I'm a huge Morrowind fan and I think MW did Beast races very well. The claws, the feet, the legs, it just hit the nail on the head. Are there any mods that do this?
Or just a mod that enhances beast races?

I guess..not?

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15469 is a good one for Argonian's. Slof released some other claw mods aswell, I dont know if they're still available of TES but try her website if you cant find them there. http://www.slofslair.co.uk/

Really? That's it? After all of these years, and all of the complaining people did when they found out beast races were so humanized at the release of OB, I'm genuinely surprised there aren't multiple total conversion mods for beast races to be like MW's. :blink: People were downright appalled at the way beast races were handled in OB. Wonder why no ones made a mod for it.
What have you modders been doing for the last 6 years?

Yep. Pretty much. There really isn't a whole lot that can be done simply due to how Oblivion works. All races share the same body mesh. Altering it for the Argonians or the Khajiit would change every other race along with it.

Then how did it work for Morrowind?

Every race was able to have their own body mesh. It wasn't shared among them like it was in Oblivion. Each body part was assigned individually to a particular race. In Oblivion the body mesh was the same for all of them with the engine simply swapping out textures depending on your race. The only unique meshes a race in Oblivion could have were the head, mouth, teeth, tongue, eyes, ears, hair and tail.

Oblivion does have a different skeleton for beast races but the only difference is the addition of the tail bones. It was completely pointless given that the tail bones didn't do anything on races that didn't have tails. They could very well have just had one skeleton, which would have made more sense with the "one body for all" approach. Altering the beast race skeleton for more beast-like feet does not work well. People have tried, and the result looks horrible.

Ah. I see. Thanks for explaining that.
Too bad, really.

Actually, there are more mods than that if you search on the Nexus for "khajiit, "argonian," and "beast," and there is an active 16 page discussion called "Proper" khajiit and argonian bodyshapes/animations" in the Oblivion Mod Requests section. I have not viewed the entire thread, so it is entirely possible there may be some partial/nudity in there since whenever this subject comes up there is always a debate about whether the bodies should have humanlike mammaries or not and people are posting WIPs and pictures of models . I don't actually know if there is anything in that thread I can't link to according to site rules, but that is my disclaimer to be safe. Nexus does have advlt content in the libraries. The boards aren't supposed to.

It looks like JazzJR removed Khajiit Beast Foots from there. Not sure where they are now.

Try PES.

I'm contributing to the Nexus discussion mentioned, and while I agree the topic about mammalian or reptilian/feline genitals always pops up when talking about changing the beasts, I can't remember having seen it over there so far. The discussion's rather concentrating on the huge basic shape and anatomy differences than on such minor details. I admit it's slightly derailing from time to time, due to all the game engine limitations to be broken leading into different directions as well (for example Centaurs became also topic of the discussion now), but it's all related to the main topic of breaking those game engine limitations in the first place still.

In comparison there aren't even closely as many modders working for the beasts than there are for fancy clothing or armor. Breaking those game engine limitations is rather complex and the solutions so far are mostly all in WIP state (just look at my own projects, ack). That's likely why there isn't that much finished up and available for download, yet. But the people working on this topic are very dedicated and I can't wait to see the next updates.

Yes i removed my Mods from TESNexus and will upload them at PES. So if you can wait a bit, i will upload the Khajiit Paws again.

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b74/Desert-Rat/Oblivionmods/PawsWIP1.jpg
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b74/Desert-Rat/Oblivionmods/Rhajirahdfeets2.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpjLEx4WLpc

And as already was said, it is NOT possible to make the Legs like in Morrowind. All races use the same Body meshes so they are all some kind of human.

That's really a shame. I only look in on that thread now and then, and it seems like there has been a lot of progress with the skeleton for the Khajiit leg, but then Argonians will need different bones, correct? So I guess there would need to be a special compatability skeleton for beasts with all of those bones, but is it even possible?

@JazzJR I will look for them there. Thanks for posting. I wondered where they went.
@Drake Warning/disclaimer was only as a precaution because I know that when the thread started there was a link to a "non-sixy" type image that has a Khajiit with more catlike chest (flat chest with more teats on it) and that picture was not wearing multiple bras or a shirt. LOL. This site has very strict rules and I don't know what they consider advlt or not advlt. Things get silly sometimes. I also saw that other thread which asked about wanting more humanlike detailed parts but I don't think the OP was looking for that probably. Most people just want the beast races to be more beastlike from what I have seen in requests. Biggest request I see about beast races is for beast females to not have big bustlines. Even the devs get asked about that in interviews. I think the bigger problem is paws and claws because body replacers can be made pretty flatchested already without needing special bones for that. Animations are very difficult to change, also, so I don't think special walks for them is really worth attempting yet. There are not a lot of good references for what a bipedal cat or reptile would walk like that I know of. Better headshapes are limited if you want standard headgear and lipsync capability, right? The centaurs amazed me. I didn't even know that was possible. That thread has some really creative people. I look forward to seeing what IS possible.

I love the beast race personalities and cultures but I admit I do not currently have a beast pc I use much, because I was disappointed with how the beast races are made in Oblivion. They just looked like humans with scales or fur and I wanted them to be more beastlike, or what's the point? Might as well just make some polka dot humans. Lore says argonians are secretly mammals, but I think we all know that is just an excuse to explain illogical design caused by wanting to make as few changes as possible for reasons of time and dev resources. I'm not interested in the six life of beast races. I just want one that looks not so human so I can roleplay being something different for a change. If I wanted to play an R2 droid in a Star Wars game, I would be annoyed if it walked on two legs, looked like a painted human, and bled red blood. It's that simple.

I don't think so, because you can't give an singe Race an own lower, upper, hand or even foot mesh. They use all the same. The only way it works is to add it as Clothes.
I have seen some videos of people who messed around with the skeleton, but it looked really weird at all.

I wish I knew more about how the different skeletons for animals and monsters work. I know of mods that let you play monsters and animals. It seems like there should be some way to add skeletons but I guess if there were, someone would have, because the modders for Oblivion are brilliant. Some of you I think do many impossible things before breakfast already.

Well, I hate to correct you, Jazz, but this stuff actually IS possible. Granted it's coming with a massive workload to get it done right, but technically this limitation is broken already.
You can have different skeletons per NPC, and with the latest OBSE you can also handle this at runtime for the player, at least with 3rd person skeleton for now, 1st person is still investigated.

To give you an example how mighty this new functionality is, in my current installation of Oblivion I only have the default skeletons in "meshes/characters/_male", nothing else. Still I can play my dragon totally fine provided I open the console and enter 'SetPlayerSkeletonPath "characters\DrakeDragon\_male\skeleton.nif"'. Immediately the skeleton used by me switches to my custom one with custom wing bones etc. etc. and everything's working fine. A scripted solution via this function is a piece of cake more or less. What struck me most about this new possibility though is what other possibilities opened with this.

Apparently the whole set of animations is connected to the skeleton used. If you use a skeleton from inside "characters/_male", you will be using the animations from inside "characters/_male". But now, if I use my skeleton from "characters/DrakeDragon/_male" (I only made up this name for convenience btw. The folder's not required to be called "_male".), all of a sudden I also use the set of animations I placed into "characters/DrakeDragon/_male" and ONLY those. You can imagine how many new possibilities this opened for me. Expect a dragon race with a custom set of movement, combat, idle, whatever animations and when I switch to four-legged motion (which is a long-planned feature), so will the set of animations! It only requires me to do a completely new set of animations for every motion type I want to be able to switch to, especially flight's coming into mind here, and a fitting custom skeleton, and I can switch these on-the-fly whenever I want to, forth and back, back and forth. This new feature really is THAT powerful! And the best of all is the "impossibility" of conflicts. I'm not even remotely touching the existing animations or skeleton files in "characters/_male" ever again anymore! Yay!

Oh, and before I forget it, my dragons will of course "not" have the same set of animations for "both" genders. *cough* I just love this feature.

And coming back to the topic of this thread (it's not about dragons, is it?), some of you might know I'm a beast race modder and might be able to guess what I'll do with such a great new feature considering Argonians and/or Khajiit once I fleshed out my use of it in my dragon mod?... Of course! The same I did with the custom body part and adapted equipment exchange script approach I created for my dragon race... I used it to make Argonian Feet more beasty! It's the same used in Scripted Argonian Feet. And with this new feature it will be the same as well once I got a hang of it and it's working flawlessly in a scripted solution. It'll get used to give Argonians (and beasts in general) their unique skeletal structure, together with fitting sets of animations, but this time we won't need to stick close to the humanoid structure with the custom meshes anymore!

Oh how I wish I'd have the free time needed to pull this off already! My lack of free time is the "only" thing able to hold me back from this. Just don't think "a couple hundreds of animations needing to be created" could have the same effect on me when I really want this done! :sweat:

To make a long story short: We have a huge range of possibilities to make things like this called "impossible" here become reality nowadays. We only need to start using them.

Haven't any of you heard of theTalkieToaster's Playable Creatures? He gives a tutorial on how you can make one for yourself. All that's really needed is for someone to make an Argonian or Khajiit creature model (and anims) built in the style of Morrowind and... bravo! You can make it playable.

I was actually surprised no one did this a year or so ago when the Playable Creatures mod was released. :confused:

Isn't Playable Creatures actually using the same approach? Using the creature's set of animations because it's using the creature's skeleton for the player and then just "equipping" the creatures mesh?
I think OBSE now only made it possible to do this skeleton swap on-the-fly from within scripts ingame.

Not particularly. There is video of dogs and cats walking on their hind legs but they are not made for bipedal locomotion. One can always look at the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basiliscus_%28genus%29 if looking for an Argonian reference, but again they are not made to walk (or run) that way for long periods of time. For an idea of what a digitigrade humanoid would look like I can always dig out the video of the various costume stilt designs people have made, but they are stiff and don't bend at all of the places an anthropomorphic would have joints.

Clanfear are bipedal, and thier animations are vanilla, OOO has some creature animations for a hunger that could be used as a base for a personal mod, and the author(s) could probably be contacted for permission to use them. A palientology site would be a place to look for bipedal animations for making animations, there has been a lot of work done to make animatronic museum dinosaurs move naturally.

You should just treat "digitigrade" anatomy as what it is, what the name implies. It's like a humanoid walking tip-toe with slightly different bone lengths. There are no additional joints and none of the angles is reversed or anything.
You can even try and excessively walk digitigradely yourself and you'll get a good feeling about the balancing acts necessary and what other motions this implies in animations to be done for it. Nevertheless getting a good feeling for much longer feet on a human is pretty much impossible without the help of mechanical equipment for support. But still for studying leg movement it's not a bad start this way. Coming to think of it you will have to "humanize" the motion further anyways, because none of the digitigrade creatures I know is or was walking upright as Argonians and Khajiit do as far as I remember.

To clarify, when I said there were not a lot of good resources for how bipedal felines and reptiles might walk, I meant that there aren't many living examples I know of of them walking bipedally and upright as a normal and natural gait. I've had both felines and reptiles as pets. Domestic cats in particular are extremely unsteady when they walk on their hindlegs because their tails don't really help balance them well in that position. I have seen some videos of trained cats that can walk/dance a bit further. A friend of mine taught his cat to play-box with him but the cat just sat up, it didn't try to box while standing on the hindlegs. T.Rex probably has the most studied examples, but remember they had tiny arms that also worked very differently from human arms or the forefeet of say, garden lizards and they apparently spent most of their time leaning forward almost horizontally. I'd actually like to see a playable smaller T.Rex. That would be a lot of work but it sure would be neat to see. A more dinosaurlike argonian could be really interesting, though. Maybe more like a http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/velociraptors-and-protoceratops/003a2599e4c59d271081003a2599e4c59d271081-962768535749?q=dinosaur+raptor+animation&FROM=LKVR5>1=LKVR5&FORM=LKVR?

Some stilt tests for reference, in case anyone wants them:

http://youtu.be/3JeJ1LimPAk
http://youtu.be/-Apt5AEsHaE
http://youtu.be/Ygpwn-EgsAM
http://youtu.be/QZ-y2PKnh6E