I barely know blender but I am sitting here watching this guy fixing houses from Morrowind in blender like its my fulltime job. (I also ignore my actual job to watch this). 10/10
Custom normals in blender reaaaaally needs an overhaul. They are currently so messed up they can't even be implemented in geometry nodes, which would be extremely useful
Learned a lot from your video thanks for posting it. Would love to see you tackle the televani housepods someday in mop. I did fix them myself but would like to see a professional take on the process. Housepod 03 is expecially messed up.
I opened it up just to check how bad it is and done what I could. Sorry, out of camera. :P On one hand it's much simpler than Hlaalu houses, just single blob, but on the other it has major design flaws. At least it was something different. Top is single relaxed island, just must be warped a bit so that tit on geometry matches the texture. Same with pod. Gills looks the best when set to utilise whole height of the texture. Distortion is much worse than aligned to one edge only but seam with pod part gets masked a bit at least. I'm going over Hlaalu in preparation to fixing similar issues in Tamriel Data before Narsis release. My contributions to MOP are limited to things that bother me in game or are required to match with TD extensions.
Yes, I'm used to having UV window on second screen. When I have to show something and work with both on single monitor I struggle a lot, especialy as blender ui does not fit. Here it was not the point so I didn't bothered.
I was wondering the same thing, could be fake AO or it could also be a simple map texture that darkens certain areas of the base (diffuse / albedo) texture, morrowind being an old game doesn't use more advanced techniques and probably "bakes" a lot of the visual information into the textures. (I guess this is probably what you meant but in fewer words haha)
@@jin3121 Now I wonder if there is some tool or plugin that allow to convert AO map to vertex colors. UPD: Answer is Blender addon - Bake to vertex color on Gumroad. So one can also create AO with Blender or Substance Painter and then convert it to Vertex Color.
@@MoonnyMoo Yes, most 3D software comes with built-in tools or community plugins for generating "Ambient Occlusion" or shadow vertex colors. This method can be a cost-effective way to add detail to games, especially when working with older game engines. However, caution is needed when using shader injectors like ENBSeries, which includes an external AO shader. Combining dark textures, vertex color shadows, and external or in-engine AO can sometimes result in overly dark or "crushed" assets, where the black or shadowed areas lose detail.
Morrowind does support AO textures. (kind of, not in PBR sense. It's still phong lighting model after all) They can even use separate UV set. Same material slot can be used also for alpha mask. Keeping it as vertex data is ofc takes much less memory and it had to fit into few MBs of first x-box vram. Besides fake AO, it's also used to break tiling and add some grim details.
as for split by material problem, it was the same issue in 3Ds Max. Workaround for it was to make a copy of the object for each material and remove faces for any other material from that copy. This can be 100% "one click" solution.
I started in max but engine I developed for supported only smoothing flags directly exported from it back then. Were custom normals even a thing in 3ds 25 years ago? Maybe that is a cause why those buildings looks like that. Most modders nowadays is way more experienced in both tools and engine than Bethesda devs were during development.
@ as long as edit normals modifier was present. And then, they had to be set to "explicit" to survive some topology manipulations. Each other modifier being able to change topology data ( edit poly ) was removing ( resetting ) all vertex normal data. Now, since few max versions, all is stable, even boolean are not changing them, which is fantastic.
They sure are there in game. Especially visible if you crank up diffuse lighting above default values. I've learned that if you leave object with multimaterial and let exporter split it, normals are fine, but you end up with one redundant empty parent for them.
Nif I/O script was not updated to 4.2 for a long time and then in 4.3 they decided to remove alpha properties breaking whole material logic. Untill there is some major feature I can make use of, staying on old version I know works is safer. Only downside so far is, that files from 4.x hava proken UV edytor UI even when appended into new file.
Bethesda really doesn't deserve modders, it exploits them and the users regardless T_T Besides, loved what you did with this model! May I suggest a before/after comparison at some point?
I barely know blender but I am sitting here watching this guy fixing houses from Morrowind in blender like its my fulltime job. (I also ignore my actual job to watch this). 10/10
I really love how you picked apart everything that’s wrong with those models, I enjoy the technical ezplanations 🙏
Why was this suggested to me? Why am I here? What is going on? Fuck it, this was rather interesting. Nice!
Surprisingly useful video. Rare youtube algorithm W.
Thanks!
Man as a games artist this is satisfying as hell, thank you so much for posting this!
I'd love a before and after too!
Custom normals in blender reaaaaally needs an overhaul. They are currently so messed up they can't even be implemented in geometry nodes, which would be extremely useful
Dozen houses later I noticed they get messed up even when mirroring, at least with putting -1 to root scale and applying that.
they can be edited in Geometry Nodes tho.
Learned a lot from your video thanks for posting it. Would love to see you tackle the televani housepods someday in mop. I did fix them myself but would like to see a professional take on the process. Housepod 03 is expecially messed up.
I opened it up just to check how bad it is and done what I could. Sorry, out of camera. :P On one hand it's much simpler than Hlaalu houses, just single blob, but on the other it has major design flaws. At least it was something different. Top is single relaxed island, just must be warped a bit so that tit on geometry matches the texture. Same with pod. Gills looks the best when set to utilise whole height of the texture. Distortion is much worse than aligned to one edge only but seam with pod part gets masked a bit at least.
I'm going over Hlaalu in preparation to fixing similar issues in Tamriel Data before Narsis release. My contributions to MOP are limited to things that bother me in game or are required to match with TD extensions.
Thanks for responding. ❤
how many septims for a home fix in balmora?
Finally the game is playable
Good stuff. Are you also using the Atlas texture?
No, those are for vanilla textures, using five materials per building. But I try to keep UVs in a way to ease up atlasing.
What are you doing on your other monitor (I assume, your mouse is going offscreen) in the UV part?
Yes, I'm used to having UV window on second screen. When I have to show something and work with both on single monitor I struggle a lot, especialy as blender ui does not fit. Here it was not the point so I didn't bothered.
@@antonisauren8998 What were you doing in the UV editor? Running unwrap on the UV islands?
@ Pinning one edge and relaxing stretched islands mostly. Unwrap, turn into quads, follow active quads in case of trims.
What are they using vertex color for? Fake ambient occlusion?
I was wondering the same thing, could be fake AO or it could also be a simple map texture that darkens certain areas of the base (diffuse / albedo) texture, morrowind being an old game doesn't use more advanced techniques and probably "bakes" a lot of the visual information into the textures. (I guess this is probably what you meant but in fewer words haha)
Yes. They also used this a lot in Skyrim, as they still didn't implement AO maps into their materials. Not sure if that changed for Starfield.
@@jin3121 Now I wonder if there is some tool or plugin that allow to convert AO map to vertex colors.
UPD: Answer is Blender addon - Bake to vertex color on Gumroad. So one can also create AO with Blender or Substance Painter and then convert it to Vertex Color.
@@MoonnyMoo Yes, most 3D software comes with built-in tools or community plugins for generating "Ambient Occlusion" or shadow vertex colors. This method can be a cost-effective way to add detail to games, especially when working with older game engines. However, caution is needed when using shader injectors like ENBSeries, which includes an external AO shader. Combining dark textures, vertex color shadows, and external or in-engine AO can sometimes result in overly dark or "crushed" assets, where the black or shadowed areas lose detail.
Morrowind does support AO textures. (kind of, not in PBR sense. It's still phong lighting model after all) They can even use separate UV set. Same material slot can be used also for alpha mask. Keeping it as vertex data is ofc takes much less memory and it had to fit into few MBs of first x-box vram. Besides fake AO, it's also used to break tiling and add some grim details.
Wait what, vertex coloring? I need to check that out.
will these be available to dl somewhere?
They will be part of Morrowind Optimisation Project.
thats great but how to fix
the urge to jump on and off of it
Haha, spoken like a true Acrobatics legend
legend
as for split by material problem, it was the same issue in 3Ds Max. Workaround for it was to make a copy of the object for each material and remove faces for any other material from that copy. This can be 100% "one click" solution.
I started in max but engine I developed for supported only smoothing flags directly exported from it back then. Were custom normals even a thing in 3ds 25 years ago? Maybe that is a cause why those buildings looks like that. Most modders nowadays is way more experienced in both tools and engine than Bethesda devs were during development.
@ as long as edit normals modifier was present. And then, they had to be set to "explicit" to survive some topology manipulations. Each other modifier being able to change topology data ( edit poly ) was removing ( resetting ) all vertex normal data. Now, since few max versions, all is stable, even boolean are not changing them, which is fantastic.
@ I have slight memories of direct normal manipulation in Max. Last version I used was 17 I think.
Finally, i was waiting from premiere.
; )
Are we sure blender and the extraction tool gets the normals right? Are the errors visible in the game I mean?
They sure are there in game. Especially visible if you crank up diffuse lighting above default values.
I've learned that if you leave object with multimaterial and let exporter split it, normals are fine, but you end up with one redundant empty parent for them.
HA i love the title just wanted to say
Is this easier than the construction kit?
Like blender overall? No, but less limiting plus knowledge is appliable in any other game/project. Is making legos easier than building from them?
Awesome job
Did u upload this to nexus?
It will be commited to Morrowind Optimisation Project when I'm done. For now they're available on my fork of their github.
Не проще ли заново нарисовать твердотелом чем вылавливать эти мелкие баги?
Not really. I'd have to do the same plus unwrap whole thing plus model it. And mesh must adhere to the original 1:1 as dimentions goes.
why not use 4.x?
Nif I/O script was not updated to 4.2 for a long time and then in 4.3 they decided to remove alpha properties breaking whole material logic. Untill there is some major feature I can make use of, staying on old version I know works is safer. Only downside so far is, that files from 4.x hava proken UV edytor UI even when appended into new file.
😲
can you decompile assets from lineage 2 and fix those?
Bethesda really doesn't deserve modders, it exploits them and the users regardless T_T
Besides, loved what you did with this model! May I suggest a before/after comparison at some point?
If *you are the 3D modeler* who made that 20 years ago at Bethesda, *shame on you! 🙃*
20 years ago people had no such sophisticated tools to model everything fast and without imperfections.