Woot, I'm glad to see that this is still being worked on, no rush still EW, just glad to know you are still truckin'!

EW, you and I are much alike, we both have a mod that a ton of people want (mine being my menu, and skies, yours being signy signs vvardenfell) and we both hardly work on them. Heh.

But... I have an exuse! I've got tons of other stuff I work on, and do you? Hmm... *looks around*, I don't see anything, so get to work! :poke:

Nah, I'm just messing with ya, but it would be nice to see this soon.

Checking in out of curiosity, as these signs are still among my most wanted list!

Ack. You caught me online. :shocking:

Actually, yeah, I'm working on them again today. Wish me luck.

Emoticons for all!!! :clap: :hugs: :drool: :dance: :twirl: WOOT!

EDIT: Oh, and GOOD LUCK!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the encouragement, Matilija. ^_^

Well, I've been keeping the previous post with the progress bars up to date, but since I've just hit a milestone, I thought that I might as well repost.
All 972 meshes are finally complete and accounted for.


Pre-production:
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Modelling:
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Textures:
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Textures QA:
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Mesh Variants:
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.esp:
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Pre-release tasks:
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Now just for the .esp and some minor pre-release tasks.

I almost forgot about this WIP, too much of my own stuff to worry about.

Can't wait for this! Finally we'll have a sign mod where the signs don't look like crap!

:celebration: WOOOHOOO, I can't wait!!!!!!!! :celebration:
:foodndrink: :goodjob: :dance: :twirl: :drool: :clap: :bolt:

Great to see some progress on this. Keep it up. :goodjob:

But what exactly does that .esp-stage stand for? Is it manually placing every single of those hundreds of signs? :shrug:
If so, can we help you on that task?

To be specific, there are 162 different meshes in an installation, with options for 6 different variants with different emissive settings depending upon the user's preference (this is where the 972 comes from). This is so that the user can pick the signs with the emissive settings which best tailor to their preferences (low emissive settings for people who like it realistic, higher for people who prefer readability, etc).

There are 27 different locations in Vvardenfell which are pointed to by a sign, for each of these I have created three different textures (and corresponding meshes) - a 'standard' texture, a mucky variant texture (for use in areas like the bitter coast) and an ashy variant texture (for use in areas like Molag Amur). Further, there are two different variations on the mesh appearance, one with a thin border and one with a thicker frame - this brings all permutations for every location up to 162.
Probably, for some locations (Guar Trail?), all of these variations won't even be used, but I made them anyway for completeness.

I just have to replace every sign which exists in the game with the appropriate one of these 162 different meshes. There's 523 of these - for the 'standard' version of each sign, I can quickly just redirect the mesh that they point to, but for the other variants (the different frames/borders and the mucky/ashy variants), I will have to place them manually, so I probably have to change somewhere in the region of 200-350 signs. Not too much work.
Thanks for the offer to help, I appreciate the gesture a great deal, but I'd rather go it alone just so as I know what changes have been made right down to the very last detail.

Edit:
Interesting fact: Bethesda put more effort into their signposts than is immediately apparent. If you have notived the two variants that they included in the game, a thick metal border and no border, you might also notice that they use the thick metal border signs (and the corresponding metal tipped posts) only for signposts close to towns. Other signposts out in the middle of the wilderness use a more basic, frameless, signpost mesh.
Convenient for me, this is, as I intended to do this myself. I'd always wondered why Bethesda included variants on the signposts, and it's only under closer inspection that I realised that they had a jolly good reason - the exact same reason that I had.

definately sounds good!

I have hit... a hiccup.
Namely, I did 486 meshes wrong. :swear:

Pre-production:
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Modelling:
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Textures:
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Textures QA:
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Programming Tools:
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Mesh Variants:
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 50%
.esp:
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Pre-release tasks:
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Ouch, hope it doesn't dampen your spirits, because this is still looking fabulous, and I can wait it out, I'm still waiting for Sega to bite the bullet and make "Shenmue 3"!

Naw, my spirits aren't so easily dampened. I'll just do it the way that I should have done it in the first place - write a tool to do it for me. Should be fun experimenting with niflib anyway.

Good luck with Shenmue though

It could happen..... :shakehead: :gun: SEGA

Hmm, was just thinking about this mod the other day... good to see an update, sorry to see a sad one

Good luck with those meshes - there's something with this mod and meshes... :ninja:

Friendly bump as a "Sign" of support for EW!

Hey Earth Wyrm, you mentioned a week or two ago the possibility of a preview you could give me for a signpost mod comparison guide? I'm working on it and will probably release it in the next couple of days, so it would be magnificent if I could get a lil' peek at your versions of the signs next to the little bridge leading out of Seyda Neen (I believe the same ones Arcimaestro Antares used in his screenshot comparison of 6 signpost mods).

(And, for the record, though I'll release it as soon as I have the roadsign portion covered, I'll be covering all other sign, placard, banner and (possibly) tapestry mods out there as well.)

So, if you can, great! But if that snag with the meshes will be holding it up, no problem! I'll reserve a spot for the Signy ones and slip 'em in when they're ready.


Edit: Magnificent is spelled magnificent, not magnificient.

Your online, so I have to bump this!

You know, for an update on the situation and all! :rock:

Whoops. I missed this post before, and since it looks like it has been a couple of weeks since...
Guess you've already done the guide, right? Well, I've done a little work on the .esp already, so I'll take care of that Seyda Neen sign and put up an .esp and the appropriate meshes/textures tonight.


There's no news I'm afraid. I've just been moving into uni for my final year over these past few days, so I've been preocuppied.
Just kicked open Visual Studio though, so I might make some progress tonight. We'll see how it goes.

Good luck in Uni, and no worries on progress, I just like to keep you motivated!

Thanks matilija (Is just Mat okay?)

Gluby, in regards to my earlier comment on providing an .esp and such for a little demo for the purposes of the guide, it looks like I won't be able to do that tonight - specifically because it's the ones outside of Seyda Neen. Signs near towns tend to use the second sign mesh, which is not complete yet (I accidentally exported in the wrong version of .nif, then didn't notice until I'd already wasted five hours of time working on them). Knowing how I am, it'll probably be better to continue with your guide without Signy Signposts(!) for now - even though putting the .esp and meshes together should only take a couple of hours, it's probably best not to be waiting on me of all people.

Hahah.
Just been workin' on the .esp, and as I've been doing it, I've been looking at the meshes pretty closely in-world.
They fail quality checks. UV-maps are totally screwy on the frames, I need to fix them.

On the bright side, I've managed to streamline my mesh-editing process so that I can do that in a couple of hours - all nearly 1,000 of them.
I think I'll be able to get that done tomorrow.

Yeah, I've got a good feeling. This time I'll do it.

Maybe.

:D Good news indeed!

Oh, and best of luck to you!

Patiently awaiting this masterpiece.

Here's cookies to help sustain the fires of creation Earth_Wyrm! :cookie: :flamethrower: