Category: Misc Characters

Misc Characters / Screenshots

Kaius Part 2: Body scars

September 30, 2018

Here’s where I get to have fun: Kaius is a rather scarred-up man due to his travails.

Sadly, one of his scars is going to be beyond my talents given how extensive it is, covering much of his right side.

So, this Kaius is going to be prior to circa 4e 201. This will still give me plenty of scars to work with.

These are Kaius’ generic scars– just some random, non-canon ones. All of these scars are based on assets from BI Phenotypes and from Body Scars for Racemenu.

There are other scars put in from Loverslab/Slavetats: Apropos and Scratch Tats.

For all of these scars I just took the image of the diffuse map for the scar itself and tweaked it to get it where I wanted and how I wanted it. Once I had the placement correct, I then copied the diffuse scar maps into my normal body map, converted the diffuse layers to normal-map layers via a GIMP plug in, and superimposed them on the normal map. I had to fiddle with inverting colors and turning down the opacity for some of the scars a few times before it looked good.

In these first few pictures as you can see, Kaius’ hands are a different color. Those are Vitruvia’s hands– I simply hadn’t swapped them out yet.

After getting approval on Kaius’ scar-ridden hide, I turned my attention to Kaius’ known scars, the big ones layered over his right arm.

The first layer is his Legion enrollment mark, from an image supplied by his author:

Very nice. I put it up on that swell of muscle because there is relatively little distortion there. Also, it would be nicely visible under one’s sleeve in formation, I would think. Any closer to the anterior surface and it would not show as well.

Next come his legion and castra identifiers.It was tempting to just do straight hash-marks, but it’s not that hard to shape a branding-iron, and that dragon is pretty fancy, so…

I found a font called Cyrodiil, which is pretty close to the font used in Skyrim, and then assembled the marks for Legion:

… and castra:

The numerals are a little crooked compared to the Imperial mark; I figured they’d probably take care with the dragon but that the numbers, maybe not so much. The castra mark is made deliberately smaller. I imagine that a castra’s last survivors might well get re-assigned.

The next mark that Kaius receives is the deserter’s strikeout cross– I imagined that one’s own Legion would prefer its designation thoroughly obliterated as having had a deserter would be a shameful thing. So, the main goal would be to wipe out that Legion and Castra mark.

Kaius’ branding would probably have been done in a hurry as they dragged him back to the Imperial City. Also, as a practical matter, I wanted to leave the top part of his dragon untouched.

You can see where I’m moving the legion marks to the normal map and then experimenting with the depth/color of the strikeout cross. On the bottom of his arm you can see my first experiment with some sparring scars.

Once I got the strikeout cross where I wanted it, it was time to put on the last layer– the three burns that Kaius and Viconia place over the Legion brands to conceal that he has been tagged as a deserter.

Two of the burns, the ones that Kaius did, are supposed to be less deep and extensive than the one that Viconia placed on him. Those two burns angle from bottom-left to top-right to reflect that Kaius would be holding the blade in his left hand. The third burn is angled differently because Viconia aided in its placement.

Technically this is proving rather difficult. The brands themselves come from a sword blade, but having hard-edged rectangular burns did not look good at all. I also had to experiment with placement of the burns in order to best cover up the Legion marks.

Here we have a series of attempts. The normal map of these burns is comprised of two parts– the bottom, darker bit is from the sword-blade. The top, lumpish bits, are the keloiding that took place as the burn healed. I did this by varying the opacity of the different scar layers on the normal map before merging layers and exporting. It’s hard to tell from this image, but at certain angles with this normal map, it is still possible to read the Legion and Castra marks, as well as see the strikeout cross, from the just the right angle.

However, I am not completely happy with the appearance of the darker burns as they still do not look organic enough– as Viconia points out, there’s no point in burning off your traitor’s cross if it’s easy to tell that’s what you did.

On the diffuse map I’m not entirely happy, either. Still, I think it gets the effect across and I can always fiddle with it later.

Here’s where I think you can best see the layering:

On Kaius’ right forearm he carries some scars from when he learned the katana from Belisarius. These aren’t serious injuries, but he carries a lot of them:

I layered them under his arm hair and hopefully they won’t be too unsubtle. I have to keep toning them more grey to keep them from reflecting back the light too much. I have not put the corresponding scars on his hand, as I figured anyone with an ounce of sense would be wearing gloves even if sparring.

After I worked these out I gave Kaius some hair– poor guy, he’d been very patient!– and beard. Kaius is a do-it-yourself guy when it comes to matters of personal grooming, so I’m still looking for appropriately scruffy-looking hairstyles. So far this one seems promising:

While I did love the sleeker haircut Kaius had in the previous installment, that one comes from Beyond Skyrim; Bruma, which seemed like a heavy investment just for a hairstyle.

In Kaius’ final iteration, I lightened his hair up somewhat to bring out the texture. I also retextured the sleeves of an armor mod, Scout Armor to give him something to wear.

Why does poor Kaius look so put-upon?

Well, we’ll have to see what’s going on with his companion first.

Kaius Treblanus Desin — Part 1 (texture maps)

September 14, 2018

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with one of the Elder Scrolls fanfiction writers I’ve been following, Tyranidlord.

I thought it might be interesting to see if I could accurately render his two main characters, both of whom are rather interesting physically. Each of them is going to present a challenge, but we’ll start with Kaius.

Kaius is, at least at first, supposed to be just another one of those tough bastards that the Imperial Legion is known for.

So, of course, I requested some pictures of Kaius:

As we can see, Kaius is a reclusive sort of fellow and evidently very patient, if he’s putting up with Sofia. The man is a saint. I’d have gone up to Helgen just to see if I could track down that special gag the Imperials put on Ulfric…. But I digress–

From the images, I could see that Kaius is a medium to dark-skinned Imperial and that he has dark eyes and hair.

But, it appears that Kaius nothing too fancy– just a modification of the first Imperial preset. So I tinkered with a few sliders and did a touch of sculpting to smooth out the vertices around the chin and cheek area. It’s not perfect, but it will do:

The hair in this shot is one of the Redguard hairs from Beyond Skyrim-Bruma. I’ve cropped out the slider settings in Racemenu since for some reason they were showing incorrect information. The face/body skin mismatch here is due to me working simultaneously on some of the textures.

I am using a mod called Unique Character V 1.1 (WARNING NSFW link) which was apparently on Nexus long ago but no more. I find it more useful than Ishara’s Custom Body or Custom Races for my purposes- but the net effect is the same: As a PC, Kaius will have meshes and textures which are exclusive to him now. This makes testing very convenient for, say, trialing a look for a custom NPC.

I had gotten a description of one of Kaius’ facial scars, and I figured he might have a couple more. I used assets from EveryBody’s Different’s texture resource packs for the male facial scars, and to make his horizontal under-eye scar, went back to the .png source images from BI Phenotypes.

This was my first test as shown in nifskope, on the generic male head mesh.

And here is Kaius’ face with the scars in place:

Next, I started thinking about body meshes and maps.

Kaius uses Schlongs of Skyrim as his base body mesh, not because he needs to be..er…equipped, but because I’m used to working with it and have a fair number of texture sets worked out for it already. Once I’m finished, it should be no issue to swap in a static mesh model from Vitruvia or something similar. I believe all of these bodies are based on the old FavoredSoul meshes. [EDIT– Static mesh Vitruvia is indeed what I did for NPC-Kaius.]

Kaius’ skin is mostly based on Veteran Skin by ZwabberdieBo who also makes my current ENB, Caffeine. While I have not used Veteran Skin much yet, that is because it is meant for a more mature and muscular build and I haven’t yet assembled the two characters I had in mind for it. But, it ought to be perfect for Kaius.

So let’s review– as we know, bodies in-game change appearance based on the four maps they all possess: the diffuse map, the normal map, the subsurface map, and the specular map. The first two maps will make the biggest difference in terms of changing what a character will look like. The weight slider will also have some effect.

Here is a good example of the differences you can get in body structure based on varying the diffuse and normal maps, as well as the weight slider:

Cyrelian is mostly Vitruvia– both its diffuse and normal maps. This is a relatively subtle and not very muscular map. Cyrelian’s normal map is not custom at all. His diffuse map has some other elements added to it, lots of Frecklemania, but it is mostly Vitruvia/scarred/hairy. I believe I added a small amount of chest hair to Cyrelian and emphasized the scars. His weight is 30.

Here you can see the differences in body maps clearly– Cyrelian’s normal map shows that he has relatively little muscular definition across chest and abdomen, though it’s clear from his arms and shoulders that he isn’t a complete layabout. His freckles and part of his chest hair are painted on top of his diffuse map. In this picture, his facial markings are a Racemenu warpaint overlay.

Ahtar’s skin textures and normal map have extensive editing to add in his scarring. His chest hair is also painted on the diffuse map. I believe that his weight is set at 85 in this picture. His diffuse and normal textures are made from Better Males.

The younger version of Ahtar is almost entirely made from Better Males and his weight is set somewhere around 40. He’s got a bit of a neck mismatch but I think it may be raining — that’s the newest ENB.

Marcus is mostly Fair Men/Real Men with other elements added. Marcus’ normal map is a meld but is mostly Milkdrinker. While I originally wanted to use one of the slimmer body meshes for Marcus, I didn’t like how it turned out for him, so he’s also based on the original Schlongs of Skyrim mesh at weight 0.

And Marcus’ old maps–

As you can see, Marcus’ old body had less muscular definition and a slightly different look to the arms and legs. There are significant differences on both the normal and specular maps.

So getting back to Kaius–I tried a couple of different skins out:

This is what he looks like with Vitruvia. Obviously this will not be suitable for him.

Here’s a couple of other trial skins I rejected, most of which I believe are based on Better Males– these are too smooth and too sleek for a man whose life has been an endurance-test of combat. Do you really get gym-toned abs by fighting off vampires and dremora? I really didn’t think so.

So then I thought to try Veteran Skin, a skin which is heavily muscled and not in the least bit pretty:

That’s better, isn’t it? I didn’t think it would be suitable to have him all the way up at the higher weights, given his origin as an Imperial Ranger, and the fact that he always seems to be dashing off to deal with some horrific crisis. I don’t imagine he starves, but I also doubt he gets much of a chance to sit around at the pub eating cheese and drinking cider. So he is at weight 40.

Kaius is built from Veteran Skin, with some bits and pieces from Vitruvia in both his diffuse and normal maps. He has also had some details added to his diffuse map from a mod no longer available, Complete Male Overhaul; and from New Male Texture for SoS– the body hair only.

I am currently using the default subsurface and specular maps which come with Veteran Skin.

Underpants courtesy of El Men’s Underwear the lore-friendly Retexture.

Misc Characters / Screenshots

Savsaaba and some friends

August 20, 2018

Marcus is not a nice person.

I told him to go out with Savsaaba, go meet his friends– maybe get a drink, have a nice time.

So where does he take everyone? To some creepy abandoned temple.

Marcus, taking people to time-locked pockets of Summerset is NOT a good time.

Thankfully Savsaaba is pretty easy-going. It’s not a prank, Sav– Marcus really likes hanging around in these old ruins, taking notes and rooting through old cairns and…

This is Ignis–