AAAnd, if I’m going to have Kitty in a bikini, I had to agree to take her to the beach… “You know, it’s a great start and all, but this cloak does weird things when you lay down.” – Kitty Yeah, I know – but that’s inherent in any cloak mod I’m afraid. But NORMAL in game poses should be fine for the most part.
“Well, good job BD. Come here and let me give you a hug!” – Kitty Really? SURE!
“YOU WISH! Keep dreamin’ dweeb. We’ll talk when you get me into some decent clothes.” – Kitty Sigh. Well, next I’ve got to start doing some transparency-scissors work and get these trimmed to be shaped more like the Cloak of Gray Tomorrow. “You’re going to take MORE cloth away from me?!!” – Kitty
Alas, the Dragon Priest cloak from Cloaks of Skyrim mod was not all I hoped it would be:
So it doesn’t wrap around the front at all. The “v” cut in the back really isn’t that big a deal either – I have learned how to “cut” models by making parts of them transparent so I can cut a v in anything really. Think of it as having a great pair of scissors but no sewing needle. I can subtract, but I can’t add. And where a hood would be, there’s nothing. But while I had the mod installed, I wanted to see some others…
COUNT KATIA! Ok, no hoodie. Neck thing is rediculous (but remember those scissors!). Does wrap around pretty good though. Frankly, this is the most likely I’ve found yet (with a lot of cutting!). But obviously it still doesn’t cover anything in the front.
The rest all appear to be variations on this theme (though I’ve only looked at a FEW, there must be HUNDREDS in this mod!) Different colors, textures and lengths but all basically similar:
There are quite a few with hoodie-type things on the back though.
So, what to do… Best from this mod that I’ve seen is Dracula cloak (Daedric technically but throw some red inner lining in and we’ve got dracula!) Do I want to start work on this, knowing that it won’t look canon? Frankly, I don’t think so. Not yet anyway. I want to see a few other mods first before I commit. So, no mod work yet. Besides, I haveotherstuff to do too.
Well, I went ahead and posted my entry. Frankly, it sucks. I regret at least a little bit having taken the time to do it. But now that it’s done, at least I can move on to other things.
I did use Nalim’s catsuit mod as, while it’s a catsuit, it’s a more believable one with seams and a leather-ish texture. Made it gray and darkened the buckles in the front so they’d blend in better. It’s based on the original Skyrim body which keeps the bust a reasonable size (appropriate for Katia)
The cloak itself is “grey linen” cloak from the other mod I’d mentioned. I actually based the color of the catsuit on it rather than the other way around. If meant for stealth, grey would be the way to go after all. Black is much easier to see than grey (gray? whatever.)
It is equipped with a hood, though not really wear-able in Skyrim. I left her without gloves/boots as 1. – I don’t think those would be included in the box and 2. – I didn’t have time to mod any existing ones to grey – they look cool in black but that sort of ruins the point for grey IMHO.
It’s got a neat effect you can’t see too well in screenshots when crouching, her face goes dark and swirly mystical smoke sort of curls around her. Eye’s therefore become quite bright. Pretty nifty and appropriate. When the final CoGT outfit is chosen and I make a mod for it, I’ll want to include that.
Ok, enough of my failed attempt at a CoGT suggestion. I know a good one from a bad one and, though in my mind it looked cool, in reality it does kinda suck. Fortunately there’s a LOT of really good ones coming in now. So this one can go in the Recycle Bin and I won’t feel too bad about it. Just too bad I cant get those 2 hours back! 😉
I may take a (SHORT!) hiatus from KM updates in the near future. The
Cloak of Grey Tomorrow outfit in Prequel has me intrigued. When the
winner is decided, I’m going to go full steam ahead to design a Skyrim
mod for it and may get a chance to use it in KM once done. I’ve already
established that she’s left some “stuff” in the Whiterun inn. That may
include the CoGT outfit if so. Probably the enchantment may be worn
off so it might not DO anything, but it would be a great way to
introduce a new outfit to KM. (and maybe work as pajamas – sleeping in Arena armor can’t be comfortable – and Skyrim doesn’t allow for blankets apparently.)
I also have my own idea of what it
should look like. Since I can’t draw, I may try and create a mod and
screenshot that to the Fanart page as another entry. Mine will include a
catsuit underneath, probably based on this existing mod but with modified coloring:
Because… catsuits are appropriate in every conceivable way. 🙂
Also,
I’m finally going to reveal H with the next update. I need to NOT have
him offscreen all the time if he’s going to be a character. Maiq has a
twin brother (or maybe it actually IS Maiq! He must do SOMETHING
besides wandering around Skyrim all the time.)
If I can do this
next update as I intend, it will be the largest scene I’ve done yet so
it’s a bit intimidating. But I think it will work out OK.
Well, it’s an experiment. One thing I found right off is my style doesn’t fit cartoons format well. Too much exposition to fit in a couple balloons. Plus, the balloons get in the way of the screenshot. I may convert to image then text as I’ve done for a lot of this one and just keep the speech balloons completely out of the images. It kind of breaks the image/speech apart, but I feel like it’s worth the slightly unusual format to keep the images separate.
Probably won’t surprise anyone to notice that I found the facial expression/modification features before I posted this one! Some of them were quite fun to work with too. Along with some mouth positions, they really widen what I can do with screenshots.
I think I’ll keep Mr. H offscreen too. After all, we all self-insert as the man behind the camera to some extent anyway don’t we? That may get a bit tricky to pull off though. I do imagine him as a Khajiit though, for what it’s worth.
Ok, enough for now. Comments always welcomed though!
This thing is taking forever – because I keep NOT working on it. But I did some more finally. When last we left, we had this texture file:
I’m now down to THIS texture file:
So I’ve really lightened the color, added the blue borders and “wolf” icon, changed the front skirt into leather fringy things and almost (but not quite) removed the rear of the skirt. I also did some modding of the “normal” file so the fringes don’t have the same roughness or pattern as the cloth sections – they stand out as more independent material that way. Result?
Coming along. Those shoulder pauldrons still needed, and some touchup in the back needed, but all in all, I’m pretty happy with the progress.
(All my starting/stopping of Skyrim for the work today popped Kaz into my chat to speculate on me modding – he was right of course. But I had to un-friend him in Steam so I wouldn’t keep bothering him with my constant start/stopping!)
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.
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…
bdprequel 