A few weeks ago, I was chatting with one of the Elder Scrolls fanfiction writers I’ve been following, Tyranidlord.
I thought it might be interesting to see if I could accurately render his two main characters, both of whom are rather interesting physically. Each of them is going to present a challenge, but we’ll start with Kaius.
Kaius is, at least at first, supposed to be just another one of those tough bastards that the Imperial Legion is known for.
So, of course, I requested some pictures of Kaius:
As we can see, Kaius is a reclusive sort of fellow and evidently very patient, if he’s putting up with Sofia. The man is a saint. I’d have gone up to Helgen just to see if I could track down that special gag the Imperials put on Ulfric…. But I digress–
From the images, I could see that Kaius is a medium to dark-skinned Imperial and that he has dark eyes and hair.
But, it appears that Kaius nothing too fancy– just a modification of the first Imperial preset. So I tinkered with a few sliders and did a touch of sculpting to smooth out the vertices around the chin and cheek area. It’s not perfect, but it will do:
The hair in this shot is one of the Redguard hairs from Beyond Skyrim-Bruma. I’ve cropped out the slider settings in Racemenu since for some reason they were showing incorrect information. The face/body skin mismatch here is due to me working simultaneously on some of the textures.
I am using a mod called Unique Character V 1.1 (WARNING NSFW link) which was apparently on Nexus long ago but no more. I find it more useful than Ishara’s Custom Body or Custom Races for my purposes- but the net effect is the same: As a PC, Kaius will have meshes and textures which are exclusive to him now. This makes testing very convenient for, say, trialing a look for a custom NPC.
I had gotten a description of one of Kaius’ facial scars, and I figured he might have a couple more. I used assets from EveryBody’s Different’s texture resource packs for the male facial scars, and to make his horizontal under-eye scar, went back to the .png source images from BI Phenotypes.
This was my first test as shown in nifskope, on the generic male head mesh.
And here is Kaius’ face with the scars in place:
Next, I started thinking about body meshes and maps.
Kaius uses Schlongs of Skyrim as his base body mesh, not because he needs to be..er…equipped, but because I’m used to working with it and have a fair number of texture sets worked out for it already. Once I’m finished, it should be no issue to swap in a static mesh model from Vitruvia or something similar. I believe all of these bodies are based on the old FavoredSoul meshes. [EDIT– Static mesh Vitruvia is indeed what I did for NPC-Kaius.]
Kaius’ skin is mostly based on Veteran Skin by ZwabberdieBo who also makes my current ENB, Caffeine. While I have not used Veteran Skin much yet, that is because it is meant for a more mature and muscular build and I haven’t yet assembled the two characters I had in mind for it. But, it ought to be perfect for Kaius.
So let’s review– as we know, bodies in-game change appearance based on the four maps they all possess: the diffuse map, the normal map, the subsurface map, and the specular map. The first two maps will make the biggest difference in terms of changing what a character will look like. The weight slider will also have some effect.
Here is a good example of the differences you can get in body structure based on varying the diffuse and normal maps, as well as the weight slider:
Cyrelian is mostly Vitruvia– both its diffuse and normal maps. This is a relatively subtle and not very muscular map. Cyrelian’s normal map is not custom at all. His diffuse map has some other elements added to it, lots of Frecklemania, but it is mostly Vitruvia/scarred/hairy. I believe I added a small amount of chest hair to Cyrelian and emphasized the scars. His weight is 30.
Here you can see the differences in body maps clearly– Cyrelian’s normal map shows that he has relatively little muscular definition across chest and abdomen, though it’s clear from his arms and shoulders that he isn’t a complete layabout. His freckles and part of his chest hair are painted on top of his diffuse map. In this picture, his facial markings are a Racemenu warpaint overlay.
Ahtar’s skin textures and normal map have extensive editing to add in his scarring. His chest hair is also painted on the diffuse map. I believe that his weight is set at 85 in this picture. His diffuse and normal textures are made from Better Males.
The younger version of Ahtar is almost entirely made from Better Males and his weight is set somewhere around 40. He’s got a bit of a neck mismatch but I think it may be raining — that’s the newest ENB.
Marcus is mostly Fair Men/Real Men with other elements added. Marcus’ normal map is a meld but is mostly Milkdrinker. While I originally wanted to use one of the slimmer body meshes for Marcus, I didn’t like how it turned out for him, so he’s also based on the original Schlongs of Skyrim mesh at weight 0.
And Marcus’ old maps–
As you can see, Marcus’ old body had less muscular definition and a slightly different look to the arms and legs. There are significant differences on both the normal and specular maps.
So getting back to Kaius–I tried a couple of different skins out:
This is what he looks like with Vitruvia. Obviously this will not be suitable for him.
Here’s a couple of other trial skins I rejected, most of which I believe are based on Better Males– these are too smooth and too sleek for a man whose life has been an endurance-test of combat. Do you really get gym-toned abs by fighting off vampires and dremora? I really didn’t think so.
So then I thought to try Veteran Skin, a skin which is heavily muscled and not in the least bit pretty:
That’s better, isn’t it? I didn’t think it would be suitable to have him all the way up at the higher weights, given his origin as an Imperial Ranger, and the fact that he always seems to be dashing off to deal with some horrific crisis. I don’t imagine he starves, but I also doubt he gets much of a chance to sit around at the pub eating cheese and drinking cider. So he is at weight 40.
Kaius is built from Veteran Skin, with some bits and pieces from Vitruvia in both his diffuse and normal maps. He has also had some details added to his diffuse map from a mod no longer available, Complete Male Overhaul; and from New Male Texture for SoS– the body hair only.
I am currently using the default subsurface and specular maps which come with Veteran Skin.
Underpants courtesy of El Men’s Underwear the lore-friendly Retexture.
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