Blender/Custom Cuirass (part 1)

Introduction

This tutorial is a step-by-step guide for making a new cuirass in Blender by starting from the game body meshes. This has some limitations, but it also has the advantages that if you use it, you will not have to make new UV maps or weight paint. This is how I got my start with armor modeling, and it works best with a more fitted look, at least until you amass enough experience to push/pull the bodies into basically any shape at all.

Sample results from an unreleased mod work-in-progress (the cuirass is new, the pants are retextured):

[Dire Thirst Cuirass]

Before you do this tutorial, you need to know the techniques used in my [sword] and [shield] tutorials. I really wouldn’t do this one starting from no modding experience at all, but that’s up to you.

This is not a short tutorial because making armor is not a short process. It’s lots of fun, and the results can be amazing, but if you’re going to do it you need to be prepared to invest some time.

A big thanks to Growlf, who told me about subdivision and how to make double-sided meshes. I would never have started down the road of learning to model otherwise. Even bigger thanks to my friend Enigmatic, who taught me almost everything I've learned about Blender since then.

Important Preliminaries: Your Modding Toolbox

You will need:

1. A BSA unpacker such as TES4BSA.

2. The latest version of Blender, and a working knowledge of the program. It's complicated.

3. NifSkope, a powerful mesh editor.

4. The Blender NIF Scripts from Sourceforge, which allow export of meshes from Blender in the right format for Oblivion.

5. A graphics editor such as the GIMP. The link for the Blender tutorial page above also has some excellent instructions for GIMP. I use GIMP, and any texture instructions will be specific to that program.

To use GIMP for Oblivion, you'll also need the .dds plugin.

Important Warning: Blender/NIF Script Compatibility

Blender 2.43 works fine with the last version of the NIF scripts, though some will encounter occasional crashes on import or export. Restarting Blender usually fixes the problem. There is no version of the scripts for Blender 2.44 as of this writing on July 3, 2007. This means that if you want to make armor for Oblivion in Blender, you will have to use 2.43.

Configuring the NIF Scripts

Be sure to configure your NIF Scripts to version 20.0.0.4 (skip to the next section if you already have). You can do this by clicking on the little python emblem in the main menu to take you to the scripts screen. Then click on Scripts - System – Scripts Config Editor. Pic.

Choose Export – Netimmerse/Gamebryo.

Now you are looking at some settings. The NIF scripts' default is to have the Morrowind settings, so you need to change them to match Oblivion like this. Make sure the version number is 20.0.0.4 and NOT 4.0.0.2, and the size number needs to be 10. You can have the export directory be whatever you like.

Useful Blender Shortcuts

I’ll probably mention these throughout the tutorial, but you can always refer to this section if you forget one (or I do).

r: rotates the mesh from whatever direction you are viewing it. Use carefully or the results are very odd.

s: scale the entire mesh up or down by dragging the mouse up or down. Also drags the mesh out of alignment with the axes, especially z, so you’ll want to move it around afterwards.

ALT + s: shrink or fatten along normals. This may not mean anything to you, but it's actually what you wanted when you chose “s” nine times out of ten.

r and x, y, or z: rotates the selected mesh or vertices on the x, y or z axis.

s and x, y, or z: scales the mesh along an axis.

g and x, y, or z: grab and move selected a mesh or vertices on x, y, or z axis. Again, you can do this without x, y, or z, but you often won't end up with the position you want.

z: when used in edit mode, makes every vertex visible and the faces transparent. Very useful for selecting hidden vertices from any given angle.

b: a crosshair appears that you can click and drag to create a rectangular selection box.

b, b: a circle appears that you can scale up or down by rolling the mouse wheel to create a selection area.

Mouse wheel: hold down and drag to “roll around” the screen and look at the mesh from different angles. Hold down shift/wheel and drag right or left to move right or left only. Scroll mouse wheel up or down to zoom in and out.

Tab: switch between modes. If you're back and forth between Object and Edit a lot, which you will be, this can be useful.

Importing Necessary Body Parts and Skeleton

Start out by opening Blender by double-clicking the icon on your desktop. If this is your first time, you’re probably looking at a boring gray grid. If you want it to look different, refer to my Talk page (SickleYield) for a link to some nice themes for Blender. If you see a cube here, press a and then delete. Choose “yes.”

Okay. First we need a skeleton. Click on File-Import-Netimmerse/Gamebryo. If you don’t have that option, you probably haven’t installed the NIF scripts correctly. Now you have a menu showing some directory on your computer. Click around until you’re in your BSA folder of unpacked Oblivion data files (mine is c:\oblivionbsa). Go to data\meshes\armor\arenaheavyblue\f. Double-click cuirass.nif, then click Okay to import it.

Now you have the entire Arena armor set in your Blender window, but you probably can’t see it because of the huge angular skeleton sticking out in all directions. Click the skeleton to select it. Now look down at the buttons window below. You should be able to see a display that says things like X-ray, Draw Names, Stick, et cetera. Click on Stick. Your skeleton is now a set of thin lines that don’t interfere with the mesh.

Now select and delete all the parts of the Arena armor you imported, but NOT the skeleton. This skeleton is one that the game will recognize as armor, but it also has enough bones that you can have a cuirass that goes to the ankles if you want.

Now let’s see the body. Import again, but this time go to data\meshes\characters\_male. Yes, Bethesda put all the female nifs in here, too. Now you should see a long list of nifs. I’ll start with femaleupperbody.nif, because I’m female and my characters usually are, too. If you want to do the male version of your cuirass first, you could use upperbody.nif. Double-click the mesh and press “Okay” to import it.

Now you should see a torso floating above the grid in Blender in Object mode (the default mode when you open Blender). It will probably be virtually obscured by the skeleton that came with it. Don’t worry, we don’t need that. Click on the skeleton to highlight it, then delete. Make sure you delete the one from the body, not the armor one that you just spent so much time clearing nifs from.

VERY IMPORTANT: Now click on the body, click on the skeleton, and press ctrl-P IN THAT ORDER. Then click armature and don’t create groups. This will make sure your new cuirass moves with the skeleton as it should.

Now repeat this process for femalelowerbody.nif, femalehand.nif, femalefoot.nif, and if you want, also humanhead.nif from the "imperial" folder (not the "_male" one). This should give you a complete body. I recommend that once you’ve gone to this much trouble, you save this as something like femalebody.blend. Then do File-Save As again and save it as mycuirass.blend (or whatever you wish). This way you’ll have a stored version of the body that you can use for future armor projects. I mostly work with Fantasy Figures and Robert's Male Bodies, but I try to keep a version of both sexes of whatever bodies I'm using for this sort of starter purposes. The pictures I'm making are using a smoothed-out version of Fantasy Figures Beta.

Just to recap, at this point you should be looking at your complete male or female body in Blender.

The Torso and Neck Line

Click on the middle of the female torso to select it. Now go to the dropdown that says Object Mode and switch to Edit Mode. The torso goes from a featureless surface to a network of connected dots, the vertices and faces of the mesh. With the default game topless mesh, the surface is smooth, and you can go straight to making a top out of it. This is why we use the topless one and not the lumpy bra version (that one is far too difficult to model with, at least for me). If you’re using a different body mesh like Corwyn’s or Biu’s, you might need to shrink the nipples so they don’t stand out and make it obvious this piece is from a body mesh.

Select a random vertex anywhere on the body by right-clicking it. Press g. Move the mouse around and observe how the vertex is dragged away from the body. You can use g and x, y, or z to drag the vertex on just one axis at a time. This is good, because otherwise you can get odd-looking results from the third dimension that you can’t see. Before you go hog-wild with this, I recommend going back to Object Mode, duplicating the torso section (shift-D) and scaling it to be a little larger than the body sections. This will drag it out of sync, so you might have to move it upwards using g-z. Try to get it to where there is no overlap or clip between the underlying torso and the duplicate that will become your mesh.

Now you have a body section and a proto-cuirass over it. Here’s another reason why we use the topless female mesh – now you can make a sleeveless or strapless look if you wish and not worry about the ugly bra straps. Select the larger duplicate and go back to Edit Mode.

Now it’s time for the fun part – making your cuirass torso look like a cuirass instead of just like smooth skin. I can’t tell you exactly what to do here, because it will depend on your preferences and art skills, but I’ll give you some suggestions based on my own projects.

Do’s and Don’ts

DO NOT:

-Distort vertices too far. This mesh is already weight-painted – it’s already been told which bones it should move with. If you move a vertex from breast level up to head level, it will still move like part of the breast section. And if you stretch a vertex very far from others near it, it will stretch the texture oddly.

-Add new vertices. They won’t be part of the weight painting or the UV map and will therefore screw your project royally. This is important because it will affect how your mesh looks with a texture on it, and even whether you can make that texture at all.

-Accidentally make your cuirass intersect the body sections under it. This is known as clipping, and it looks terrible in-game. To help avoid this, make sure you look at every change you make from more than one angle.

DO:

-Subdivide. If you select some vertices adjacent to each other and then go down to the buttons window in Edit Mode, you should be able to see a button that says “Subdivide.” Yes, you might have to hunt through a few tabs for it, because Blender’s edit screens have a lot of little buttons. This is a good thing, believe me. If you click Subdivide, it will double just the vertices you chose. One square will become four squares, a line of three vertices will become a line of six, and so on.

This will allow you to make spikes, for example, without a screwy UV map. Subdivide the area – say a circle of six vertices – that will be the spike, and subdivide it. Now raise the vertices, then raise the ones in the middle of them, then the central triangle or vertex (you might have to subdivide the central triangle to get a one-vertex point). Now the spike consists of several vertexes and you can put details on the texture of it rather than having an oddly stretched-looking section.

EXAMPLE: If you’re not sure what I mean by this stretching thing, have a look at the upperclass clothing burgundy and gold outfit on a female character in-game. See how distorted the lower part of the skirt is? It doesn’t take into account the stretching of the fabric with player movement. The vertices are further apart than planned, so the texture doesn’t look quite right there. You can avoid similar problems through subdivision.

Tips and Techniques

-Bear in mind whether or not you want to add pauldrons (details below). If so, don’t add a lot of decoration in the shoulder region.

-If you plan to include the upperbody section under the cuirass as part of it, you can show skin underneath. This is why I had you copy it. This way you can have different necklines by cutting off vertices, or you can have open sides that are closed with decorative fasteners (something I enjoy doing with my cuirasses). I’m not promoting skimpy armor – I try to always have mine cover the important organs and so on – but it’s a valid technique for making your cuirass actually look like it was made from pieces of skin sewed together, different bits of shell or metal, or et cetera.

-Remember, collar and hemline variations help to distinguish your cuirass from the plain old body mesh. Experiment with subdivision and grabbing to create new hem shapes, a mandarin collar, etc. For parts of the cuirass that need to have an “inside” showing, you can do this: Select the vertices you want copied. Press shift-D to duplicate them. Now the duplicate vertices will be highlighted instead of the originals, which is useful. Go down to the edit buttons and find the one that says “flip normals.” Click it. Voila, now that part of the mesh is double-sided and will be textured, too.

-Don’t forget to export the UV map of this section when you’re finished. Go to UV-save UV face layout. A screen will pop up that allows you to choose the directory in which to save a .tga of the UV map. It doesn't matter where you put it, as long as you can find it later. I always put mine in textures. They're not hard to locate, since the names are generally rather odd-looking. This is what you'll use to make a new texture that will actually fit your new mesh.

Helpful warning: Occasionally in Blender I've seen a glitch wherein Blender outputs a blank .tga file with nothing in it instead of the real UV map. If that happens, keep trying. Sometimes you'll need to change the name of your object (from "sphere" or whatever the default name was in Blender down in the edit screen). Sometimes this will also happen if you try to change the strange name Blender gives the UV map before you save it.

Continued in Custom Cuirass in Blender Part 2: Other parts of the cuirass, and how to export all of this.