Skyrim Fuckery and Aesthetics

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How did I forget this.

This is the "next" thing I had in mind when I was working on the squire's plate redo. And the dark witch outfit! This outfit is based on the Goliath beetle. I came across one when I was in Spain last winter, in the Zamora ethnographic museum. Why an African beetle is in a spanish ethnographic museum remains a mystery to me. But I digress.

I was immediately enchanted. I wanted to make a design that captured the essence of the creature: black and white when resting, and revealing the copper wings when in flight. From the get-go I knew I wanted to do a high fantasy styled outfit, with motifs from art nouveau and quite some visual noise. When I came across this bug, back in January, I didn't find myself capable enough to actually accomplish this design. So I worked on other things that were still on the backburner. The dark witch came first, then the squire's plate.

And here it is. The Garment of the Goliath. The cloak moves in movement, revealing the flame-painted copper armor underneath. The pattern of the beetle is reflected on the cape and tabard. The design language is supposed to be somewhat organic and unconventional. I also tried straying away from generally accepted high-fantasy designs, as you get a lot of that when you're doing elvish stuff or working with art nouveau motifs. It really was a bit of a test to see how well I could pull of a more complicated design like this. And I think I succeeded. I'm really happy with the way this thing turned out. All elements of the design, compared to older outfits, look better. The pouch is big step up compared to the squire's. The coin bag's textures look splendid, and I'm also super happy with the way the cuisse turned out. Lots of relief, lots of detail. There's this one shape/motif that's constantly being repeated across the entire armor. It's in the pauldrons, chestplate, vambraces, cuisses, and the boots. Can you spot it?

I did cut some corners during texturing, which is a bit of shame. These are learning opportunities. For example, the belt is a bit bland. When I'm striving to be holistic in my design, I need to pull it all the way through. For my next design, I'm intending to do just that. And I want to get that shit going from the concept stage onwards.

What I also want to do is to continue to be inspired by nature. So for my next project, I will make something as inspired by the American hummingbird. Of course it'll be armor. This time I'll try for a contrasting design to this goliath outfit. Colourful, but not demanding. Stay tuned.

[skyrimfuckery]

It's out boys get it from the link in my sidebar under Squire's Plate Redo.

Man this was fun! A design like this is very familiar to me so it shouldn't come to anyone's surprise that development was smooth. But over time during development I found a style to adhere to and that was to incorporate the shape of the pauldron in every mesh where possible. The gauntlet kind of has that shape in the knuckles, the sword and the scabbard are both full of it, and the bevor on the helmet is similarly shaped. Little things like that, design choices that serendipitously appear as such, they are so much fun.

I think the textures are really nice this time. Both for the metal and the leather. I did a lot of experimenting in substance and really tried to focus on actual materials and realism. I'm still not there yet, obviously, but I'm making steps. Overall, I'm super pleased with the textures and I think they came out very clean. My workflow is definitely faster now, too, now that I fully use the high poly baking method for my geometry.

There is so much I learned in Blender, too! Little things like checking for the direction that faces are pointing to, and working with proper edge flow. There was a lot I learned about proper topology and I think my meshes are cleaner compared to the Dark Witch and especially the Dragonstar armor.

Lastly, SMP. It was a breeze this time, save for a small stretching issue that turned out to be caused by shitty weighting on my end. I think it adds a lot to the flair of the outfit. I'm glad I bit the bullet and went the extra mile to add it to work. Thanks, past me.

Overall: This is something I can really be proud of! It was worth a redo and I learned so much. The project wasn't as draining as my previous ones, and I really feel invigorated to do more! I already have an idea and I plan on getting to sketching as soon as possible!

[skyrimfuckery]

Working on my Squire’s Plate redo is partly an exercise of looking back and seeing how I’ve progressed. I finished the gauntlets today, and I’d like to take the opportunity to compare the textures for the inside of the glove for all the gloves I’ve textured so far. The reason I chose this area is because it’s easy to ignore during gameplay and barely gets shown during screenshots, yet it has the potential for the most personality as it’s literally the palm of the hand. Furthermore, this has been an area that I have always needed to texture, no matter the design of the glove. It allows for a good 1:1 comparison between things.

Starting off with the Blackened Steel Vambrace, I must say the leather texture has nice folds and creases showing off personality. It is very rough around the edges, and could use more detail in the color maps and more nuanced creases in the finger areas. The seam work is done quite messily, too. At the time I was set out on creating a good leather material both up close and at a distance, and not so much on creating a leather glove. I can tell you right now that my current work, which I will show last, still does not meet my imagination’s standards.

Moving up, the leather on the Evermorin Gauntlet is downright disappointing. I put in very little effort in the palm texture and only added the bare minimum: the cushioning but at the base of all fingers is accentuated, that’s all. There aren’t even any creases worth mentioning in the fingers. That’s not to say this gauntlet sucks, because if you flip it over you’ll find something I’m proud of to this day. This texture work perfectly illustrates my earlier point of the palm being easily missed, meaning shoddy texture work goes unnoticed.

My first venture into Substance Painter was with the Lorisian Glove. You’ll see that t he seams are way cleaner and not as squiggly as the previous two gloves. I went in the right direction by adding yellowish highlights to the top of the creases to simulate natural wear. Too bad it’s not enough and the palm is not exactly convincing. The thumb, however, looks fucking nice though. Note the lack of detail around the fingers, once again.

Then we have the Dragonstar Gauntlet. The leather was supposed to be a rough suede esque thing, which means it starts to look crusty really fast. The creases, however, are done pretty nicely. There is defined geometry, with major and minor details. Note the shaping around the base of the fingers, which is cleaner than the previous work. Apart from some deformed stitching, I’d say this is a pretty okay texture. This work builds upon my previous stuff because it uses both larger and smaller creases. None are hand-drawn, all are the result of a rotated overlay and clever masking. All in all, it doesn’t come across as convincing leather.

The Dark Witch Gauntlet technically isn’t leather. But a palm’s a palm. The fingers are very detailed and got a splendid 3d-look to them. The palm, however, is relatively barren. That’s because fabric doesn’t leave crease marks with use like leather does, but I could have added a few here and there because the thing is being used, and it would make it look less like shrink wrapped latex. The few creases that are there are subtle because they are supposed to convey the pulling of fabric close to the seams. Overall, I paid a lot of attention to actually painting the shape of a hand in this one, which you can see around the thumb webbing and the base of the fingers.

Closing up, we have the palm of the Squire’s Plate. The redo. This is the first gauntlet I textured using a high poly bake. I sculpted all the finger details in blender and transferred them to the lowpoly. The thumb has creases running perpendicular to its axis. The details that I’ve added to other gloves are here, with a few more. What this workflow allowed me to do, though, is to add worn areas based on the sculpt data. So you’ll see that the top of the creases are lighter and their bottoms are darker. One thing to note is that I underestimated the normal strength resulting the baking process, because areas like the base of the fingers are not as defined as I’d like.

The workflow that I used for my most recent project, the Squire’s Plate redo, has allowed me to produce the most lively glove out of them all. Yet I must say that the dragonstar glove has the most intricate details, with creases everywhere running in directions that make sense. The Lorisian glove was made with a good mindset, I just lacked skill and experience. My first glove, the Blackened Steel Vambrace, remains a great work for the time. For a while it was head and shoulders above my other leather work.

This post was for showing you my journey thus far, and for me to learn from my older successes and mistakes. I’ll definitely go back to the Squire’s gauntlet for a little bit to add some more juicy creases because I still have the project files so it’s literally no big deal.

Included are also some pics of the Gauntlet as it looks like right now!

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get it while it's hot folks i just released this motherclucker and it's in the sidebar as well as on the nexus

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Oh hey guess what you wouldn't believe it but it's true! A new outfit made within a year? No way!

Yes way. I had the concept sketch lying around since last summer. Originally, the design was intended for Fadiyyeh, the redguard showcasing my Dragonstar armor. I wanted it to be a more Indian inspired witchy dress with more colours, decorative stitching, and jewelry everywhere. But her story was told and the Dragonstar armor project kinda drained me. So I decided to turn it into somewhat of an elegant gothic dress with coarse medieval armor parts! You know I can't resist adding historical armor to everything I make.

So here it is. A black brocade dress with a mix of 14th and 15th century armor (I did my research) and modern(ish) jewelry and boots. The gauntlets sport fake nails for extra goth. All in all, a pretty good mid-late game dress for a mage up to no good!

In hindsight, I should have added more lace pretty much everywhere, as the design is pretty simple at this point. Then again, that allows for more customization with accessories from other mods, in a similar vein to the Brigandine set. Texture wise, though, the dress is a bit boring. It's just the single fabric texture. But it works, I guess, and all the other parts look amazing so it evens out. This outfit was also my first venue into baking normal maps from high poly models instead of manually painting them. I think it turned out especially nicely on the boots and the gauntlets. I hope you think so too.

The armor is female only. It has no quest. As much as I want to give my items a place in the world, it seemed like an effort spent in vain. Plus, I had no ideas I liked for this dress. It's just something people wear now, I guess. The skirt on the dress will be physics enabled. I'm also experimenting with that now, spooky stuff.

This dress will be released on the Nexus somewhere next week. I have the weight painting and BHUNP sliders done, so all that's left is the inventory models, the crafting recipes, and tweaking the physics.

Oh yeah. I moved to SE because of data loss somewhere last May. This means this outfit will be SE only. I still have the mesh without physics, so technically I could make an LE conversion. Will that be worth it? If literally one person asks me in DMs I will do it, bet.

I already got plenty ideas for my next project. I'll have to focus on other things after this, but I'll make sure to keep you guys updated. I'm kinda thinking of remaking the Squire's plate...

Till the next one!

[skyrimfuckery]

Alright so here's the update! Can't go half a year without posting right? Right.

As you can see, all the pieces are done. Boots, gauntlets, helmet, cloak, man it's all there wowee! I'm really happy with the way it has turned out. All original, just like the cuirass.

So why isn't it available for download yet?

Because I'm currently finishing up the quest that is associated with it! To give it a believable place in the world, and to make it differ from the standard armor sets in the game, I decided to write a little story around it.

The mod will be released on the Nexus as that allows for better versioning (if necessary) as well as user feedback. But I'll add a direct link to it to the sidebar, as always.

[skyrimfuckery]

New Armor. Completely originally designed and made by me. No mashups. I’m really happy with the way it’s turned out. Now I need to make a male version and the boots, gauntlets, helmet and maybe even the cloak. But this is a really nice start and I can’t stop looking at it.

Expect updates!

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I added some new shit to my enb and it’s got a bunch of visual updates like new clouds (like 2 lmao) and weather edits as well as a BUNCH of atmosphere and color grading tweaks so uhhhh yeah im gonna throw it on my blog right here yeah righto in the sidebar

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Accessories to accessories.

I expanded on the torso belt for my brigandine pack and added a waterskin, a vial holder, and a pouch. Alternatively, you can opt to add amulets of the divines to your belt instead of the adventurer gear. All combinations have breakdown recipes so you can switch out things easily. 

There’s also a new satchel.

On top of that, the new update has a few bug fixes and quality of life improvements. All brigandine inventory models now show the exact colour layout of the armor. No more guesswork about what colours your character will actually sport when wearing the outfit! It took me quite a while to put that shit in there and it was NOT fun. As for bug fixes, I’ve fixed a few misplaced enchantments on items and I’ve also overhauled the leveled list implementation so you actually have a realistic chance of finding the accessories at vendors now. I hope it’s better this way.

The link to the update, as always, is in the sidebar. Click Brigandine Redux Armor Pack to download the latest version.

Enjoy!

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It’s done! This is my newest release, the decorative armour of a forgotten duchy in Western Haafingar. Getting it is different from my other projects. You cannot buy it, you cannot smith it, you cannot loot it in dungeons. Link to the outfit is in the sidebar, as always, under “Lorisian Armour”.

In Dragon Bridge, a Jehannian scholar will be staying at the inn to look for experienced adventurers to help him on his quest. He’s been conducting economic and historic research on past trade partners of Jehanna, and has stumbled upon a discrepancy in the records. He will explain everything to you in person.

All right. This armour is unique in more ways than one, to me at least. One of which is that the thing has a fucking quest attached to it. Like, an actual quest with objectives and where you do things. First one ever, for me. Secondly, a few things are actually made in blender. I’ve now actually dipped my toes in that scary spooky program, and it’s paid off. Thirdly, a good amount of the textures have actually been made in Substance Painter instead of Photoshop. So that’s another new workflow I had to learn and get comfortable with. Those gloves, for example, are fully made in SP.

I don’t have much to say about the outfit, though. It looks like I wanted, I’m happy with the textures, and all in all I’ve spent a lot of time polishing the outfit. And the mod as a whole, I guess. If I just decided to forego all the lore and just dump it in the world as some sort of forgotten outfit that magically hasn’t rusted away, I could likely have released this thing in October. Oh well. I like this more.

The outfit has a bunch of backstory behind it that’s all explored in the mod itself. If you want to dive deeper into its lore, there are some things you can ask the researcher for more explanation. I don’t want to spoil too much about the mod itself in this post.

While my mod will work as-is, you will be unable to have full access to its content if the invisible border Bethesda placed around Skyrim is not turned off. In order to do so please add, or ensure, the following is in your Skyrim.ini file: [General] bBorderRegionsEnabled=0

I can now finally move on to other stuff. This project has taken too long.

[skyrimfuckery]

guys guys guys im not dead look guys im not dead PLEASE DONT LEAVE

this design was pretty much finished in may. MAY. and it spiraled out of control. i will elaborate further in the release post about the how and why and the story of the armor itself, in-game, but for now all i can do is drop this fucking teaser because holy hell i almost kept my joke promise of radio silence till 2022. it wasnt on purpose i swear

in a nutshell it’s an in-universe reproduction of an armour set of a forgotten duchy from the second era in western haafingar.

let’s just say i’ve been doing a LOT of stuff that will pay off pretty soon.

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Hey all, hope you’ve been doing well. I’ve decided to remember I still had a brigandine outfit project thing that needed polishing up, or rather, that needed additions. 

First of all, I made a lighter variant for early game characters of the main brigandine set very quickly after uploading the initial version of this mod. You can see that one in the Fourth image. Sorry, that cloak isn’t included, it was a tad finicky to get working right. Anyway, I like that lighter variant a lot because sleeves are nice and look cool.

Secondly, I made a fuckton of accessories! A new cloak, which also has physics, a belt that you can hang all sorts of junk onto (will maybe come in a later update, now it just looks cool), a pouch for both sides and with three different colour schemes, and leg straps for that extra colour! Oh yeah and a fucking hood. With scandinavian inspired patterns on the edge. 

I think the cloak looks fucking comfy as hell and I love LOVE the pattern on it because it’s not wholly original but I did have to hand-paint the individual shapes etc. Sadly, there was no way to automate the process, but nevertheless making  it was a lot of fun. 

Also, meet Fenja. She’s a Nord, and uh yeah she has no fucked up past this time, unlike all my other characters. She decided to just go out and see the world, and unlike Erik, from Rorikstead, her parents thought it okay for her to do that. Expect her to appear in many more posts.

This update has been sitting on the backburner for over three months, maybe even four. That’s because my attention was drawn towards other things, like a hobby wholly unrelated to skyrim, and after that fixing the mod called “Jedi Trees”. A mega link should be floating somewhere, just like the original. Oh yeah, I also made a new mashup during this period, but I still have to texture it and cook up a way to put it in-game. I’m gonna write up a little story, but I’ll share that once I feel the project has furthered enough that I can release it in a proper timeframe. I don’t like to hype people up and then fail to deliver (even though I probably do that shit all the time).

See ya in the next one, till 2022!

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I’ve added a bunch of colours to the pack. Five, in fact. The armor consists of three pieces: the brigandine, the pants, and the gambeson. And each piece has now received five extra colour variations. On top of the base colours, this makes for a total of 150 different combinations. There are five basic colours to now choose from: black, red, green, yellow, and white. Instead of white, the brigandine piece uses a cream colour scheme. 

This has been the true aim of the project. I wanted to build a basic brigandine outfit and then expand on it in all kinds of different ways. These colour variants are the first step. And boy, did it take a long time. I had to add all the texture sets to the armors by hand! Any subsequent variations on the brigandine concept will probably not be this complex. Updating things was a chore!

Your character should now be able to find at least one combination of colours in there. There’s so much variation, there’s a palette for everyone. Above you can see a few of my favourites, but there are way more that I like myself! Check out the pack to mix and match to find your favourite colour scheme!

The link in the sidebar has been updated accordingly. If you click it, you will be able to download the new version. It also includes some minor weighting fixes to the male and female versions. I hope you enjoy this update!

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Hey Hi I’m back from the dead. What a year it’s been.

Here’s a quick Brigandine mashup that I made. The mesh still uses the same base as the one with the evermorin brigandine, but it’s touched up and the textures are way overhauled. I’m really really happy with the way the leather turned out.

Said leather textures were actually part of a project for my current character’s getup. But because it’s a character-spicifc armour, I never felt like releasing it. Plus it uses a crapton of assets that are just copypasted and I don’t feel comfortable releasing something that I did not edit or make myself.

Anyway, the rest of the armor uses meshes that I already had used before. The majority of the cloth stuff and the belts are from the blackened steel set. I tweaked the normal maps a little bit and touched up the fabric texture and that really was more than enough. I also had a fun time redoing the normals on the plates on the legs. The other plating, namely the shit on the arms, was able to be lifted from the evermorin brigandine. I did not have to change the UV much; all I had to do was make sure there was enough space for the other textures that were going to be added to the map. The brigandine texture took me the longest, but that was made way back in October or some shit. September, even? So when I started working on this set the majority of the work was already done.

Except for the weighting. God, it really is a separate layer of hell. Every time I think I got it right I select a new pose and notice some minor clipping. For the female version that’s just mildly annoying. No big deal. For the male version, however, every time I make an edit to the weight painting and I want to see it in-game I have to manually sculpt the high weight mesh instead of letting Bodyslide generate both the low and high weight meshes for me like on the female version. Time sink.

Overall I am very happy with this conceptually simple outfit. The esp is separate from the Adventurer’s Wardrobe, as the style is significantly more grounded. I also do plan on making the pack centered around brigandine armor. Expect color variations and maybe some sidegrades with different pieces of armor bolted onto the mesh. When I find some nice gauntlets and boots to pair with the armor, I’ll incorporate them as well. For now, only this white/brown/green outfit is included. Also included in the archive is a patch for MorrowLoot Ultimate users, like me.

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Here’s the release of my most recent project, the Evermorin brigandine! It has boots and gauntlets and a male version and fucking everything your heart desires. The helmet in the cute knightfu pic is not included as that’s from the witcher 2 armor pack and can be found on the nexus.

Download link is as always found in the sidebar of my blog.

It took me a long time to finish this up, considering the lockdown. Work got in the way as well as uhhhh a lack of a proper modding flow. Idk man. Overall I am very pleased with these textures. In my opinion, they look stellar and especially the gauntlets rival some of the better textures for armors found online. I am also especially proud of the belt, even though initially it was kind of an afterthought.

I’ve spent enough words on this set already and I’m really glad to be able to release it in the whole wide world. I hope you guys will enjoy it as much as I do.

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WIP shots for my next character. I plan to finish Ilve’s playthrough first, of course. This elf has custom textures with unique tints in order to capture the energy of the reference images I used.

I plan to construct an entire snow elf aesthetic to inspire her future mashups. In accordance with her backstory, I plan for her to start with a snow elf garb or dress, and for her to add pieces of equipment on top of that. Quite similar to the outfit that Amicia wears in “A Plague Tale: Innocence”. I’ll share more of the elf’s backstory later, but the events leading up to her ending up in 4E 200 Skyrim are similar in nature to the ones in the aforementioned game.

Name’s Symeris, by the way.

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I DID IT

it’s been a whopping two days and i got around to finishing the textures for the leg pieces, or the cuisse to be exact. I also overhauled the inlays on the belt, as I wasn’t satisfied with em and to be fair that swirly pattern looked kind of amateurish in general. This more elaborate medieval pattern looks way fancier and I love it.

This does not mean the armor is ready for release! ha! I still have to make a male version which has its own set of textures, though they are quite minor, and I also have to make textures for the gauntlets as well as for the boots. I have a vague idea as to which meshes I will use for the gauntlets, but for the boots not so much. We’ll see.

Again I’m really happy with the way this outfit turned out! I think it looks really good and I think I’ve outdone myself. Let’s try to make the gauntlets an actual masterpiece, shall we?