Marauder - A Mace

I don't make too many maces. Not sure why, as they're cool looking weapons. This one was a real bastard to unwrap, though - took about an hour just for that.

Skyrim Download
Fallout 4 Download

Tutorial to make my weapons less shiny

I receive a lot of comments on my mods about how shiny my weapons are. Especially in comparison to the vanilla weapons, mine are very clean and shiny, and some people don't like the disparity. That's completely understandable. I, myself, like consistency in my games. So, I thought I should write up a quick and easy tutorial for people to alter my weapons to be less shiny.

First off, you'll need Nifskope (preferably Nifskope 2.0) and to install the mod you wish to edit (the textures have to be present in your Skyrim directory or else they won't show in Nifskope).


Righto, let's get started:

1. Open Nifskope, then open the .nif file you want to edit. In this case, I will be editing my Leaf Dagger (after installation, it can be found in "data\meshes\billyro\leafdagger" - all my weapons will be located inside the billyro folder).

2. Now, click on the weapon and it will go wireframe. In the Block List (the thing on the left-hand side), expand the NiTriShape and the BSLightingShaderProperty inside of it.

3.By clicking on the BSShaderTextureSet (which, on mine, is denoted as "...") we can see the textures of the weapon down the bottom of the screen in the Block Details section. Here, we want to change the cubemap from my own one (provided by Humus) to a vanilla one (most weapons use shinybright_e.dds, so that's what we'll change it to).

4. Double click on the value with the cubemap, then change it to "textures\cubemaps\shinybright_e.dds", and you'll see it change immediately to the darker version below.

5. You're done! You can also tweak some other values inside the Block Details of the BSLightingShaderProperty itself, but you shouldn't need to with my weapons.

I hope this tutorial was somewhat useful, and perhaps it'll help you with unifying your Skyrim weapons. :)

Leaf Dagger

Today I made a dagger with a leaf-blade.

You may notice how the metal looks a bit different than my previous weapons... well, the reason for that is this is my first ever successfully baked model! What this means is that the normal maps were generated from a high-poly version of the dagger, making the edges in particular really nice.

You can download it here!

Chieftain Cuirass for Morrowind

I've been playing Morrowind again (probably my favourite game, though nostalgia probably contributes to that) and wanted to make a decent cuirass for my character that didn't look weird (unfortunately, most high-tier armour in Morrowind, Tribunal or Bloodmoon look crazy) so here we are.

It's just the bear armour from Bloodmoon with a fancy cuirass on top. Since Morrowind doesn't support normal mapping on its own (I am aware of MGE XE and OpenMW - I use the latter) it won't look like this in-game, but hey... it's a render.

I am aware of the shiny fur - I cannot figure out how to apply a material mask to Knald, so yeah. It's easily fixable outside of it.

The armour will be obtainable by completing the Thirsk series of quests and becoming chieftain. You'll receive it alongside the sword Clanbringer, as it was in vanilla Bloodmoon.

No download yet - still gotta get some permissions sorted out and stuff.

Albion Viceroy

I came, I saw, I opened 3DS Max and did stuff.

I'm quite happy with the scabbard in particular, as normally I don't put quite so much effort into them.

There's no download as of yet.



EDIT: Been messing around with the textures and the normal maps; thinking I've got something pretty decent for now. Will try to push for a release sooner or later.

The cubemap (fake reflections) that you see in this second render I will include in the release, as well as a few optional cubemaps with different blur amounts. The sharper one is good for renders, though not quite as nice in-game in my opinion. There's also an alternate cubemap I will include, which is one of the first cubemaps I started to use (way back at Wraith) but tweaked a tad - should look fairly natural without being too bland. Hopefully... 

EDIT 2: It has now been released. You can grab it here! 

Legerity - Morgynn Ashcroft's Sword

I'm making a sword for an upcoming companion/quest mod by Darkrogue21.

"Morgynn is Marcelon Ashcroft's younger sister, the baby of the family of 4. As well as taking her etiquette lessons and studying music, she also dabbled in swordplay and fencing, being taught by the family house-guard in secret as her parents thought it, 'wasn't becoming of a noble lady'."

"Morgynn isn't as innocent as she plays out to be, holding a steeled confidence when she fights, but still has a childish naivete about her, even after being turned into a vampire. Whilst her brother is cynical and jaded of the world, she is open minded and enjoys living life, experiencing everything it has to offer. She's also a typical girly girl and likes flowers and jewellery."

With that in mind, I set out and made this thingo.

It's not done quite yet, and I'm still experimenting with the textures somewhat, but it's getting there...



EDIT: And it's done.

You can download it here

Celerity ENB

A preset I've been working on for a while. It's rather simplistic in nature, which is why I gave it the name "Celerity ENB" - it should be very performance friendly. Although, the name is quite a mouthful so I may change it if I can think of any other names.

Performance-wise, I usually only drop about 5-10 frames with ENB on. In heavily forested areas, it compounds a little bit so the drop is more noticeable, but otherwise the impact is negligible.

If you want to see some comparison .gifs, they are on the Nexus page (the link is at the bottom of this post).

Download it here.

Skyrim's Shadow Problem

Many of you have probably realised that the shadows in Skyrim are pretty bad. This is why:

The quality of the shadows is (for some reason) tied to the FOV in the game - anything above a FOV of 65 renders the shadows at half resolution! It appears to be an engine or game-related bug, and I don't have the knowledge required to fix it. But hopefully someone out there does...

Some Random Witcher 3 Screenshots

I take lots of screenshots in all the games I play, but I don't really post them. Here are a few screenshots from The Witcher 3.

And the sword in the first image... so pretty!

'Tis a pretty game.

Ember

I had 3 hours before I had to go to work, so I decided to try and create a weapon before that time.

This is the result:

Luckily I had modelled and unwrapped the model by about the halfway mark, which gave me enough time to bang out some decent textures. There are a few minor annoyances (like the line down the middle of the grip) but overall, I'm happy with how it came out. And I made it to work on time!

Naming it took up like 5 valuable minutes, though - I settled on "Ember" because of the colour. There's probably a sword on the Skyrim Nexus already called that, but meh.



I've also got another sword which has been modelled and unwrapped, but I can't be bothered texturing it. Maybe one day...

A Second Month of Internet Deprivation Weapon Pack

It's out!

Have a look

Tristan de Dois' Great Sword

This was actually for a request - I knew not of the sword's existence. It's from BBC's Merlin, and is wielded by Tristan de Dois.

Still can't upload anything, but hopefully my internet will be fixed in two weeks time.

Knightly Mace

Couldn't think of a name for a mace, so "Knightly Mace" it is. I'm particularly pleased with the textures this time - normally textures are where I tend to fall flat...

As stated in my previous post, I cannot upload until I get the internet back (a few weeks at least). I'm just using phone data right now.