Love watching this project develop! I have to mention though (and I'm not sure how far you're striving for realism here) but the way this bow is strung here wouldn't work. Once the bowman sets the string, it is pulling the ends against their natural inclination and therefore has to lie down from the tips against the opposite side of the shaft, like in this http://classic-bow.com/catalog/images/0245_recurve_bow.jpg. The way its strung in your picture the bow would simply snap back to normal. In the vanilla version the string just kind disappears without detail so it gets away with it. Here's another http://wiki.robotz.com/images/d/d7/RecurveBow01.png.

As someone who shot a bow a lot as a kid, I couldn't help pointing that out. Carry on.

Ok, uploaded the new version. I like it more, too.

As I am kind of a hobby archer myself (though I admit I have not shot for several years now), I know what you mean, but at this stage this mod is mainly about recreating the look of the original weapons with higher detail. I know this bow shape is unrealistic and impractical (I see it in the animation, too), but I foremost strove to recreate the original shape and animation as faithfully as possible - now they are almost congruent. But this is the first bow I ever modeled for Morrowind (and any other game), so I was mostly experimenting with it, and there is plenty of room for improvement, of course. I think I will do the longbow first, but after that I might return to the short bow to improve upon this issue. But I would have to diverge from the vanilla shape to make it more realistic.

By the way, I just learned that apparently, bows made of steel actually existed... always thought that would be kind of ridiculous, but it seems like the weapons in this game are more realistic than I thought: http://margo.student.utwente.nl/sagi/artikel/steelbow/steelbow.html

Huh. Wondered about this myself more than once.

Steel dagger is now done as well! Besides the fact that, like many other people as far as I know, think that it would much better fit an artifact weapon rather than a standard variant I really like the vanilla design of it, so I had a lot of fun making this. And in the end I was rather surprised how small the file ended up being, with all the little details I included in it, many of which are not even very noticeable ingame (at least in my opinion). However, in the future I might provide an alternate mesh which is more in line with the look of the short sword and use this for an artifact dagger, though I can't think of one which would qualify right now.

Looks good, Pherim!

One critique is that it looks like the vanilla model has that rim at the bottom end of the metal portion of the pommel which your's doesn't have as clearly define. But it might just be the angles I'm seeing. My only other comment is on the tongues: I like the way they look, separated from the lower jaw, but it also looks really flimsy.

edit: what about if you curved the tongues back down towards the lower jaw, somethinghttp://imgur.com/sKM8mup?

Yes, I see what you mean, but this is due to how the texture is mapped on the vanilla mesh... from another perspective you will see what I mean: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-DnUK6IyM3LQ/U1E8fjqdfCI/AAAAAAAABZU/UbApXy3isGE/s0/steel_dagger_comparison2.jpg

In the vanilla model the backside of the pommel is simply black, I tried to make it look a little more realistic.

By the way it appears to me that you base your comments mainly on the screenshots I post of the new meshes, but don't you take a look at them in Nifskope if not in the game? I would really prefer to have people take a look at the actual meshes when commenting about them (but of course, comments about the screenshots are welcome as well). This way you can inspect them from all angles and see all details that I can't convey in the screenshots alone.

Also, I already had the same thought about the tongues. I'll try to work something out.

Yeah, most of my comments come while I'm away from home and don't have Nifskope. Right now I'm just being lazy. But that alternate view definitely shows that your UV job is good. No change needed there.

Just a quick and dirty edit in Blender, may redo this with a little more care before I upload it: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-jFkMfUazKgQ/U1IsiJTW_7I/AAAAAAAABZk/HPjjdzkX8wU/s0/steel_dagger_hilt1.jpg

Maybe I will flesh out the teeth a little more, too. Fun fact: The inside of the mouths does not even use this part of the texture, so that the tongue does not get in the way. I hope it is no too noticeable.

I think that's a huge improvement. The tongue still looks well defined, but it doesn't look flimsy! Your project here is almost making me want to re-model some more items like my lanterns.

Well, why not? There are certainly a lot of things left that deserve faithful remodeling.

Time!!

I uploaded the modified dagger mesh, screenshots are updated, too. I also like it a lot more this way.

Also, the last of the melee weapons is added: The steel saber. I was a little worried at first because of the bad uv mapping of the vanilla mesh and the texture itself, but I think I found a good way to do it.

Furthermore, some of the other weapons have had minor changes made to their vertex shading again.

Now, only the longbow and the crossbow are left. It might take a little longer, also because I want to provide a tutorial on animating bows along with the longbow, but don't worry, I will complete this soon!

In the meantime, I would like to ask for as many people as possible to take a look at the already uploaded meshes and give me feedback, especially if you have any ideas for improvements! If there are none, I assume that these are already perfect and I will compile them to a proper mod after I finished the last weapons. I would rather not have to edit them again (at least not much) once I released them as a real mod, so please download these, look at them in NifSkope and in the game itself and tell me what you think!

I'll take a look at them all this weekend. I'll let you know if I find something that's not right

Thanks. Just a quick question: Which blade shape for the longsword do you think looks better?

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-mq9HuH6iPho/U1l5CsTBPdI/AAAAAAAABbU/1DJM4cUMXGo/s0/steel_longsword_blades.jpg

The first is the one that is currently uploaded in the dropbox folder, and it is already the second version, with the first being more like the second version in the picture, but I did not like that look for some reason, so I changed it to how it looks, now. But again I was not really happy with it, so I tried to go back to something more similar to the first version, but now with different proportions and I think I like it more now. In my opinion, from the vanilla mesh it is not really clear how it is supposed to look, it just has a kind of odd shape. So it's up to you which version you like more or you can suggest something different.

I'd say number 2. It looks like a longsword is supposed to look, really. Both the vanilla and your latest edit of it looks kinda off. If others think otherwise, I'd like if we could have that second choise as an alternative

Number 2 is actually the latest version (I guess my post was a little confusing about which version is which), but the very first version (you can see it in the screenshot labeled "old" in the start post) was more similar to that than to number 1, which is the one currently uploaded. But the newest version now has different proportions from the old one, and I like it a lot more. I'm glad you agree.

Oh. Well everything ok then!

The new saber looks great btw. Huge improvement!

Hi Pherim,

I just downloaded all the meshes and took a quick look at them in NifScope (I'll take a look at them in game as soon as possible) and I must say they are awesome They look much better than vanilla and still they maintain small size. I found only two little things that might be fixed, but they might not be worth it, as it could cause more trouble. On the head of the spear, the UV is a bit too much stretched here:

http://imgur.com/cy0Hjx8

It might be better to stretch the edge points a bit. Yet, this causes the model to use the darker parts of the texture, which might not suit everyone:

http://imgur.com/Iy5fmwu

And on the star, there are black lines where black texture is applied due to UV points placed on the edge of the colored part of the texture. By moving the points a bit to the center, you can get rid of them:

http://imgur.com/OnVgteO

But I'm very beginner in altering models (in something different than Cinema), so I might be wrong with my suggestions

On the sword thing, I'm a bit hesitant. No.2 looks a bit more realistic, while no.1 is more true to vanilla. I would say that if you widen the tip in no.2 just a little bit more, it would be perfect

Once again, you did outstanding job

EDIT: The same applies to dagger and imperial shortsword. This is noticable in 1st erson view in game, as it is on the edge of the blade facing player.

The name of the model is w_broadsword_leafblade.nif. They intended for the sword to be in that style. If you Google "leaf-bladed sword" http://imakeswords.com/images/leafblades/leafbladesetof3b.jpg and http://jodysamson.com/images/swords/11-30-04/leafblade1.jpg of http://kultofathena.com/images%5CBKS100_3_l.jpg come up. I'd be inclined to move in the direction of improving on their design intent rather than eliminating it. Perhaps it's just me but "that's how a longsword is supposed to look" (not to point at you, personally, Trance, I just go on these sort of rants every now and then ) is not a good reason to adopt a simplified and - in my view - boring design. I'm not trying to argue that the idea of a sword with a narrowed middle of the blade is necessarily a fantastically optimized design, but I certainly would prefer that to every single longsword having a straight blade.

That's just my two cents: I'm not a huge fan of either option 1 or 2 when compared to the vanilla model.

Very good suggestions, thanks a lot!

You really took a close look at them! UV issues like these often are a result of the textures themselves having a bad layout and not exactly being suited for better meshes... I could have done a much better job at uv mapping if the textures would have allowed it. I will take a look at the specific things you mentioned and improve them, if possible. Once I create new textures, I will, of course, try to get rid of all these problems.

What I always try first in cases like the spear (a common result of applying texture projection to a cylindrical mesh) is to take all vertices of the UV map inside the shape and scale them down to have them more evenly distributed. This way, I can reduce stretching and still stay within the correct parts of the texture.

edit: Thanks for directing my attention to the spear mesh, that way I discovered a double triangle which I got rid of.

Thanks a lot, MD! I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable about medieval weapons (and I hope that shows at least a little in the models, despite them being based on fantasy designs), but i did not think about searching for "bleaf-bladed sword" - otherwise I would not have been so puzzled about the vanilla design. Now that I know how these swords look like, I believe I will be able to get it "right" - in fact, number 2 in the picture is not so far away, I just need to widen the tip a little, as WH-Reaper suggested.

Ok, I don't know if this is helpful, but I roughly checked the weapons with nifskope for any uv issues (stretching) & didn't found any problems.

I would say this is on a good way & as perfect as your other mods (e.g. comberry remodel, iron weapons).

Thanks.

Happy to be helpful.

I'm really looking forward to that tutorial too!

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-7h2erPyDMww/U1rE4BsOXnI/AAAAAAAABb0/7uB-gGpqWwY/s1437/steel_longsword_comparison2.jpg.

I updated the screenshot in the start post as well and uploaded the new version.

And nothing short of perfection is what I aspire to.

But seriously, thanks a lot for your comment.

Yes!

Kein Ding. Gerne.