We all know Morrowind has very few bows, and the models mostly svck. Back in '08 / '09 I obtained Nicoroshi's permission to downgrade some of his gorgeous TESIV bow models for use in TESIII. Downgrading removed the animation, and it took a year or so for them to all get reanimated by various wonderful members of the community (if you remember who you are, please tell me, because I don't recall with 100% accuracy. I think Phijama did some, and bodvar the others? I know bodvar rigged the crossbow meshes. Melchior, did you downgrade them? Gah, I wish I kept better track of who helped me!).

I've had them sitting around long enough. I can retexture them using Morrowind textures, but I need the meshes to be segmented -- all without losing their animation -- in order so that I can have a nice texture variety; as they are now, the entire bow model uses one texture, and MW textures are not complex enough to be used to texture an entire bow!

In particular, I plan to turn the Jade Bow into a glass bow. As for the rest - I honestly don't know if I can make Morrowind textures look good on the Doomshard and Lachrymal bows due to their complex shapes. For Robin, Horseman, and Blade bows, I think I might be able to create bows out of them.

If someone feels they have the time, inclination, and skill to tackle this, I would be ever so grateful.

Of course, if any texturer wants to take a crack at crafting new textures, you have but to ask and you shall receive whatever meshes you desire forthwith.
PM for a link to the download. Included are the bow meshes, the original textures, and some illustrations I made of suggested segmentation areas (please forgive my horrible skills in Paint.net and the abominable color choices I made). The meshes are symmetrical for both limbs and on both sides of the limb, so I only "illustrated" on one side of one limb. It'll make more sense once you see what I did.

The bows:
The Bow of Robin of Locksley
Blakely's Lachrymal Bow
Doomshard Bow
Blade Bow
Bow of the Mongolian Horseman
Nicoroshi's Jade Bow

Bump.

Also, I've been in contact with Nicoroshi, and he would be the one to upload the bows as a resource if he should decide to do so. He says that if I release his bows, it is to be part of a mod, not as a general resource.

So, uh, I could really use that segmenting help. Unless segmenting an animated mesh in Blender is the same sort of process as editing a non-animated mesh?

I have already converted everything that Nicoroshi has made. Made new animations for all of the bows and even made new textures/remodels for some of the stuff that didn't look quite as pretty without the normal maps with nicoroshis permission of course to include them in a mod.

Great, but that doesn't really address my problem.

If you wouldn't mind, do you think you could make a tutorial for animating bows? It took me about a year to find people who knew how to (and were willing to help me). I wouldn't want the knowledge to be "lost" again.

Oh, ok, I thought you were looking for people to retexture bows...



Sure, I do it in Blender, is that ok? Not only can you create the animations from scratch, but you can convert them and transfer them from bow to bow.

Bodvar did a max tutorial for it but you would have to ask him for it.

Ah, I think I did not understand that from your post (it doesn't mention texturing). Sorry for the misunderstanding.



Blender is great. And thank you, I really appreciate that you will take the time to make a tutorial to add to the general community's Repository of Morrowind Modding Knowledge. :read:

I mentioned that I already made some retextures, perhaps we can arrange something. No point in making something twice. If you just want the UVs splitting up, that isn't a problem though..

I have to admit, I am fond of the segmented mesh idea. I guess I've gotten a bit obsessed about using vanilla textures - the benefit is that they will change with whatever texture replacer mod a player happens to be using. Of course, the limitation is that I have to work with small textures that are sometimes limited in number and variety. It's a challenge, but I embrace it with all my amateur modder enthusiasm!

Could you show me what texture work you have done? If you don't want to post screenshots here, you could PM me the links or a download of the pictures. I remember using my limited photoshop skills to work over the jade bow textures, but I had very little success making anything look convincingly glass-like. I had also hoped to use Phijama's bows, minus the gloss mapping (still have to figure out how to remove that...), perhaps using some of the models as replacements for the crappy vanilla models, and retextures for new bows (dreugh bow? Silver? Nordic Warbow? Ebony? Dwemer? I had a lovely vision of the animated thorn-bow retextured with daedric textures. So cool!).

I think I still have max scenes of some of the bows I re animated. If this is the case I'd have full control over the uvw templates and could re map them at will. Sadly I have little playtime with regards to modelling but may be able to snatch a few moments.

Edit:

I do still have the scene for my warbow which had extruding thorns at full draw - this could be remapped with ease as I have a variety of templates for the uvws.

Long time no see, Phijama! :wavey: I do hope you are doing well. If there is anything you'd like to send my way, my hard-drive is ready to download anything you have to offer! If not, then I eagerly look forward to seeing what you create in the spare time you are willing to allot to modelling.

As for me, I'm a bit stop-and-go with my mods - it all depends how I'm feeling on a week-to-week basis (e.g. sick and crappy or well and energetic), and what my assignment situation is like. For instance, I have this monster lab report to write that covers four weeks' worth of experiments and results. :dead: I haven't even started it, that's the worst part - and it is due next week. I console myself with the fact that I'm trying to get other assignments out of the way early so that I'll have oodles time to work on the lab report this weekend. :bleh: