Yeah i'm kinda t/o'd cause tes cs wiki used to have a sword tutorial that explained everything but they edited it adding new stuff into that tutorial but taking tons out of it. Thanks for the help on the previous topic, and it was unriddled so to speak. hehe, and btw i post new forms since my other one will not have the "New" by it's name when browsing through topics. k so new questions.

1. This is the number one thing stopping me right now, and my priority of things to learn. My sword is fine but to make the custom hand guard i am making i need to make a new add/mesh/circle/6 sided. but when i add any mesh they are literally microscopic. i use the scale (s) and keep moving it in one direction but i never see it so i delete it again. (I delete it cause i don't want seemingly flys around the sword....) when i started the sword any and all meshes i added were pretty large and i didn't have to zoom in our out to see them. whatever zoom i am in at that time would auto size the mesh until i scale it. So how do i change it back and or what did this? i don't remember doing anything except once or twice hitting the wrong button (i blame 1.5 liters of Dr. Pepper and no sleep since 36 hours ago.) P.S. if your thinking i'm dumb enough to be making the mesh and looking at it from the side thus it being too thin to see ur wrong, i checked into that and even tried a cube.

2. This would really be nice but i guess wouldn't kill me if i didn't know (Last question might....) But for some reason if i view my sword from "side" or "Front" or "top" or the set angles i can see it from that angle. If i hold Shift+hold scroll and move mouse "To move camera on an axis and not change the angle" then i can still see it. but if i flip the screen as in move the camera to a point where it's upside down or pointing at me or anything like that, it starts to disapear. The way it disapears is like a stick into water, only part of it is disapeared at one point and the more u move it into that point the more OF it gets disapeared. Once again might have been cafiene/hitting wrong buttons, but if so which one was it and how can i change it?

3. This is for future reference so i'm atm not in a rush to know this question and the next one. say their is one vertice on the hand guard of the sword that i need to make 3 vertices come out of, how would i do that? (3 is an example, it might be 5, 9, etc). Also i did figure out how to fill in holes between multiple vertices, but how do i make a line between two vertices?

4. This is ultra important but i probably won't be to this part till a day or two from now. How do u make items glow in oblivion. The main thing i want is to have enchantments text on the outside of the armor but i want the enchantments to glow, not the whole armor. In other words the darker it gets that the object is in, the brighter it gets, and the closer to a wall or ground it gets, the more the light reflects of the wall or ground. I know it would be some mass modding to make it to the point that the wall, ground, puddles etc reflects it well enough to actually read it on the wall so i'm not bothering with that. I'm planning on doing this on both a new armor i'm making and also this sword. Basically the kind of glow i want is similar to how a lit torch reacts as u get closer to walls and such. I know this is possible since i've seen similar armors with glow in the dark eyes or something. and if you are thinking just give it the light source that the torch has, i want it to be any color i want it to be, maybe make multiple ones (colors anywhere from purple, to white, to black, to green etc).

5. similar to the previous question, how do i make something like a blade shine? I've seen sword mods that get to the point that they reflect whats around them but mainly i just want light sources to shine off of it and wouldn't mind maybe blurry reflections of objects, npcs etc. Also how would i do this on armor as well?

6. This is the lest important out of all of these questions because, i modded up intil a few months ago and just started again 2 days ago, and also have dl'd new mods. but i have dl'd a few body meshes/textures etc. And last time i did that and i tryed to open a body mesh (hands, feet, upper, lower, head) the path the tutorial gave me was halted because some of the files were missing. I believe it's because the vanilla oblivion files were replaced with the new textures and such. so i'm wondering if anyone who has a complete vanilla oblivion, no mods, or someone that has it uninstalled and can install it fresh, could maybe send me a copy of the vanilla data files. I mean i could make it for the body meshes i'm using, but most of the body meshes that are none vanilla will give an error when i try to upload. plus i'd like to make a version for the people and or kids that don't want the large breast huge ass skins i use. (I believe it's the ones that are like 7 'atm' in the top 100 on tesnexus.com)

7. and just a curiousity question, has anyone made animations into capes or cloaks or anything such as they at least tilt toward away from the oncoming wind, or flex/wrinkle on the floor when u sit. It's kinda an example question to me cause i'm wondering if it's possible to have armor animations such as maybe a mini crossbow that unfolds out of the arm or maybe even an assasins creed kind of concealed blade.

Thanks so much for any and all help and if i get the answers i need i hope to have my mod on this site... seeing as how atm i have tons of free time on my hands.



Btw i know a lot of people have gone to 3ds max and other 3d programs since blender is some what fossilized, but if you know how to do any of the things i'm asking, and u don't know what buttons it would be on blender, if you could give me the name of the action i can look it up. example: Form mirror, Sharpen edges, etc.

Please only make one thread, it's easier to keep track of information.

Dunno blender, but believe there is a process to making faces, it's mentioned here
http://canadianice.ufrealms.net/forum2/ind...hp?topic=9160.0

Most people who use blender use primitaves, and then move and join verticies. As far as the Wiki tutorials, the only ones I remember seeing were based around already having a weapon mesh made, and just trying to export it for used in game. However most of them were written over 2 years ago, so have information which is no longer valid. They still exist, but you'll have to search for them.

Camera angles in most 3d programs don't handle looking at the bottom of stuff to a specific point too well. Most modeling (not Oblivion, but in general) is vertically oriented (with the long dimention pointing into the Z axis) which is why view panning and rotation tend to be more reliable, and easier to control along this axis.

Not sure on 3, don't use blender

With 4, not sure I'm understanding this right, but in general, everything which is enchanted glows. Glow mapping only makes those parts of the weapon or whatever glow when in a dark environment. The glow doesn't seem to affect how enchantment shaders function, and don't usually work when any significant light is shining on it. The glow also doesn't actually produce any illumination. You cannot give anything other than a defined light, light charistics. Which means that as far as worn items go, only an equipped torch will cast any light, and you cannot equip a torch anywhere other than the torch slot. As far as reflections go, within Oblivion, they are greatly simplified. Water will only reflect static things, like trees, rocks, and bridges. Reflections on everything else are more of just a highlight, and do not actually bounce back an image of what they are facing.

Shinyness is controled by the alpha channel of the normal map. Again, this is just how it reacts to light, and doesn't make the item reflective in the general sense. Think of it like very crumpled tinfoil. you still get a shinyness to it, but you do not see any reflection of objects.

The files you were probably missing were probably the skeleton files. Like all vanilla files, these can be extracted from the .bsa archives. Extracting these to the location in your data folder will overwrite anything which has been done by body mods (and may break those mods or anything for them). What might work, provided you have 10-15gb free, is to make yourself an extract folder somewhere, and extract all the meshes and models from the .bsa archives there. Provided that the directory structure is maintained, anything imported should link properly for anything else it needs.

Capes and cloaks cannot interact with the environment. Nothing which is worn can. Although technically supported by the engine, it is disabled within Oblivion. The likely reason for this was because it required alot more processing and rendering power than what most people have, given Oblivion's environment, or because they could never make it look right. As far as the wind goes, only trees are affected by it, and that is mostly so that you know its there. Equipped items are just weighted to react a certain way with the skeleton they're parented to, this is all that they can use as far as motion is concerned. The closest you could get to a moving cape would be to weight it to some of the bones used by tails, but that requires setting a beast skeleton for everyone (and can lead to game instability). Everything else really just isn't feasable in any way within Oblivion. It's a much more generalized engine, and special things like that usually have to be coded to work specifically within that game.

As far as 3ds max vs blender goes. There is alot more beginner type tutorials available, and the .nif exporter is far more advanced than the one for max. Although blender may seem a bit more simplified, this is because it is often used by non-professionals who want to do modeling, and likewise, you will find more people who use blender. 3ds max is more the tool of people who have some logical reason for dropping a grand and a half, and are either doing something 3d related professionally, or considder it a more beneficial hobby than drinking. It also tends to require alot more effort to learn anything with because it is geared toward the professional, and those training centers who earn money teaching it. Likewise, alot of the names for commands are different, or follow a different process.