February 2018 – Page 5 – Syls Amusements

Introducing Ahtar

February 12, 2018

Ahtar is an unusual NPC for Skyrim, and one that’s pretty frustrating to mod due to his status as the executioner– and lord help you if you try to disrupt that scripted role. Just try to get rid of his default outfit, and you’ll see what I mean.

I like him due to his unrepentant bad attitude and his continued testiness despite your relationship status. “Yeah? What?” is about as much as you get out of him.

Where did he come from- and why is he living amongst the Imperial-allied Nords? It seemed pretty much a given that he’d be living with the sharpest-tongued lady in Solitude.. but what’s he doing sleeping in the downstairs bed?

I thought Ahtar deserved a little bit more of a story, so I gave him one.

I tinker around with Ahtar’s hair and skin tone quite a bit depending one what I’m doing with screenshots. Redguards vary quite a bit depending on the ENB so it’s tricky. Ahtar’s body is made up of quite a number of mods and unfortunately I had to make some choices which means he’s got some graphical issues.

The body scars and the brand on his left arm are made via pasting assets onto his body normal map. The burns on the right arm are from BI Phenotypes — the burn scars from the Mage resource files, cropped and inexpertly pasted onto his normal map. It was a pain. I believe I grabbed the long scars either from there or one of the other files. The brand on his left arm is one of the glyphs from the in-game journal. It’s better in some shots than others as I struggled with the dpi. His body normal map is Smooth Body Textures for Better Males by Urshi, which has some artifacting, and unfortunately that’s sometimes visible in the shots.

I think his diffuse body texture is also Urshi’s, but there’s quite a number of other resources in it. The chest hair is from resources culled from MBHROP (very NSFW site).

I believe that Ahtar’s subspecular map is also Urshi’s. I made the specular map myself using greyscale images.

Ahtar’s facial scarring is also from BI Phenotypes— I pasted it onto the normal map, and the diffuse map of the scar was painted from that resource as well. The eyeliner and warpaint hopefully are concealing some of the klutzier bits of that. I also made Ahtar’s facial specular map as I wasn’t happy with anything available. I believe his eyes are from Improved Eyes-Skyrim.

Screenshots / Several Characters

Fireglass Armory

February 9, 2018

Mod author Robbie asked for screenshots awhile back, and I took some.

I really liked a lot of these shots and I kept the male Altmer as a preset. Wish I had thought to keep the Argonian and the Khajit..

Fireglass Armory

Wow what fantastic Armor, thanks

Lots of folks did screenshots. Fireglass Armory screenshot links

Robbie’s a class act. He even released the resource files so that others could build on his work here.

Marcus / Screenshots

Marcus – Furb armors photoshoot

February 8, 2018

This was a series of shots I did for Furb’s Male Replacer- Wolf

and Furb’s Male Replacer- Steel. Marcus was not happy, but he was at least somewhat cooperative. That’s fine– we can go get him the lighter weight armor he prefers…Furb’s Male Replacers- Dark Brotherhood…

All right then. I’m not sure it’s worth Mehrune’s Dagger to the throat.. he doesn’t have to wear it. He did beg to keep the hat..

I promised him a treat if we could get in one more armor. He… very grudgingly agreed to cooperate.

Furb’s Male Replacers – Forsworn

So, at first I told him that there were these people out there– men, probably– who were complaining about the penises that could be seen in the mod page pictures.

Marcus demanded to know why these men were afraid of penises.

I tried to explain, but he interrupted– Marcus always knows better– his theory was that the penises on the mod page were… must be… terrifyingly huge to these individuals. He then expressed his own opinion as to their respective equipage:

I then gently reminded him that we had to get back to work:

After I made it clear that threats, begging, tantrums, and chicken dances weren’t going to work, I got a reasonable shot:

He asked for a bottle of mead, which is fair– we were in the sun all day, out on the marsh… but when I got back..

I have advised the mod author that this fad for functional loincloths is going to result in severely curtailed photoshoots. At least on Nexus. I can’t imagine the terror and tumult that would result.

As it was, I drank the godsdamn mead.

A few weeks later Marcus reminded me that I owed him that promised treat. Well enough.

Brigida Dress Alteration for Men.

Hah. We’ll see who has the last laugh.