Silgrad Tower from the Ashes

What I'm currently working on/thought about to improve the Tsaesci NPCs:

1. adapted SkeletonBeast.nif with legs 'cut off' (size 0) and tail enlarged (size e.g. 3)
2. an adapted tail mesh (bit 'lower body' added)
4. adapted KF files for EVERY animation to reposition the tail (lower and rotated parallel to the ground).
Perfect version:
use Fiore1300's tip (http://www.rubberbug.com/reptiles.htm) to improve the tail movement in all KFs.


Or, if the KF thing is not working or too much work, make them sort of a floating Ghost NPC without 'full' tail:

1. adapted SkeletonBeast.nif with legs 'cut off' (size 0)
2. and tail enlarged (size e.g. 3)
3. an adapted tail mesh, mostly invisble, only 'a thin shadow' to give the impression of a moving invisible snake body.



Or, as a mix of both:

Use a very wide and long 'chinese robe' (at least as big as the queens weeding dress ), partly animated by the tail like in 'Animated capes'.
No need for animation changes, as anything is unseen 'under the hood', only the dress moves a little bit to give an impression of the snake below it.

Could especially the last one be a challenge for you, Corthian? Even if the other things work too, such a robe would be great ...

Edit: removed the 'resized mesh', no need, done by skeleton change already

Tsaesci animation has always been a problem. I think your idea of an extended tail with special animations would be the best. Only idle, walking and running would really be needed. The skeleton and mesh would be no problem. The animation however would be tricky. I have never successfully created KF files. I might give it a try if I can find the time.

Auryga is also working on Tsaesci for his Rimmen mod.

http://assaultknights.net/obc/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=1458

It's my first try on the character animation thing too. Doing the changes in Blender is quite easy, 'just' a bit moving around the whole 'IPO curves', until you find the right amount of change.

But haven't tried to export and look at it in game, so it may end useless in the end.

Drawback in any case is the sheer number of IPO curves, there's a lot of them . And it's not only the base animations, as I'm changing the rotation and Z-axis of the tail root node. That has to be done on every animation, I'm pretty sure.

Besides that, if it work's I will use the alternate animation replacements with more 'stylish' moves ...

To get it perfect, even the upper body anims would have to be adapted. Without that, I can still see the girl 'walking' even without legs, as the upper body moves in that typical walking way.

But that perfection is out of budget for me ... no wonder why Bethesda didn't do a real Tsaesci in Pale Pass.

I really hope it works. I know that a number of people have tried different solutions and not found anything that works very well.