MW bumps (or at least what engine developers, NDL, are calling "bump maps") are not the same what is generally considered as bump and normals maps.
http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n45/AxelIP/ScreenShot258.jpg
http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n45/AxelIP/ScreenShot264.jpg
http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n45/AxelIP/ScreenShot297.jpg
http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n45/AxelIP/ScreenShot420.jpg
Let us not hijack the topic with bump problem, there were numerous discussions/debates (solutions as well) on the forum about that.

Linking to outlying anomalies does not help your case

http://www.human-body-facts.com/images/human-body-muscle-diagram.jpg

This is not an abnormality but realty (historical, obligatory fashion) for those Chinese nobles, etc.
What you are posting is actually an idealized scheme for the first semester medical students: visit a local beach or anatomical theater if you really need realistic prototypes. I have enough realism in RL and do not want to see it in a game.

This is a taste matter: do not like what a mod author is proposing ? model yourself a realistic, anatomically correct and hot variant. I am sure that all of us would be happy to see it, play MW with it.




I have made dozens of BB male and female body shape modifications, with extra bones and without as well as not BB based bodies for NPCs. I can post pictures. I am not an artist but do know technical aspects of 3D body modeling.

You know what, I think I have an explanation of our taste differences, body shape preferences: Americans statistically (scientific fact) are more variable in body shape, face morphs, and other anthropometrical parameters than we, Germans. Probably, therefore you prefer more "standardized" ideal shapes, and I am missing it in RL seeking exaggerated variety in a game.

Nicholiathan, I am very sorry for this off-topic mess. I am shutting up.

Probably. I'll just avoid the anorexia mods, then.

I like the look of those.

While there isn't many anatomical issue's with what Nicholiathan has, I too would prefer more stylized body models with exaggerated proportions like in that image. Alternatively for a more "realistic" look something close to this → http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v217/AnOldFriend/Concepts/bernadette_by_blackhearted_censored.jpg censored due to forum rules and uploaded to my PB account, this is NOT my work. However I suppose I am partial to the "ideal" womens body figure. XD

As for the male body I think I would prefer something similar to the Kruxena, second to last race in the image A1x2e3l posted in the quote above.

However, these are just my opinions and I know, everybody has there own taste's and what not. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the route you have taken Nicholiathan, go with what you prefer, it is your work after all. :grad:

IMO MW in itself was never a realistic world comparing to the real world and was never meant to be that is why we love it, this is why I would surly agree to stylistic bodies.
But I would also welcome a more realistic approach because it would help bridge the gap between our world and MW.

IMO people are making bodies to beautiful either way, I think DA was pretty good on supplying animation for NPCS to make them appear unique (cutscenes) not in the actual gameplay.

Then again, this is because I like my MW dark and gritty, a harsh environment in need of a hero that may never come haha.

Much of the above commentary is a bit discouraging. Neither the less I appriciate all of it. I would like for the body to be a bit more attractive but this statement above is part of the guiding principles I have for this work. Morrowind is a dark and gritty environment. There is no hollywood media pushing the populace towards some unnatural expectations or standards. Yes I would like a more curvaceous body but I am not looking to make a barbie doll figure. On the http://www.nicholiathan.com/morrowind/Images/nifskopebody.jpg I'd tried to make the waist a bit trimmer but didn't like the results. I'll try to improve the shape a bit while working on the hands and UV mapping.

Here's a first look at the neuter http://www.nicholiathan.com/morrowind/Images/HDMN01.JPG.

The male looks pretty good. The female looks pretty good too actually - a little stocky for an "average" character though, more like a relatively in shape forty or fifty year old. It's a pity most games don't't permit multiple body types. I don't want a barbie doll, but I think slightly less angular/high hips (something about them is just bothering me, more than the waist or briasts), a marginally narrower waist, and slightly higher & smaller briasts would really improve things. Of course, these things are very subjective, and whatever you end up with, I look forward to seeing it.

Never meant it to be that way, sorry if It came of as such. I think it's grand that your working on a new body mesh I'm all for choices! That is what MW modding has become all about, choosing what game fits you the best =)

Thank you for your hard work Nicholiathan!

haplobartow:


Also, just thought I'd point out that first person hands are seperate from those of third person, so you could presumably have more detail in first person while simplifying the rest. Check out Better Bodies - all body parts refer to the full body mesh, except for first person hands, which refers to a seperate mesh of only only hands.

Male body looks really great!

All body parts can be in different nifs.
First person hands are separated because they are skinned to another skeleton that has five fingers and camera (camera node to my knowledge is not properly handled by Blender/Max importers/exporters).
There is another issue with first person hands: their geometry/normals/textures should fit the third person wrists model. Otherwise you will see with some clothes/armor an ugly gap between hand and wrists.

I am apologizing, friends, but I cannot stop myself (I was so impressed by the video): body shaping sliders (not simple TESCS height/weight 0.5-2 adjustment) could be a solutions of our "taste problems".
Few online games have this option: Aion (tweaked CryENGINE 1), Champions Online, Second Life, and really insane character customization in the coming All Points Bulletin (Unreal 3 engine):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icR3LtEMvZI

I could never run that kinda game on this laptop. But I'm gonna have to check that one out. Thanks for the vid axel.

I've been working on the female body tweeking in a bit here and there in preparation for the new UV maps. I've made the waist a tad bit trimmer the hips just a bit wider and the buttocks more round. The result is a subtle improvement to the waist line. I am remaining true to the original vision of a body that looks as if where a person that grew up in Morrowind without the benifits of modern health care, hollywood media or diet regiems behond hard labor in a harsh environment.

I've toyed with the idea of creating a seperate body for orcs that are heavier than the other races. That would require scripting all the clothes as well as making seperate versions of the clothes for orcs. I'm filing that idea away in the pipe dream catagory for now.

When you finish, will it be module? So that we can use the female body and not the male body or use the male body but not the female body?

It would be pretty darn cool if say, niftools team could integrate makehuman into niftools once we have a base body exported working with MW skeleton so that sliders etc could be used for everyone to make their own body. Oh well, probably will never happen haha, partially because it's difficult partially because we would have clipping... everywhere.

The clipping issue would be the killer. Even a tool like makeHuman could export a morrowind .nif body that would not address the clothing issue. The result would be that any part of the body that was enlarged would progect out of the clothing. Simularly the clothing would conform to the origianol body shape for any part that was shrunk. So that if you shrunk the waist the pants would look like clown pants with a large gap between the clothes & body.

For such an idea to work the tools would also have to alter the meshes of all the clothing models.



I will be releasing this with two versions of each gender (clothed/nvde). My plan is to have one .esp and then have the user plug in the appropriate models. Given the number of computer illiterate mod users I may look into an exe installer but that is doubtful at best. As to offering a version of female only & male only... maybe. Only if there is overwhelming demand.

As far as I understand body shaping sliders are not waking on the level of a single mesh (e.g. particular cloth or armor) but on a higher level e.g. animated skeleton that is common for a race or unique for selective PC/NPC. For instance, when you are changing race height or weight in the TESCS all clothes/armor are automatically rescaled accordingly. Not-uniform scaling of a bone or group of bones (one of the possible sliders mechanism) might cause some clipping in some cases. Another problem of this solution is not-skinned meshes, they are not affected by local skeleton alterations.

Anyhow, I think that all that is not doable, sweat dreams?

Your body meshes are beautiful, Nicholiathan! I am really looking forward to this release.

They are actually getting better thanks to the input I've been getting. I'm considering putting together a rebuild of the walk run animations to use with this body replacer. That would vastly increase the download size, which will be large to begin with, and require permissions from the animators.

I would like to second this, they really are quite outstanding!

I've made very little progress since beginnging to address the hands issue. I'm attaching LizTails modified hands to my model. In doing so I've ended up with duplicated finger & hand bones. Attaching the hand is a time consuming task working to make faces to join the edges of the wrist and hand. It remains how well blender handles the conversion of weight painting from one skeleton to another. My worst fear is that I'll have to redo the weights 1 vertice at a time.

On a sidetrack (which I often take when my brain starts to freeze up from staring at pixels) I've investigated the idea of packaging this with an exe installer and that's looking to be a plausible solution.

Once I'm finished with the hands and with a bit more poly reduction the models will be ready for their beta test. That of course I don't have any other glaring problems such as the hand issue. I plan on testing to see if I can run these models with balmora expanded, nom, com, mca, julan ashlander & carrie irrietie (no I've not forgotten that project & will return to it eventually). If my PC can handle all that then I'll consider the models good.

Could you upload the screenshots anywhere else, e.g. Photobucket. I can't open your site, neither see them on GHF site...

I am lost. The idea of using Liztail's hand was actually based on assumption that they can be used as they are.
You are using original MW skeleton, right?
You have already some variants of your new body in the nif format with separated wrists, correct?
Then delete you highres hands in this nif in NifScope and paste LizTail's hands; import that back in Blender and correct the wrists or hands (what would be more convenient for you); export and assemble the the model again in NifScope using modified hands or wrists and usable meshes that have less export/import circles. You can also test the model using different nifs for your testing race. All body parts can be in different nifs (meshes names should be valid).
I have no idea how this works in Blender but in Max it is a 10 minutes operation because you do not need to change vertex weights only reposition some vertices in order to remove the gap (textures and normals is another story). You can send me your nif skeleton with only wrists and I can do that for you (I have LizTail's BB hands). However, I believe the procedure in Blender is also straightforward.

BTW what do you think about new Blender 2.5 alpha (released few days ago). Is UI really better and user-friendly? They are saying they have significantly changed it (no nif support so far).

I had someone else who's server was blocking my site for some strange reason. She was able to use an anonomizer to get to the site http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://www.nicholiathan.com/morrowind/newbody.html You might want to book mark www.anonymouse.org for use when pages are blocked like that.



The bodies with LizTail's hands actually has a beastman skeleton. For my first attempt at this process I croped out all but the hands and linked bones of LizTail's model. The importer then renamed the imported bones so that Bip01 L Finger01 became Bip L Finger01.001. Hopefully when I go in and reassign the weighting to the original bone everything will transfer correctly. I do indeed have multiple versions of this model at various stages of prgress so that I'll be able to try several approaches. I figured the manual approach was most likely to give me success.

I did upgrade to 2.49 and am sorely missing the UV Face Select feature available in 2.45. Without a nif exporter for 2.5 alpha I'm not ready to upgrade yet.

Amazing.