walk now. Looks actually far better than last time, better than I expected.

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/9881/walkfwdanimround.gif (give it some time to load)

Don't mind the camera going round in a crazy circle. This is just me experimenting with just another play-thing I found during the process, animating camera movement as well and a moving lightsource creating some nice highlights occasionally. Hope you won't get sick by watching... and you can see the animation that is. :facepalm:

Oh and if anybody's wondering, these are Drake's new personal textures, many smaller high-detail unresized elements, like scales etc., added to bring back the sharpness even the sharpen tool could not restore. I'll never again use double-sized resources as a basis for my textures. It just gets way too blurry right from the start this way.

Due to me altering the wings' geometry that drastically all available dragon races will need new wing-membrane textures at least as soon as I release the new meshes and the skeletons going along with these.
Now I think I'm finally done with this little task, so here are the results:
http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/8312/newscalytexturesandwing.jpg (I posted this already but here it is again for direct comparison),
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/5721/originaldragonnewwings.jpg,
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/8215/blackdragonnewwings.jpg

lordsoulstrike, I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty to create some fitting ones for all your fine retextures I could find as well:
http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/4813/blackreddragonretexneww.jpg (black membranes),
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/4813/blackreddragonretexneww.jpg (dark-red membranes from black dragon),
http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/4813/blackreddragonretexneww.jpg (original-color membranes like you did in your release),
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/9494/icedragonretexnewwings.jpg (the most-sophisticated work of all of them),
http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/5273/albinodragonretexnewwin.jpg (was hard to hit the right tone)

Those will all be included in the next upcoming resource release/update. I hope you like them and they're fitting in Your eyes as well.

Now while I was at it I also gave all existing texture variants a quick work-over to create matching counterparts to Drake's brand new textures, the "red-gold scaly" variant. Thus I actually created a complete second branch of new scaly textures.

http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/1576/redgolddragonscaly1.jpg,
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/9025/redgolddragonscaly2.jpg,
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/748/originaldragonscaly1.jpg,
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/4360/originaldragonscaly2.jpg,
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/3428/blackdragonscaly1.jpg,
http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/2758/blackdragonscaly2.jpg,

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/8305/blackreddragonretexscal.jpg,
http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/8305/blackreddragonretexscal.jpg,
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/4097/icedragonretexscaly1.jpg,
http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/7149/icedragonretexscaly2.jpg,
http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/9398/albinodragonretexscaly1.jpg,
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/2347/albinodragonretexscaly2.jpg

This makes 12 variants overall already.

And now here's another resource release:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6N12E2K4

It contains the new and improved wing meshes, all wing membrane textures I did, plus the scaly textures for male and female I created.
Attention: the scaly textures are contained in a seperate folder inside "textures/characters". I conveniently named it "DrakeDragonScaly". Right now you can only use one or the other, but at least you can decide about this on a per-race basis.
If you replace the files of the species you want with the scaly ones or change the textures used by the race in the ESP itself is up to you, both should work fine.
Replacing the skeletons though is mandatory for the new meshes to work!
I included "skeleton.nif" and "skeletonbeast.nif" in "_male" as well as "skeleton.nif" and "skeleton_loupsombre.nif" in "_1stperson". Latter is a replacement for when you are also using Loup Sombre's "3rd-Person Animations in 1st-Person View" like I do. It has a different 1st-person skeleton, so that's a compatible one.


I now also resummarized my CS instructions and the latest unreleased scripts, for anybody who feels like going on with what I currently can't do.
It all can be found in http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1071472&view=findpost&p=15580318 of the previous topic.

OBSE is in beta 6 stage :hehe:



By the way how adapted boot mesh should look like with the new skeleton ?

Yepp, you're right. Thanks for pointing it out.
That's what you get for copying an old and out-dated opening post. Man, is this stuff I mentioned up there out-of-date already now!

Well, the newer feet meshes are in no way different to the existing ones. Only because they're rigged to a new skeleton, their rigging has changed significantly.
Think along anatomically correct placement of joints and all, no more bone joints far outside of the mesh itself. Also the first version of these new feet is aligning perfectly seamless to Robert's V5 ankles, not V4 anymore... unless they're the same, don't know. There are more and more male items created for this body, so I was planning with future usability in mind.

It doesn't matter yet, though, because nothing of this is yet released already. I will post pictures of the new stuff as soon as I finish something.
But unless I can use the CS and test my mods myself, there's no way I could implement the new skeleton idea into a plugin. This and it will need yet-to-be-developed new OBSE functionality to really work first. So as I said, this is just for future directions in development.

The beta release with current meshes and everything will come first. I'll see if I can't get some flight movements into it already, but I'm not too positive about this rather complex aspect. :shakehead:

wow wow wow, slow down a bit, take it one step at a time, you'll burn yourself out if you keep this up :flamed:

first make the base of it all, then see where you can go from there, theres really not much point worrying over problems you have very little control over

Bump, bump

A few questions to you Drake:
1. Is your mod crashfree ?
2. Can I have your feral walk animation ?
3. When beta is going to be relased
4. What about FPS hit ?
5. Are you going to relase HGEC version ?

Oh wow, it's been a really long time since I've posted on this string of threads, hasn't it? (...pun not intended <_<)

anyways, I'm finally back! woo! for anybody that cares, anyway

But, the reason I'm posting is to ask for something that seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle; the hybrid dragon race. you know, the one with the human head? I was wondering if some kind modder wouldn't mind making that again... well, with the gold and red scales texture rather than the normal one, and perhaps some actual hair styles, like from rens added to it rather than having that empty. it would be well appreciated!

Well,

1. You should rather ask my testers, but until now I was only reported 1 single crash issue and that's only when playing a non-dragon race with my ESP activated and COC-ing to the testinghall or Hawkhaven. Additionally none of the testers could reproduce these crashes yet.
Keep in mind though that I'm aware of a serious savegame bloating going on in the currently uploaded version of my scripts!
When I wrote these I didn't know I had to clean really "all" string_vars, even outside of user-functions, or they will sum up infinitely as garbage inside your saves. But it was reported that doing a clean save got rid of these and reduced savegame size back to normal values. However, unless I get around to add these fixes (or finally finish the latest state of art of my scripts with these clean-ups included, whichever comes first) the bloating will always return of course.

2. If I "had" such a thing, I'd gladly send you. Unfortunately I didn't get around to make the movement an actual walk yet. There's no translation going on in this, it's walking on-the-spot, if you know what I mean. Of course I could send you the current file(s) every time, if you'd like to have them. But they're of no ingame use for anybody in their current state.

3. I myself really don't know that. There's still a lot to do until then, and as you might have noticed I'm not making much progress lately (if any at all), still needing to buy a new pc first.

4. Hmm, my scripts shouldn't have any serious or noticeable impact. You can configure/fine-tune many details of execution which will increase/decrease FPS hit, hopefully enabling you to completely eradicate any. It was one of the main purposes of the test-releases to determine how much an impact (if any noticeable) on performance my scripts have, so maybe some of the testers could answer this? My laptop was always a bit slow, so I wouldn't have noticed any difference between normal play and severe stuttering anyways.

5. It would be "ideal" if I could somehow "avoid" having to do this... working with the Exnem texture layout is a real pain, I tell you. I got many severely noticeable texture seams with the scaled textures from AB and literally went to Mars and beyond to fix them afterwards... I'm getting nightmares when thinking on what I'll have to do for the complex structure of my dragon textures to be seamless then!... But I guess on the long term I won't have a choice anyways, so yes, I think I'll have to add Exnem/HGEC/whatever-other-derivative-there-is support to my project sooner or later.
Just don't expect this to happen anytime soon, please!


Welcome back then, Chellen. I was already wondering where you disappeared to.
Let's see if I can't do that. Actually it didn't "get lost". It's just, it was a request from you, and I remember I fulfilled it last time, so I considered this to be done with for the time being.
However, it was created by "removing" features from the full-dragon appearance, which is something I can always do again, even with the latest state of art. It shouldn't be a big deal. I just have to figure out again which features were requested dragon and which human and to what extent.
As for hairstyles, you might have to tell me the actual mods you're thinking about and the styles you're interested in most perhaps. I could simply add their styles into the ESP and you would only need to have their meshes and textures installed already. That won't be re-releasing or including, just enabling-use, so I think it shouldn't require permission even.
However, I think you could already simply replace the meshes and textures from the hybrid race with my latest meshes and textures. But I'm not too sure about this without knowing what exactly I put into this release long, long ago.

edit: Oh, damn, I forgot I can't edit any ESPs at the moment without being able to use the CS! So technically I was writing nonsense about what all "I" could do... however, it still shouldn't be hard to do for somebody else in the meantime. Getting the existing hybrid race to use the new resources is still something I could do myself. I won't have to edit the ESP for this task.

I just have some interesting info on this i recently found.

The translation on the bip01 bone only controls the direction (i think) and speed of the animation. yes the speed, not the distance you cover during the animation, if you make a huge distance (as in 0 to 1000 in a few seconds) the player will still move around at the same speed, but the animation will become really slow. setting it as a really small amount will make the player play the animation over and over, even though they will still move around at the same speed.


just thought i'd let you know of that, has caused some annoyance for me.

That's very much appreciated. This is some really vital information.
Thanks for sharing! ^_^

This game engine and its mysterious rules for internal processes never cease to surprise me though...

I was always thinking the Funcom devs were smoking some really weird type of weed when developing the rules for Anarchy-Online... but whatever the gamesas devs were smoking, they were obviously trying to top them! :whistling:

you're telling me, i had to add in a hidden speed/arthletics boost in order to get any sort of horse type speed for my centaur.

That's cool; to be perfectly honest I didn't know if someone would do it at all

I think the simplest way to do this would probably just to take the existing gold dragon and make a copy, then convert its head from a dragon one to a human one

Oh, and the hairstyles I wanted are the ones from http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15568. Would someone be willing to do this?

Actually,I don't think you'd need to if someone still has a copy of the hybrid dragon race. if they do, this work can be avoided and I can just use that - I got used to what small issues it had, so there'lll be no problem for me

Well, this original release would still be there on MegaUpload, I just checked it:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=X4UDIBY3

But I'm also almost done with updating it to the latest state in meshes and textures already. The very-high-detailed scaly red-gold color scheme was what you're wishing for, right?
Unfortunately I have to go to bed soon after breakfast now, else I would already be rigging the blades and stuff to the regular bones as in the initial release. After this I would be done already and could send you the final archive.

Is it still no wings and all spikes, claws and blades as part of the tail?

Yes, that's right, all of it's right. Would the hair enabling the corean mod be included in all of this?

Unfortunately no, I'm sorry. That's the only thing I can't do. Modifying the ESP is beyond my possibilities at the moment.

that's fine. Like I said, I got used to the particular quirks of this race and have several workarounds in place - the texture was the only thing I didn't have the ability to , as I have no skill in that respect

Finally, my Oblivion is working fine !

So:
A bunch of photoshop works + a few old files + new files = Dragon necromancer/dark lord
http://img515.imageshack.us/i/screenshot65g.jpg/

I have created new race using some of your meshes because I don't want to kill my very clean save with installing, updating and uninstalling beta's :glare:

nice picture, looks pretty good

so that has the textures on the argonian race?

No, I have just edited RBP to create new dragon race, which is simmilar to other races (in stats).

I have a question to you Drake: Whats your way of creating normal maps, what programs are you using.
I really want to create my own texture for your race, I'd like to add some scars with normal maps.

I'm exclusively using Paint.NET for my textures.

Usually I used the "Height Field to Normal Map"-plugin with a setting of 5.20 for skin or other not-so-rough surfaces, 7.00 for my scales.
Previously I merged red, green, blue layer of 2 normal maps seperately, the 5.20 with the 7.00, to get a proper roughness but don't loose the details, then used the merged black&white versions of their base textures for the new transparency mask for the alpha channel, but this has turned out to have far inferior results than just merging the black&white versions first, then creating a normalmap from this (setting 7.00 or something close, some fine-tuning never hurts).

So now I first create the black&white of my dragon texture, merge this one with the alpha component of a Robert's Male normalmap (+10 brightness for each of them, so there's no 0 in alpha which causes distortions in the reflectivity, then overlaying), and then I create the new normalmap of it (setting 7.00 as usual). Afterwards I use the merged b&w as the new alpha mask for the normalmap's alpha component.

Any update on the status of your new computer?

Unfortunately not, no. I just don't get the time to actually buy one.
It's only work all day and night for me... I can't believe I'm without a PC and ability to play games or mod for several months on end now already... and I'm still alive! :blink:
I must be even too busy to notice the absence of something as important to me as this!

I'm so sorry for all the delays...

It's ok. I understand work comes first. I know once you have more free time you can look at many computers and find one that won't break on you. ><

OMG AN UPDATE!!!

and yes, work does come first