I'm sure there are FANTASTIC reasons for why it hasn't been attempted. I'm not necessarily asking people to do this, I'm just wondering why it hasn't been done. I'm aware that Morrownd's skeleton doesn't really allow for multiple digits to animate very easily, for example, but surely that doesn't make it impossible to port the meshes themselves. Since HGEC and Robert's as user created meshes, I imagine Bethesda wouldn't care if someone ported them. They don't use any vanilla OB assets, right?

For anyone who doesn't know, Robert's Male and HGEC are the popular body replacers for Oblivion. They've been ported to Fallout 3 and New Vegas as well, if I'm not mistaken.

Fallout 3 uses the same (updated) engine that Oblivion does. Morrowind does not.

The biggest reason would be that it would be incompatible with everything. All of the clothes and armor, modded and not, would need to be redone. It's not as simple as "convert body, play".

I do believe a user called Axel did this with an Oblivion female body once. It is possible, just time consuming.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y233/Bahamut_ZERO/wipstuff/Screenshot3.jpg but I think he said that the incompatibility with existing clothing/armor mods scared him off. Also, it wouldn't be a straight conversion as the body would have to be segmented to account for Morrowind's clothing/armor slot system (the arms would have to be separated from the torso, for example).

I am quite aware.

That does not seem to have stopped people in the other Bethesda game mod communities from creating these bodies and then systematically going through all of the Vanilla content of those games and making the various armors and clothing compatible with them. If I'm not mistaken, Morrowind's equipment system works differently, also? But from how I understand it, it wouldn't make redoing vanilla content more difficult, just 'different'.

I actually remember Axel's thread.

You have to remember this community is way past it height. Given that there are very few mods coming out it would never gain traction as there are hundreds of mods that use better bodies and huge amounts of resources for it. The work required for one person (and it probably would just be one) to convert a large enough number of mods would be insane.

Indeed.

I suppose my questions about the "technical difficulties" has been answered. That is, I take it there are none; besides literally going in and dealing with the downgrades to the skeleton etc you'd need to work out in blender and, of course, converting clothing etc which goes without saying.

Part of me is just a little sad that here we have multiple body replacers for Bethesda's two latest open world games, each with overwhelming mod support and complete conversions of the vanilla content; and here in Morrowind land we are stuck with BB which as much as I appreciate the work put into it, is starting to show its age next to the amazing features of MGE/XE.

i don't like the oblivion body and skeleton. even in it's age i like the BB most. i always hated to look at my body in oblivion, there where so many things i did not like. axel also used one of the ugliest body forms ever, the muscular one with the wide pelvis and extremely huge briast (she looked as if she coulnd't fit through a doorframe) - that showed me, that you would have to convert all different body shapes to satisfy everyone and convert clothing fitting each special body form. this is not even possible or made in oblivion. i nearly found no shop that supported my chosen body form or briast size when i played it.

Go for it! You make it sound so easy.
I'll be eating some popcorn while you keep us posted on your progress. Mmmm'kay, good luck now.

I was never particularly charmed by Axel's choice of body mesh, either. I did wonder why he 'gave up' though, whether it was something that made the porting technically impossible or what.

I know porting Oblivion-ready .nifs to Morrowind ready .nifs is possible because of the work Bahamut has done porting a few Oblivion mods down. I was curious to see how different the situation with the body meshes was.

How you managed to interpret that I was saying it would be easy, I will never know. I am impressed, though.

This is exactly the kind of insight I was looking for. Thank you, Jiub.

There is this amazing male body's mod => "http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1054885-wip-hdbody/page__hl__caustics
http://www.nicholiathan.com/morrowind/Images/ManPosed.jpg
Website of the modder => http://www.nicholiathan.com/morrowind/newbody.html



Westly and AOF had proposed however for texturing the model.
But no one news of the modder

As I've been unable to create or acquire a working texture and am unable to complete clothing for these models I've abandoned that project.

Well I can't speak for anyone else, but I LIKE having only one body replacement. It means I'm not left searching, scrounging, begging people for conversions of their work to something I prefer, digging through pages and pages of mods catered not to what I'm using...honestly, to put it bluntly, Oblivion's modding scene is a pain in the ass.

And personally I find it extremely distasteful when the mod's only appeal is "stick thin with your choice of bouncing boobies from size E-M!!!!!". I mean really. I don't use HGEC for that very reason.

Personally, I believe Better Bodies is a good compromise between the vanilla MW and OB bodies. Robert's is certainly a great model, but wouldn't it be a bit out of place in MW? Also, although I've been using BB almost from day one, I know there are still lots of people still using the vanilla body, for the same reason as above - as well as modding clothing and armor for it.

However, the argument "not enough clothing for a new body" doesn't really hold. I'm sure talented modders will put up a new set in short time (I can see Hedgehog's armor working on a new body, with small modifications) - the question is more of style and utility, than of usability. Anyone would start a mod for as long as he/she would like to have that in his/her game, but an important factor would also be if others will want it as well.

That said, the idea is quite good, as innovation is always welcome and it is what makes the 2011 Morrowind what it is, with grass, trees, AA, bump mapping, hi-res texture replacers, BB, etc. If a new body will come up, I'll sure give it a try, as many others would - it's only a matter of finding someone willing to do it, according to the above reasons...

Cheers,
PKR.

Personally, I would love to see Robert's male's ported to morrowind, while I am fine with the BB female form, as I feel it is already pretty close in quality to what is available for OB, the male BB version is fine, but it is clearly inferior to Robert's models, the difference being, to me anyway, that I would have to really look closely at the female bodies for oblivion and the BB version to notice much of a difference, while I can tell immediately the poly count difference between BB and Robert's male bodies.