Yes, apologies Plangkye for the derail.

Parting shot then and we'll let Plangkye get back to the good work (I love your Dagger of Symmachus mesh and textures by the way!). I didn't mean to insinuate that I though you were taking a shot at Connary, but I didn't state my own view with any clarity in this thread. I personally prefer to retain the look of the original game as much as I can, and feel that a great many updated meshes change the looks of the items too much away from the Morrowind I played for so long without mods of any kind. I admittedly can be somewhat picky when it comes to this and do use some new meshes, but personally if I've the choice between a new high quality but looking nothing even close to the spirit of the original item, and a nice retexture of the original mesh then I'll take a little from column B.

(That said I never really had a problem with Goldbrand's mesh so each to their own)

I never had a problem with Goldbrand's mesh either - the only updating I'd be doing would be to make it shiny and bumped, and maybe cleaning it up a little if I think it needs it after taking a look. Since it'd be using the vanilla textures I wouldn't even need to do much to the UV mapping. I'm in agreement with you about keeping the original look of things, except in extreme cases of hideousness (HI TRUEFLAME), but you knew that already, and even then I like to stick to the general idea of the original.

I don't mind the thread derail, either. As far as Trueflame goes, there's not much more to say until Phijama finishes that animation for us, so we might as well talk about other weapons and texture replacers and mesh upgrades in the mean time.

I don't know, the only thing I can think of improving on the Goldbrand/Eltonbrand mesh is to make it less blocky and work on the handle area (which is imho the worst part about the blade's shape).

Other artifacts, such as the Staff of Hasedoki could definitely use a mesh makeover. The horns on that thing are hideous! Also perhaps the Crosier of St. Llothis. I think some of the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Armor_Artifacts are more hideous than the weapons. I'd also like to see some new meshes for some of the unique items that share meshes with other weapons, such as http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Unique_Weapons or http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Unique_Armor. (Just links to UESP weapon and armor pages)

As a side note, if anyone ever tweaks the mesh for the dwarven shield artifacts, perhaps they should keep it inline with anything that comes from the current thread on http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=999037.

For Goldbrand, you can compare it to VA's katanas (those are quite realistic models) and see where it is lacking. The other artifact swords (Umbra, Chrysamere and the Ice Blade) have been beautifully done by Oriphier (without fake modesty, I helped him a bit with the bump mapping on those). I don't remember if there is any proper Daedric Crescent replacer - if not, that'd be one very nicely to have. On the short blades, you did yourself a couple, so I think only the Fang of Haynekhtnamet and Keening need to be improved (though I remember seeing the Fang somewhere...). All the Axes (Cleaver of St. Felms, Wings of the Queen of Bats - though the latter needs to be added somehow in game) and Hammers (Mace of Molag Bal, Scourge, Sunder, Volendrung and my great fave, Skullcrusher). Maybe some of them have been done, but I honestly don't remember of any and I'd be very happy to have a Plangkye Skullcrusher!

As for armour, I'd like to think I covered all the artifact and unique shields in http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=6383 (as the name says ). I might look into refining a bit the mesh for Spell Breaker, but the others look OK, imho. Some of the cuirasses are covered by HedgeHog's replacers (ie. Lord's Mail, Dragonbone, Ebony Mail, etc.), although one would say that he strayed a bit from the original design. However, they need rigging and I don't know how much you'd like to do that... If you would be in the rigging mood, there is the Fists of Randagulf to be redone - probably the best gauntlets in the game (other than the Wraithguard), with probably one of the poorest model and texture... The Helm of Oreyn Bearclaw has also been done by Hedgehog, but you could try to make one for the purists...

I hope this will help. Keep up the excellent work!
PKR.

I second that. Those items don't need to look epic, but they could use a little tuning.

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=4048 by Oriphier

and

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=4006 by..... you guessed it Oriphier!


Sy

Aye, the Fang looks nice, now I remember where I saw it! But Skullcrusher is still in great need of updating, as that mesh is one of Oriphier's oldest...

I don't know a single thing about rigging, so armor that isn't a shield or a helmet isn't something I can do, unfortunately.

Same here, this being the reason I limited my work to weapons and shields (oh yeah, tapestries and coins, too... ). However, there is always Hedgehog's armor replacers...

Have you had any thoughts regarding the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Weapon_Artifacts? It could do with a higher poly-count in its model, maybe? :unsure:

wonderful work Plangkye!

Any progress on this lately? *can't wait*

This is too pretty to die!

I know.

Come onnnn, Phijama...

I am hoping Phijama can apply this unknown technique with success. I anticipate this release. :foodndrink:

Sorry, been very, very busy of late and what seemed like a small task actually turned out to be quite troublesome.

Real life always takes precedence and unfortunately mine has been hectic.

To cut back to the matter at hand, I cannot remember how I worked around the issue of adding animated looping textures to a mesh that has the billboard property. When the animation is set to loop and play continuously the billboard property is broken. This may be a problem with the exporter. I know this can be done as I have done it before, many years ago - I just cannot figure out the settings.

I'm in the process of putting together a PC to port my modelling tools over to. I cannot work comfortably with vista and with virtual machine, too much farting around and disruption to work flow. I should have this PC up and running in the next two weeks. If I do find some time between now and then I will try to look at the model again and try out a few different exports.

I apologise again for the delay, I had hoped to return to modding (I certainly feel the urge) but it seems the time is not yet right!

Regards,

Phil

No worries, we still love your work, and we will still be here to dote praise upon you on your sure to be triumphant return, whenever it may be.

HOLY CRAP THAT LOOKS AWESOME! YOU SHOULD DEFINETLLY FINISH IT!!!

Okay, stupid thought, and probably will result in something fugly, but I want to share it anyway in case it provides some inspiration:

duplicate the blade portion of the mesh and resize it so that there is a 'skin' around the original mesh. The you can set the blade 'skin' to have an animated, alpha'd texture (like in Phijama's Phoenix or Obsidian Phoenix shields).

Just a work around, not really any better than the plastic-wrap glow. =/ I guess there's no way to attach a light-source to the blade and plop a flame on there?

Your doing hopesfire too?
When your done could you mabye do a duel weilding thing that lets you choose which one to block and which one to fight with. After all they are the nerevars TWIN BLADES...

Out of curiosity, are you attempting the same effect for Trueflame as the Elven Flamesword you did in Death's Doorstep Add-On?

When I think billboard I see a plane mesh that rotates to face the camera. What you did with the Elven Flamesword was a have a tight array of 2-sided planes that were static.

With the proper alpha settings, it looked as if it was a single-billboarded mesh but it wasn't.

I thought that Hopesfire had ALWAYS been Almalexia's, even if it was supposed to be a counterpart to Trueflame. Nonetheless, you're not the only one who's made that request, and it is on my to-do list.

Yay! thank you. Lore says that trueflame and hopesfire are the twin blades and i was under the impression that almalexia didnt want anyone to know she had it. :liplick:

No, they were forged as matched blades as a wedding gift for Nerevar and Almalexia.

I guess the dwemer didn't use such mundane items as wedding rings.

I wasn't, but to animate the flame this way is a possibility. I'm referring to a different effect that does allow looping animations on a billboarded plane. I know it's possible because I've done it - it's bloody frustrating knowing that it can be done and not remembering how.

I deleted the majority of my files when I separated from my partner - I have a handfull of unreleased weapons with what could be described as 'test' effects unfortuntately the flame effect with looping anims is not one of them. I've been scouring through my salvaged max scenes and appears that that one is dead and buried along with many others.