Ok, took a couple months off. Back to work. If Kaz can update, I can too. Not a LOT of progress, but here’s the latest. So once again I’m going to start with the Prisoner outfit. I do have the highres mod in – but that’s the official Bethesda highres mod so that’s OK. I exported all the files from the file named HighResTexturePack01.bsa and found the Prisoner texture files in there. This is the main one I’ll be working with:
Once again, “white” areas are holes in the fabric. For our mod, we don’t need the pants or the belt textures (top right). So I’m going to delete those totally. Also going to fill in all the “holes” in the parts we do need and I also smoothed out the rough sleeves a bit. End result is this:
That’s frankly all I’ve done so far. But the question is, what does it look like in-game so far? Well, HERE is what it looks like:
No, that’s not a bug – her legs only go up just above the knees. Then… nothing. But remember, with the original prisoner outfit, there are pants – so you never SEE the missing legs. While not true of all outfits, lots of them have missing body parts inside the outfit. My understanding is that, by not including them, the graphics processor doesn’t have as much work to do – so when there’s no expectation that anyone will SEE the body missing, they remove it.
And again, EVERY OUTFIT HAS ITS OWN BODY inside it(!). They don’t even have to be the same body really. So that obviously is going to have to be fixed. Fortunately, in the last mod I did, I not only fixed it, but I was able to essentially put 2 bodies inside – one in blue “tights”. That’s what I’ll do to fix it this time too.
Hehe – here’s a real test for Pepsidude… would you rather have flat-butt Katia or NO butt katia? Remember, you can always Imagine! Oh, for that matter, here’s the ONLY upskirt screenshot of a khajiit I’ll ever take on this project…
That’s just nasty. ^_^ Anyway, that’s where it stands for now. But I’m going to keep working on the textures before I fix that body – so you’ll have to get used to Takia’s Missing Torso for awhile.
Ok, got Steam/Skyrim all fired up and my base, unmodded Katia in-game. WOW it’s been a long time since I’ve seen unmodded khajiits. (Wow they’re ugly!) No offense Katia! It’s not you its just…
…rough. There’s a river right there Katia. How about you go wash those undies huh? ^_^ But at least I don’t have to worry about showing nudity anymore!. Yeah, this is the model I’ll be using. Stock. Standard. Not even yellow. But no, this mod is about the armor, NOT about Katia. So lets just say this is Katia’s third cousin, twice-removed…
…on her father’s side. Oh Pepsidude ain’t gonna be happy with that flat tush. But remember, it’s all about the armor (keep repeating that… it’s all about the armor, it’s all about the armor… You CAN survive this unmodded horror that is default Skyrim!)…
Maybe not. I need a name for her I can remember since she’s definitely not Katia. Let’s call her Tackia. Well, this is about as good as I could do with all defaults and no mods. And no, I’m not going to mod her this time. We’re going full-defaults here.
Some other new adventures we get though will include the Creation Kit. I never used it before, so I guess I’m going to learn how this time! Also, I cheated with my other mods. I just replaced an existing armor with my mod’s files. By doing that I didn’t have to sweat getting it into the game or what stats it should have. This time I’m going to build a new armor and I’m hoping the Creation Kit will help me to get it in-game like that.
Which also brings up the question of what the armor itself should be like. I’ve been concentration solely on the visual aspects of it. But should it actually be GOOD armor, terrible one-step-above-rags armor, superpowered magical kick-ass armor or what? Should it have any magic powers? I mean really, to be canon it really probably shouldn’t be much. But if you play Skyrim at all, you’re not going to want to keep this on when your a level 46 Assassin unless it’s got something special going for it.
I’m really open to opinions on that. If you have any, go right ahead and respond to this.
I know – old news right? Well, I’m about to start my 3rd mod for this believe it or not!
What’s different about this one? Well, the first one I did required the CBBE body. The next one required the CHSBHC body. This one will be completely, 100% stand-alone using the base models and no other requirements at all.
Why do this AGAIN? For 2 reasons.
#1, lack of anything new to do that I know how to do.
#2, I want to put this one up on Steam Workshop and that probably will require no other “assumed” mods be in place.
Nothing pretty to show yet, just announcing I’ll be going through this again. Hopefully I can re-use some of the assets I built, but my first step will be to re-install Skyrim from scratch and that alone will likely take a few days.
I was inspired to revisit this yet again because I recently learned that a lot of people only mod via Steam Workshop and, really, I think this would be pretty popular, well at least with Prequel readers that play Skyrim!
Well, that’s it for now. No, I haven’t done any of the other tweaks I had in mind. Maybe I will someday but – I know me better than that. I probably won’t. But I did succeed in what I set out to do so. Maybe when Katia goes spelunking in the sewers of Kvatch, Kaz will see fit to equip her in a new outfit. If so, rest assured that I’ll be back with a new series to recreate that one in Skyrim too! So for now, goodbye Katia! We’ll meet again!
Thanks for following! It’s been my first real Tumblr series. Hopefully there’ll be more. There’s been a lot of talk about the future of Katia and Prequel. But I know from first hand experience that everyone waxes and wanes periodically in their enthusiasm for a project like Prequel. (No, I’ve never done anything like a webcomic, but I do have my own little pet project that has it’s own small fanbase).
I think Kaz just went through a lull, but he’ll not be able to leave Katia so easily. She’s lurking inside his head and won’t leave him in peace till he leaves HER in peace (one way or another!). Of that I’m sure. I’ll be honest, in the last few months I’ve been pretty mad with Kaz. He’s infuriated me with his constant delays and predictions. To be fair, he never PROMISED anything. Just suggested time frames for the next update that never came to pass. But no one ASKED him for predictions, he just volunteered them and yes, that did piss me off. Yet, as he said, I find myself coming back daily to check Just In Case. Damn him and his story-telling abilities! I feel like a puppet on strings, but it’s worse – I KNOW I’m a puppet and still I keep coming back willingly.
So, should he ever read this – yeah, I’m still one of your loyal minions. Maybe a grumbling a bit, but I still trudge on following for a chance at another crumb. Hey, if I can wait a year for the next Game of Thrones season (or even longer for the next book!), I can wait a few months to see Katia in action again. And no need for some hyped-up super-flashy minigame thingy. I’ll be happy to see her do anything. I must confess though that I hope her storyline doesn’t hit another bottom again. I know the narrative has to rise and fall, but it’s just human nature that we hope the falls get shallower and the climb gets higher to see SOME progression. Yet I’m bound by the author-reader alliance. Your will be done. (but dammit, I don’t have to LIKE it!) ^_^
And, finally, if fictional characters have any sort of reality somewhere in the multiverse – (And in some way, I think they do. But that’s waxing metaphysical which a computer geek should not try.) – good luck Katia! We’re still rooting for you. There’s Hope For You Yet!
As “proof” of sorts, here she is with a different outfit. What does this prove other than that I’m a pervert and install sexy mods? Well, she has no blue pants here, THATS for sure!
Yeah, you keep dreaming shopkeeper. This kitty ain’t for you! She’s given up the booze and the one-night stands… (well, maybe not wearing that outfit!)
Ok, enough silliness. So when last I left off, I had an upper-half-khajiit body that worked beautifully with the rest of the armor (which allowed me to have a 2nd body inside the armor with the blue pants texture) – but it was only available at max-size. I tried making a minimum size body, cutting out the same vertexes using 3ds Max program, but it either crashed the game completely or in-between things went hyper-wonky because the vertexes didn’t match up exactly between the two.
(weight settings other than Max and Min were failing miserably – not now as you can see!)
I even went so far as to post for help over at Nexus – (with no results). But then I got an idea – what if I import the complete, max size body into 3DS Max, along with the complete min size body AND the partial, max size body. With all three in at once, I can edit both complete bodies precisely to match the partial max-size I had. Then, when I exported them after removing the lower half, the two originally complete bodies SHOULD be identical. The same process will have been done with both bodies so the result should match too. It worked. IT WORKED! Hurrah!
Ok, so there are still some small touchup things I want to do – plus this is still the Ragged Trousers clothing and it needs to replace an existing armor. (I’ve no plans to create a truly NEW armor in the game here – I’ll just replace an existing armor mesh/template)
So not really done yet – but nothing is stopping me now. And now, for something completely different. First, for HoodieKatia, the closest I could find in Skyrim!
More like HoodED Katia but it’s still cute!’
Anybody like succubus-es? (Succubi?) How about Katia as a Succubus? Maybe if she hangs out more with Nah she might someday…
(And this shows the problem with lazy modders – max-size body regardless of the weight settings you choose. Not MY mod tho! But perhaps for a succubus mod I guess that max size might be somewhat more appropriate.)
Ok, enough of my screenshot-fest. I’m going to go head to the beach and see if I can catch Katia there. Or at least take a break from this for a few days. A few tweaks still – I’d like to work on that belt a bit, got a few clipping issues (minor though), maybe re-work the wolfs head. For now though, something with ice and rum sounds good!
Who’s bad? Well, in fact, >I< am! I FINALLY fixed my last major remaining issue! My Arena armor for CHSBHC body is now 100% functioning as intended! To celebrate, I’m going to load this up with screenshots because I like ‘em!
See this kitty? Notice anything DIFFERENT about her? Something, perhaps, LESS? She’s skinny! (well, relatively) AND she’s wearing Katia’s Arena armor! HURRAH!
See that booty? Well, heck, what would my tumblr posts be without a booty shot anyway? She still has awesome glutes, but they’re not Monster Booty anymore! This COULD be Katia in Skyrim finally. So, to sum up, I’ve now got a new Arena Armor that:
A) – conforms to canon rear design.
B) – Supports CHSBHC body (including jiggle)
C) – can be sized properly from minimum to maximum
D) – dons blue “pants” along with the armor and does NOT require all khajiits to have blue pants all the time!
Yeah, that’s right. Uh-huh. Me Bad. (BTW, I’ve bumped her size up a bit here. Not Monster Booty but a bit more.)
Following up with another post in just a sec. to continue this gloat-fest…
Just a frustrated “Still haven’t got it fixed”. I’ve gone so far as to get a true mesh-editing program and see if I can create the minimal-size-top-only body created myself. But that failed miserably. I just don’t know how to work with these to import/export them properly and edit them precisely. I may actually need to abandon the CHSBHC body completely and do this for a more standard body that I can find appropriate top-only versions of (as much as I hate to do that.)
But in the meantime, have you seen Sentient Socks latest “rejects” art? Look, the guy does porn – I’m not going to beat around the bush on that. But he also happens to be REALLY GOOD. (and I think he’s a she actually but I digress. Not really relevant. But please forgive my erroneous use of the masculine pronoun if it’s inaccurate. I don’t know… it… personally!)
Anyway, he’s the one that created all those katia/kill la kill crossover fanarts. (which make me want to find kill la kill actually). Apparently he drew a few more that he considered rejects and posted them to his furaffinity page.
S.S. has said before that he’s fine with people posting his stuff anywhere, but a couple are nudes (tasteful but still) so I won’t post those here. (But if you’re ok with that, check them out here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/12715022/ )
I THINK the last one is supposed to be Sigrid, but the style is so different from Kaz’s that it’s hard to be sure. Just posting here to spread the love for SS, who obviously is a Katia fan too! (And I just LOVE the Quill Weave one. She’s so cute.)
KATIA REJECT:
QUILL WEAVE REJECT:
SIGRID REJECT:
Wow. Rejects? I also really like the two nude Katias but… well… Probably not a good idea to post em here. I may put em up in the fanart section over at prequel though if no one else has yet!
Ok, the pauldrons took a bit more than just copy/paste but really just revising the names of some objects and copying some “bones” over. I’m really getting close to being done with this CHSBHC model version, and it will be better than my original because the blue pants are part of the armor this time, not a separate body texture that applies to ALL Khajiits!
So, the latest. First, I still have the problem that I can’t reduce the size of her below max, so I know you’ll all think I’m some sort of big-boobs pervert. I may be a perv, but not for unreal silicone. I can appreciate them as well as the next hetero type, but I KNOW this can’t be Katia with those mammoth mammaries. I’ll try to explain as best I can what the problem is.
As I mentioned before, there is an actual body underneath all armors (that have any sleeveless, breast or leg showing anyway). But I can’t just paint the legs blue to simulate pants – if I do, ALL khajiits will have blue legs. I want them to come-and-go with the armor though. Well, I did figure out how to do that. Inside I now have TWO bodies. The lower half is separate from the upper half, with transparent texture on the upper half so you never see it. Very fortunately, I found a mod that had an upper-half-only body too so that’s what we see for the arms and chest. Problem is, that mod ONLY had the full-size body. It didn’t have the corresponding minimum size body. So I’ve been looking for a mod where someone has just the upper-half as a minimum size for CHSBHC shape. I’ve not found a SINGLE ONE! Everyone is just creating single-size CHSBHC mods…
or their armor is full-coverage and thus there is no minimum body or it’s a full body. And I can’t use a FULL body – the lower half must not exist. While I can make the upper part of the blue pants body transparent, I can’t do the same for the lower part of other body because the other body’s texture is used by ALL female khajiits. They would be floating around legless! I’ve got an idea that I may be able to use a non-CHSBHC upper body though – so I’ve still got hope. Meanwhile, I HAVE gotten a lot of other stuff done…
Pauldrons obviously, and I fixed the texture issue with the pants – and made them shiny. (I like shiny things.) I even tried making the main armor shiny, but – though these screencaps show the shiny version – I’ve gone back and put back the duller version so it wont have the sheen you see here (except her leggings – like I said, I like shiny!)
WARNING – MORE KHAJIIT BUTT AHEAD! HIDE THE CHILDREN!
Anyone who has worked on textures knows the bane of the “seams”. Seams are hard to avoid when you have a 2D texture laying over a 3D model.
Two are quite obvious here on her butt. I could try and minimize them, but then I realized that, in this particular case, they’re actually a benefit! While in reality her “pants” are really just bodypaint for all practical purposes. But those seams, normally a bad thing, help create the illusion that the pants ARE leggings and not just paint. Ok, not MUCH, but a little bit at least. So I’m going to leave those as-is.
I had another problem – hard to see in screenshots, but just above her tail there was a section where both the upper body AND lower body textures were in the exact same place. Causes weird flashing colors when that occurs as one texture gets slightly over the other and then vice-versa. I solved that with some VERY careful editing of the blue texture to just the point where the upper body starts. End result is good as the tail actually joins with the upper body texture and not “poking through” the blue.
If you look close, you’ll spot a bit of clipping (blue poking through the armor) at her hip. I should be able to fix that too with some careful texture work. So I’ve got quite a bit of tweaking to do when I’m finally finished with the last major hurdle – the ability to tone down her curves to a reasonable level! But I’ve a fighting chance now and the end is in sight.
So, with some luck on my current plan to use a non-CHSBHC model for the upper half minimal-size version, I might just be able to pull this off yet! If it works, the next update may actually show Katia’s sammich-loving sister trimmed down and with some breast-reduction and butt reduction – they go together. Just so you needn’t fear that her butt must always be so… well… round?
bdprequel 