[WIP\ALPHA] Robes Restored

Good work so far. Now hopefully within the next few months Morrowind clothes won't look completely strange on Oblivion NPCs and on the player.

Wonderful! I can't wait to see the final result!

This is great work!  You are amazing hashmi.

I'm torn between wishing you would stop teasing me with pictures and wishing you would hurry and post more.

Awesome. Those robes looks amazing.

Having done a lot of retexturing myself, I can only imagine how much time this must take. Props to you, you seriously deserve them. Keep up the good work!

Nice work so far, thanks for doing this!

Done a very quick test as am not up-to-date on all my modding stuff so very quickly cobbled together a test NPC with the clothing on:

• Picture 1
• Picture 2
• Picture 3

Let me know if there's specific testing you want done and I'll do my best to oblige...

Here we go ;)

• Picture 1
• Picture 2
• Picture 3
• Picture 4
• Picture 5
• Picture 6
• Picture 7

Let me know if you need more... time to go to work...

Loving the work so far, you are indeed legendary! :D Roughly how long does it take to edit one of the meshes? I have a hankering to have a bash at some basic NIF editing but I'd have to use Blender and more to the point, 2.4x blender which is way less sexy than the new 2.5.x version... Ho hum.

Heh, sheepish mode on...

I'm really sorry about the delay... I had promised Hashmi1 I'd do a proper test of the common robes but because of me having to work a couple of overnights (not to mention some wedding planning) it has taken longer than expected. Also, the first attempt a couple of days ago did not go well due to running out of disk space ;)

Excuses aside...

Ok, so I laid out each of the common robes in order of name left to right in the TestingHall. Then tried on each one and checked inventory / 1st person / 3rd person view.

The results are show in the video here.

Please note the video is 169MB in size (as it's around 10 minutes long and shot at 1280x1024). The format is webm, and if you don't have anything that'll play it, I'd suggest vlc.

As far as I can tell, there are issues with three of the robes... one has a pink texture in 3rd person (a thin stripe down the back), one has a black texture in the inventory (also kind of see through), and one has invisible textures in 1st person.

The only other thing I noticed is occasionally there were weird happenings with the models in the inventory... but I'm running Morrobilivon under Linux so it *might* be that, though I haven't seen it with any other clothing. It didn't happen at all in the last video I shot, but it does happen sometimes. Examples would be the robe model looking "spikey" as if someone has taken a point on a 3D mesh and pulled it outward, and on one robe I saw a knapsack / pouch displayed at right angles on the player's hand (the dark green robe). It would be good if other people could test this and see if they can reproduce it...

Aside from that, looking pretty darn impressive... well done Hashmi1, truly excellent work!

The esp I created is here if others want to test (does not include the robes laid out in TestingHall, that would be this file) - of course you will also need the 7z file Hashmi1 provided in the post above.

I think the next time I do one of these videos I won't use the TestingHall... the glow from HDR is just horrible in there, though again how much of that is due to me running under Linux I dunno.

Hope this is of use!

Rob

Man, I can't wait for this to be added to the esm/ released. The pics look so good! I'm seriously looking forward to see this finished. Keep up the good work!

Nice work! Thanks for keeping at it, it's great that you're also doing the female and ground meshes.

As always if you want testing done just holler...

Out of interest, the videos I've knocked together to show testing... I never asked but is that actually the optimal way to test or are simple screenshots preferred?

Any thoughts what you may do after completing the robes (apart from perhaps take a well-earned break)...?

You two rock!

Oh ... I almost forgot, thanks a lot for testing the common robes and reporting the bugs ... I've figured out the cause for those problems and am avoiding it from now on (will also fix the original ones).

You are totally welcome sir, as I'm not yet ready to do any real modding, it's nice to be able to contribute... What was the problem (just out of interest)?

I'll definately be needing your help with testing ... and with making an esp for this mod ... hopefully by the end of next week.

No probs, happy to help ;)

I realize that making videos and uploading them can be quite time consuming and I'd like to thank you again for doing that.

Actually, now I've done it a few times it takes barely any time at all... the uploading takes the longest time :D

Shirts and Pants maybe, though I can't really keep to one type of stuff for long ... so, along the way,  I'll also be doing updates for creatures and static collision meshes as well.

Sounds like a good way to keep interested, working on the same thing for too long would get boooooring ;)

Ah, very enlightening! Many thanks for explaining the required fixes, always nice to know these things... it all makes sense now!

Looking good sir! It will be great when the clothing is fully re-done... in particular, the 'pants' (in the UK we call them trousers; to us, pants are underwear.. but I'm sure you knew that) have never looked good, even given the limitations of the original Morrowind engine...

Question: I'm guessing that in order to fix things like the nasty clothing misalignments where you get invisible sections of body due to meshes not fully lining up, is the easiest fix to take an existing mesh from Oblivion and simply re-texture it... do you have to import the mesh in Blender and do some funky UV mapping? If so, do you use the original Morrowind textures and somehow make them fit or create a new one, etc.?

Very interesting, thanks!

The textures are original Morrowind ones, though I've edited them all to make them look more seamless and sharper\detailed.

I wondered if that might be the case, in particular I was looking at the image above of the blue robe with the leather cross over on the upper torso. The new version looks as if it uses the original texture for the leather cross straps but it's been rescaled to be vertically higher. At the same time I could see that the belt appears to be more complex than the original so I guessed at a mix of new and original textures.

Is fitting the texture to a new UV map a massive pain to do? In my imagination, I'm guessing you export the UV map as an image to give you the outline of where everything needs to be, then using the original texture as a base rescale the existing texture and then update certain sections with more highly defined textures of your own devising?

Wow. That's so impressive. I wish I understood this better/ hope that I will someday. Truly neat.

I don't remember morrowind textures every being as high res as the ones on your edited clothing. When you say you increase detail and resolution, how do you do that? I didn't think it was possible to make somehting that is low resolution higher resolution. If you scale it to make it bigger, doesn't that just make it blurryer?

Thanks for the pictures by the way!

I redo the UV map itself to make it fit the texture.

Ah, clever - the screenshot really illustrates that well, thanks!

I didn't think it was possible to make somehting that is low resolution higher resolution.

No you can't, you're right! :) Assuming the image is lossy (which DDS is) and you're increasing the image size. However, Hashmi may be doing something else here that either isn't a direct re-scale or mitigates it in some way...

No offence but this robe looks horrible:

[External image]

The texture is really strechted when put on to the Oblivion mesh. Maybe we could just make a new texture for Oblivion for just this robe because all the other ones are fine? I think that could make it look less stretched.

The Exquisite Robe looks exquisite.

I think your method of upping the texture quality makes sense. I'm untrained in these ways, but I do play a lot of oblivion, and using that as my authority I say that it DOES look nearly perfect. 

:D

I add some noise to the textures (Texturize in Photoshop and Clothify in Gimp) and sharpen a few things etc.  Its far from perfect but I think it looks better than the original textures ...

Heh, sneaky... I like it!

The texture is really strechted when put on to the Oblivion mesh. Maybe we could just make a new texture for Oblivion for just this robe because all the other ones are fine? I think that could make it look less stretched.

Hmmm... maybe it does look a bit stretched but personally I can live with it. The problem with creating brand new textures is that you have to be an artist. Question is, do we know anyone who could/would take that challenge on?..

Creating a finer texture is pretty easy, using GIMP in this example I have done the following:

• Render clouds > Plasma x3 (all in separate layers, change seed each time, full turbulence)
• Desaturate all three layers
• Set opacity of layers so that they bleed through each other to the bottom layer
• Merge layers
• Colourise layers
• Apply clothify filter
• Apply canvas filter (with depth set to 1)
• Copied the belt texture from the original and pasted it in as a new layer

However, it's not really possible to improve the appearance of the leather cross-belt (I've tried rescaling it and adding as a new layer). It would need to be drawn from scratch which I don't have the skill to do...

Wow, that is sooo cool. I followed 90% + of what you said. That is the coolest thing. Did you start with the origional texture or did you just render the clouds from new blank layers?

Did you start with the origional texture or did you just render the clouds from new blank layers?

Blank layers sir... It's a quick and dirty technique for generating very fine cloth textures, there will be many other ways...

I dig it. It's quite clever. :)

Woohoo! Nearly testing time :D

HeWhoWatches plays with a female character (apparently) .. so a male character should be nice

She's modelled after my missus ;)

How did you get the colour to match the original texture so closely? My problem with doing a texture from scratch like that is that I can never get the colour to match ...

Having just had another quick check I didn't do an especially good job at matching the colour, it was only a quick experiment - I could definitely do better. My method was simply to have both images side by side, and after desaturating the plasma effect, using the Colours > Colourise tool to match the two as closely as possible. Using GIMP of course...

Another good technique (especially for merging two different photos together, i.e. someone's head on someone else's body :D) is to have two layers, and using Colours > Curves or (preferably) Colours > Levels to match one against the other. After getting the right degree of lightness / darkness, I would then use Colours > Hue - Saturation or Colours > Colour Balance to adjust the colouring to match.

I was also experimenting with making a vector image in Inkscape, importing it as a png into a new layer in GIMP and using the select tools to first select the empty (transparent) regions, then invert the selection and render clouds. Then adjusting the colour after desaturating the clouds, etc. etc. It kind've works but doesn't really look right in game. I'm just not an artist... but the theory is there.

Still, from that I worked out that if you select the transparent regions again (don't invert this time) and use the Select > Grow command (to say, grow the selection by 5 pixels) you can then use one of the blur effects to soften the edges of the object you are pasting in as a new layer. Otherwise you'll get a very defined line between the object pasted on top and the item below which looks a bit unnatural to me... If you're interested, here is the result of my weird little test...

I just compiled the DDS plugin for GIMP too... now I can load in DDS files instead of using ImageMagick to convert them to PNG first... ;)

In Linux, you have to build from source as per the install text file. While you can build from source on Windows, there's a precompiled executable in a zip file here which is easier to install. From the readme in the zip file:

To install, extract these files to your GIMP plugins directory.
This directory is usually located at:
C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins

Though I'd imagine it's 2.6 instead of 2.0 these days ;)

Edit: I've seen a Windows 64 bit build here (treat with caution as is not official). Not sure about MacOS... it looks like maybe the Mac build here comes with DDS but I have no way to test this.

Ok, still working on the test screenshots, but here's a test esp for the robes. There's also an esp here to add a chest with the robes in it, which you can find in Balmora. Take an immediate left after going through the gate with the silt strider next to it. The chest will be to the left of the other containers outside Dralasa Nithryon's Pawnbroker shop (it's number 12 on the image here).

Here we go, male and female tests (front/rear view of each):

Expensive01.jpg
Expensive02.jpg
Expensive03.jpg
Expensive04.jpg
Exquisite.jpg
Extravagant01.jpg
Extravagant02.jpg
Extravagant03.jpg
Extravagant04.jpg
Extravagant05.jpg
Extravagant05_Problem_Male.jpg
Extravagant06.jpg
Extravagant07.jpg
Extravagant08.jpg

I could only find one obvious problem, see the screenshot above - looks to affect male version of extravagant robe in 1st person view only. But otherwise, totally awesome work Hashmi, thanks! :D

Edit: If anyone wants to do future testing using both male/female version of clothing, may I suggest the following:

1. Do a manual save of your current character (in my case, starting off as female), and turn off autosaving.
2. In the console, use the command: sexchange
3. In my case, I then have an invisible head. Open the console again, and type: showracemenu
4. Do not close the console, leave it open and ignore it!
5. Change the face / hair / eye colour / whatever you like, but do not click on Done
6. Press escape and do another manual save
7. Load your new save - this should retain your changes without resetting all of your skills / attributes.

Works equally well for making adjustments to your current character (but don't use sexchange, obviously). Method above adapted from here, but I found that loading the new save straight away worked fine for me.

Edit #2: Also useful to get proper light levels for screenshots, the console command for changing weather: fw 38EEE

Hashmi, I'm really stoked seeing these! They look legit! Thank you, and keep up the good work!

HeWhoWatches, thanks for those pics!