Hello again! After 2-year hiatus, I'm giving the mod scene another try. *fingers crossed* To start with, I'm getting back into practice by fixing my first mod, http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15952. I say it's version 2 - it's actually the way the mod was originally supposed to look. But because of my lack of knowledge of normal maps, specular maps, UV Mapping, etc, the original mod has a completely different feel to it. So this is going to be uploaded as a separate mod, rather than a version update.

I'm still contemplating on whether to mess around with glow maps on the crystals or not - my preliminary attempts at it rendered the texture of the crystals to become very bland and near-impossible to see.

Improvements/Changes:

• Reduced Texture Map - For what it was, the texture map before was WAY too big. It's been reduced to 512x512, with possibility for a larger one later.
  
• Fixed Mesh - Parts have been redone and the face-count has been cleaned up dramatically. It has a fourth of the faces it used to have.
  
• Baked Normal Map - What does this mean? The Normal Map has much greater detail now, as it was generated from a hi-poly model, rather than just filtered from the texture map
  
• New UV Map - Remapped for the new mesh, it now keeps things proportioned and no more ugly stretching on the crystals!
  
• Shaft - It's now thicker than before, per user suggestion. He was right - it WAS way too dainty!
  
• Transparency - The crystals now have some transparency, per user suggestion.

You've been so patient with me. Screenshots?
Onto the screenshots:
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h136/rynsinner/oblivion/WIP_CrystalStaffv2/crystalstaffv2_wip1.jpg - Because the normal map is much smoother this time around, it shines much differently at different angles. It catches sunlight very well though, in my opinion.
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h136/rynsinner/oblivion/WIP_CrystalStaffv2/crystalstaffv2_wip2.jpg - (Not to scale)
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h136/rynsinner/oblivion/WIP_CrystalStaffv2/crystalstaffv2_wip3.jpg of the old staff (top) and the new staff (bottom)
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h136/rynsinner/oblivion/WIP_CrystalStaffv2/crystalstaffv2_wip4.jpg of the old staff (right) and the new staff (left)

New!:
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h136/rynsinner/oblivion/WIP_CrystalStaffv2/crystalstaffv2_wip5.jpg - Brown, Copper, Silver, Black, and Gold
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h136/rynsinner/oblivion/WIP_CrystalStaffv2/crystalstaffv2_wip6.jpg - Sorry for the shading. It just kept wanting to thunderstorm in the Imperial City, no matter how many times I forced the weather to be clear!


I'm still open to suggestions, but the biggest thing I need help with is color choices. If you look at the old mod's colors, they were pretty...generic. Most of them were done for the sake of a little variety, but no real planning. They're cliche, let's face it. So I wanted to know what combinations people thought would be interesting, or might be interested in having for their characters.

Updated the main post. There are two new screenshots:

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h136/rynsinner/oblivion/WIP_CrystalStaffv2/crystalstaffv2_wip5.jpg - Brown, Copper, Silver, Black, and Gold
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h136/rynsinner/oblivion/WIP_CrystalStaffv2/crystalstaffv2_wip6.jpg of the new metal colors

OP requested close.