Silgrad Tower from the Ashes

I've done some texturing and modeling, nothing worth showing, and alot of thinking. I've noticed that the texture that I'm using for the arms could look alot better if I made the normal map less noticable and made it non-specular. Opinions?

I've decided that the I'll only make 2 more textures with the remaining space in my "gather"-texture. One for 3 new pockets and one for an additional smaller piece of cloth. The model and texture should be completely done next week from what I currently know.

After that I'll make the earlier mentioned variations of the armor. I may do the gauntlets, or what they are supposed to be, and the thingy on the head before. It all depends on my mood. A testversion of the final version could be done this in a day or two. If so, there will be in-game screenies (something that even I'm longing for )

is it possible to make the characters arms visible instead of covered?

It is possible but then there would be little or close to nothing implying that there could be an armor underneath the clothes.

I think covered arms would work best, prehaps with pauldrons that are slightly reminiscent of chitin or netch leather. I think it needs to be clear that this is functional armor

I've done some skinning now that I feel like there's not really anything else to add. Now I have a whole bunch of problems and some of them are probably beyond my skills to fix.

This is a part of the things that I might not be able to fix.

Same as above but from the front.

I've been testing alot with the legs. I've got to make a REALLY smoooth transition between the legs (skinning) for it to look good... also have to fix the model a bit so that you can have boots and such on you without clipping.

Weapons that you hold with both hands will cause this no matter what I do. If I make the armor so that it doesn't happen then the pouch will look like crap. And I'm going to fix the arm.

It there's a really good skinner out there somewhere I'd like that person to tell me:
if there is a way to make the skinning-transitions between bones REEEALLY smooth, if you can somehow edit the position of the weapons, sheaths and such to prevent clipping and some tricks to make the skinning better.

If there is no such person then I'll just have to figure it out myself...

Now that I've seen the armor in-game I can tell that the armor will look larger on the not tall/taller races and that there's still a whole bunch of stuff to do. No full-body pics since I don't think it looks good enough yet

hmm, i think once the skinning problems are resolved it'll look nice. I don't know anything about skinnning (sorry), but there's gotta be someone here who does.

Aside from the skinning, it looks pretty nice from what i can tell. maybe take a few shots whether in-game, in nifskope, in your modeling program of choice, ect. to show us what it looks like front and back?

Try talking to tda on the official forums, I think he's got a lot of experience with skinning and bones and stuff.

Well... tda's got to be a 3DS Max user since that's what I am. I'm not a member of the official forum so I'd hope that someone on this forum could help... I'll wait some days and then I'll try there.
Seniosh, I'll throw in some pics if I can get vertex paint to show in the renders... otherwise I'll just take some pics in the CS. I got the vertex paint rendering to work! I'll send in some pics here tomorrow (it was today for me actually)

This day shall forever be known as the day that
...I learned that rendering is alot easier in 3DS Max 9 than 8....





As you can see I took some renders in 3DS Max as requested.... You can see all the new parts on these pics... There's a new piece of cloth, 2 pockets and some straps (4). This should be a somewhat final model for the first version. If I'm unlucky I'll have to edit some models to make it possible for the skinning to work But I will not give in yet! There's still some time before the release of the next version of Silgrad Tower.... there's still some time left right?

oo wow that looks nice. there should definitely be time to put it in before v3 (scheduled for *i think* late june).

I think with the skinning, one of the really important things it that it looks presentable while sneaking, because that's what it's made for. I hope you don't need to modify it too much to make it work, and hopefully you can find a skinning expert somewhere.

You should probably just make an acount on BSF, even if you only use it for skinning help and such.

Good luck with it! this is really close to final