Explanation

This is a continuation of my Custom Cuirass in Blender tutorial. If you haven't done the first part, this one is unlikely to be helpful. A quick reminder: There is more than one way to do this, and this is just the method that I've found to be effective for me. If you have another one, write another tutorial.

New Shortcuts in Blender for This Tutorial

These are new since Part 1 and will be referred to in this tutorial: CTRL-w: Save a file. p: separate selected vertices into a new mesh. CTRL-a: Apply size and rotation before export. u: UV unwrap selected vertices or faces.

The Pauldrons

Adding pauldrons is optional. This is a little tricky if we're choosing not to add verts. What I usually do is to copy a big patch of vertices from the shoulder section of BOTH shoulders in Edit Mode using select and shift-D, then g-z to slide them up above the original shoulders to somewhere we can work on them easily. Depending on what pauldron shape you’ll want, you might have to subdivide all these vertices. These will be your proto-pauldrons. Then I select just the outer row of vertices on one “pauldron” and do g-z again to drag them slightly downwards. Next select two that are opposite each other and press alt-m and “at center” when that comes up. This merges the two vertices into one.

Repeat until you have a closed shape that is roughly domelike. This will be your pauldron. Give it the shape you want by using the g and the axis keys before you lower it back down onto the shoulders. I don’t recommend joining the mesh to the cuirass, because that can make texturing much harder later on. I do recommend doing each change you make on one pauldron, then the other, in a continuous way. It can be hard to replicate all the changes from one pauldron on the other side otherwise. You can just make one and copy it, but then the weight paint will be wrong for the side it’s on and you’ll have to rename all the bones to which that particular pauldron is painted (this is done in Edit Mode).

Alternately, you can make the pauldrons totally from scratch and copy the weight paint onto them using the Easy Rigging in Blender tutorial on this site. You will then also need to redo the UV map.

The Arm Section

Now when you make this part of the cuirass, you need to have a couple of things in mind. If you want a sleeveless look, you don’t need to do anything here; you’ll just leave the bare arm sections with your cuirass.

If you want an armband look, you can do the same as you did with the cuirass: copy the arm sections and enlarge them using ALT + s. I recommend molding the edges of these also as described in Part 1, so that it's obvious they have some thickness to them.

Once again, toggling the wireframe (z key) is an excellent way to make sure things overlap just right, or to select vertices that are behind other vertices.

Once you get the copied arm sections situated, trim away whatever you don’t want. Remember, gauntlets usually cover part of the wrist, so unless you have a very clear and specific idea what gauntlets you want to make/use you don’t want to put things there.

If you want multiple, separate parts of the arm section, it's very easy to do. Go ahead and shape everything the way you want it. Then go to Edit Mode and select just the vertices you want to be a different mesh. Press the P key and choose “selected” from the dialogue that pops up.

The vertices you chose are instantly an all-new, separate mesh. This can be very useful.

Optional: The Skirt/Kilt Section

Bethesda’s default cuirass meshes generally have a lower section that protects the hip/groin areas of the body. This overlaps the greaves and provides additional protection over them. However, it creates some issues with fit. This is why this part of Bethesda meshes tends to be so large; it has to fit over every type of greaves in the game to avoid clipping.

If you want a shorter cuirass, you don’t have to include this. Or, if you wish, you can include this section with the greaves instead of the cuirass to make your cuirass compatible with more different greave styles. Remember, using the p key technique you can separate any mesh into as many parts as you want.

If you do want to include this section, there are a couple of ways to do it. One is to import a game cuirass and delete everything but the skirt (don’t forget the skeleton!), then scale and subdivide and grab and drag that into the shape and size you want. Don’t forget to parent this to your skeleton, or you’ll get a really odd look ingame. If you want something longer, do the same thing with a plain skirt mesh from the game.

Alternately, you can select a ring of verts on the lower torso at the waist. Press shift+D and then p. Go to object mode and select your new "mesh" (which is just a ring of verts). Go back to edit mode and extrude into the shape you want by pressing e and dragging verts downward. You will need to recalculate the normals outward if you do this, and again, you will have to UV map and rig it.

Bonus Section: Editing the Default Game UV Maps

Bethesda’s default UV maps for their body meshes look nice In the UV screen, but once you get them out and start trying to texture them, you realize that they are somewhat difficult to work with. The femaleupperupperbody.nif in particular has considerable distortion in the chest areas. It is very difficult to texture over UV maps with no straight lines in them.

Before I get into what I’m about to propose, you need to be familiar with the UV window and where it is.

Here is a dress whose upper bodice I made using a method similar to the one for the cuirass above: SickleYield's Regency Ballgown

I then discovered that I wanted to paint folds on the bodice, but it was impossible with the UV map as it was and my limited drawing talents. After much flailing, swearing and muttering, this is what I did.

I went into UV Face Select mode in Blender. (Now you do this in edit mode because Blender's later versions have no UV Face Select.) Then I used the bounding circle (b,b) to select the front half and ONLY the front half of the bodice. Then I went to the UV screen, which I had in a small window off to one side. It was showing the section I had selected with its overly-curvy original UV map.

Then I went to the UV dropdown and selectedunwrap (You can also just press the u key.) Suddenly my UV map was beautifully flat. I repeated this with the back half and laid them one above the other in the UV screen, so that they could still be used on the same texture.

Now, what you get by doing this is still rather curvy for us to use a flat phototexture over it. So then I used the weld commands (w,2 and w,3) to straighten the lines where possible. On female chest sections, you’ll sometimes just have to learn how to draw lines curved on the UV to make them look straight in-game.

If you straighten lines too much, you’ll get a bizarrely stretched texture that won’t look right. If you don't straighten them enough, texturing them will be much harder.

You can also use seams to make your UV map turn out better. This is just like a seam in a real garment - it tells Blender that there is a break in the mesh there and to act accordingly. So when doing the above, instead of selecting all the front verts and then all the back ones, I could have put a seam up each side instead. To make a seam, select a row of vertices and press ctrl+e and choose "mark seam." You can use the same command to clear seams as well. Play around with this a little and UV mapping gets vastly easier.

It's easy to select a whole row of vertices in Blender. Choose one at each end of the row, then press w+alt+7 and "edge length" when that comes up. Usually this will give you a nicely selected row. You can try using select-edge loop, but that doesn't work well on meshes that are not evenly curved.

Export: Putting It All Together

It has now probably been several hours of staring at your screen, swearing violently at Blender, et cetera, and your cuirass hopefully now looks like you want it to look.

First, highlight your new cuirass mesh (or all meshes if you have more than one). You should have NO skeleton in your file at this point! We have to import a clean one for things to work out well in game.

It's time to import a skeleton. Go to file-import-netimmerse/gamebryo. Navigate to meshes/characters/_male/skeleton.nif. (It will not be there unless you have unpacked your .bsa files and/or are using a skeleton replacer.) A screen pops up with your import options. Choose "skeleton only + parent selected" and then import.

Now you should be able to grab the skeleton and move it around. If you did things right, your new meshes will move with it. Do not try to export until after your UV and weight painting are all done. Before you export, be sure and press ctrl+a to apply your changes.

Make sure you’ve saved your finished project in Blender. You can save by pressing CTRL-W.

We don’t have to add textures or materials, because they’re already there. You’ll want to add different textures, so you won’t have a fleshtoned cuirass, but I’ll show you how to do that in NifSkope.

Now make sure you've selected the skeleton and export, using the settings we did back in part I. A screen will come up that lets you name your cuirass and decide where to export it.

Minimize Blender when you’ve exported, then click through the Data files on your computer until you find your cuirass.nif in the armor section. Now we'll do what we have to do to make our cuirass actually show up in Oblivion.

Necessary NifSkope Alchemy

And guess what? This section was once long, but is now basically obsolete thanks to the wonderful makers of the NIF scripts. Basically, you need to open up your mesh in NifSkope only to change textures and materials and maybe export the UV map. You can export the map of one piece by selecting that mesh, then right clicking. Then choose textures-export UV map and tell it where you want the map saved. You can use this for texturing.

If you get a mesh that crashes the game after this, the odds are good you did not export with a skeleton or exported with two.

Note on Skin Pieces

If there is skin showing, you need to make sure every skin piece's material is named "skin" and nothing more. Blender sometimes will change it to skin.001 or similar when exporting, which will cause people wearing it to always appear Imperial from the neck down instead of their actual race. Make sure the armor parts are NOT named skin, because then your armor will be textured like flesh and will look very odd. Naming the material “armor” will generally give good results in Oblivion. There are other things you can do with materials, but we won't cover them here.

The section of your cuirass that covers the arms must have "arms" in the name of the nitristrips or nitrishape in NifSkope, as in "cuirass:arms" or "upperbody:arms." Otherwise it will not show up in first person.

Now File-Save. You can replace your original exported cuirass, or give this one a new name if you like.

Adding/Changing the Textures

I'm not going to tell you how to make a texture from scratch here, but once you have one, here's what you do to assign it to your mesh. First, make sure you put your texture in a folder somewhere in Oblivion/Data/Textures. Please don't just dump it into the Textures folder, which creates clutter with other mods, but make a new folder for your own textures and give it a name you and others can remember.

Now go to your open mesh in NifSkope. Expand the nitrishape node. Expand the nisourcetexture node. You should see a line with a little flower next to it which is labeled nisourcetexture. If you made your cuirass from body parts, this will probably have the imperial body texture in it already. Double-click, delete that, and type in the path to your own texture. It will usually look something like data\textures\armor\cuirass.dds. This tells NifSkope where your texture is.

For now I'll leave it that the texture must be a .dds file and it must have a normal map, which is called something like cuirass_n.dds. You don't have to assign that in NifSkope. As long as it is in the same folder as your texture, it will work fine in Oblivion.

You can leave the parts that are supposed to be flesh with the Imperial body texture on them. As long as you made sure the material is called skin and nothing but that, it will be changed to match whatever race is wearing the armor or clothing. The body parts will still have the same UV map no matter what, though, so don't expect Exnem's textures to look right on the default armor or Fantasy Figures textures to look right on BAB armor.

==Important Tip: Making Meshes Double-Sided in NifSkope==

I still recommend molded edges, but if you aren't able to do that or do want to create an impression of very thin material, you can do this instead.

If you look at your mesh in NifSkope from the right angle, you will realize you can only see it from one side – from the “back” or “inside” it's invisible. This doesn't matter if no one can see that side of the mesh, but often they can, and it will look wrong in-game. We can fix this.

Click on the nitrishape of your mesh that you want to be double-sided. Now right-click and choose Block – insert. Choose nistencilproperty. It's under the letter "s" because all the options start with "ni."

NifSkope will probably bump this NiStencilProperty all the way down to the bottom of your list of nodes. That's okay. Click on it and choose block-copy again. Now go up and click on your nitrishape and paste the stencil property into it. It should now show up in the hierarchy of the nitrishape, where it belongs.

When you click on the nistencilproperty in the block list, the detail screen down below should show you something that says DRAW_CCW_OR_BOTH. Click on the dropdown and change it to DRAW_BOTH, like this.

Now you should magically be able to see both sides of your mesh with the texture shown on both.


=Getting The Mesh Into The Construction Set=

Double click on the construction set icon on your desktop to load up the CS. If you don't have this icon on your desktop, I urge you to put it there right now. Now wait for it to load. This may take a while, and then there will be very few items on the screen. That's because we haven't loaded any data files.

Click file - data in the top menu. You should see a list of all the mods on your computer here. If you don't have any, it'll probably just show oblivion.esm. Click on that so that a little "X" appears next to it, making it active, and then click "OK."

Now wait for THAT to load. Or come back in two years.

Eventually it will finish loading and you can see every object in the game and every cell in Tamriel. Find the objects window, which has a list that says "Actors," "Items," etc. Click on Items to expand it, then click on Armor. Now you see a list of all the armor sets in the game. You can click on one set, say "Glass" or "Daedric," in the left-hand pane and it will show you all the pieces in just that set in the right-hand one. Pic.

Choose a cuirass that has the kind of stats you want. Glass and Daedric are very popular because they are the best light and heavy armor in the game. Don't choose one that says "arena" anywhere in the ID, because those have scripts on them that we don't want. Double click the cuirass of your choice to bring up its information. Click on the name of the nif (say, glass/f/cuirass.nif). A little window will pop up with the data directory in it. Click through until you find your own new cuirass mesh. Click on that and click "OK". Your mesh name should now appear in the window.

Notice that there is a space here for a separate mesh for both male and female versions of the cuirass. If you want both sexes to be able to wear your armor and look good in it, you need to make meshes for both. Otherwise you get terrible-looking armor when the opposite sex wears it, the way it generally happens with Bethesda's original Crusader cuirass from KOTN or the Steel and Dwarven cuirasses from the default game.

You'll also need to create a path to a new icon, which you can make easily in GIMP using this method: [[http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Better_Icons_The_Easy_Way_With_GIMP Easy Icon Tutorial]]

Now, this is different from swords and shields. You need a world object, so that your cuirass will be visible when a character drops it in the game. I will link to a method for that as soon as I've made a tutorial for it.

This next part is very important. You need to change the ID of the new cuirass, not just the name. The ID is above the name and looks something like "GlassCuirass" or "DaedricCuirass". You must change this to a new ID such as "AAMyCuirass," or you will replace every glass cuirass in the game with yours. Be sure and give it a unique name, too. I put the AA designation in this test cuirass so that it will be up at the top of the list and easier to find.

When that is done, click OK. You'll get a message asking if you want to create a new form ID. ALWAYS SAY YES.

=Getting the New Cuirass Into the Game=

Now your cuirass will appear in thearmor list. It will be listed alphabetically by its ID, although you can change the sorting method by clicking the headings of the list. If you keep it in a separate folder such as Data\meshes\armor\TestArmor and don’t just drop it into Data\meshes\armor, the Construction Set will create a special tab just for you under the Armor list over on the left.

Now you can drop the cuirass into the inventory of a merchant, into your house, or into the street of a random city. If you already have a quest all planned out, you can do that, too, but I don’t plan to cover that here. Go to file - save in the main CS menu and give your mod a name. Close the CS. This might take a while. It might even crash. This is okay, because we already saved.

After all that work, you can now go into the game and see where you screwed up.

Ha ha. Just a little bitter humor there, based on the number of times it normally takes to playtest before an acceptable version is reached. Don’t worry, the cuirass is the hardest piece of armor to create; everything after this is cake. To facilitate this process, modders will often create a new container in Hawkhaven, the testing hall, or another cell that can only be reached with a console code and put all of their armor into that container. This makes playtesting easier. You can then set up your armor in a shop or quest (or whatever) when you're sure it all looks the way you want it to.

Making armor takes time, but before long you’ll get used to the steps and it goes much faster. There’s nothing like the satisfaction of seeing a character wearing your new armor for the first time.