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About this mod
Rebuild and fixes for Underworld Armory set
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
This is a rebuild of the beautiful Underworld Armory from Fraper.
Description:
After looking at Underworld Armory models and textures, I have found some bugs and errors, due to the porting from Oblivion, and I tried to fix them. In particular:
- Many textures were wrong, especially normal maps and specular maps. Some of them were corrected in other retextures found on Nexus, but only for female. I fixed them for both male and female.
- The mapping (UW) of the textures was quite bad, resulting in a waste of VRAM. In the original mod, a 4096x4096 map was loaded three times (for armor, boot, and gloves), while the real textures models used in the models were at max at 2k. I remapped all textures to smaller size for boots, gloves, and helmet, in both male and female versions. Anyway, there is NO LOSS OF RESOLUTION. You have the same resolution as in the original mod.
- In the female models there was a bad clipping in the armor neck region in both human and elf versions, and a not working transparency in the upper chest region. I fixed them.
- Many materials models defined were wrong or not used. I fixed them.
- Helmets: All models used the options to not show the face in .gda files. This resulted in a awful black face (at least for my taste). A see-through helmet is more suited for this type of helmet (being a sort of mask). I decided also to remove the fake dark hair from the helmet. I opted for no hair in the male version and for true hair in the female. Now, when you equip the helmet in females, you will see a long ponytail hair with the natural color of the corresponding character equipping it.
- I added unique icons for the armor parts, to make this set more recognizable in the inventory. For the armor chest I used the male version. If you prefer the icon with the female armor version change "ico_arm2_snja.dds" into "ico_arm_snja.dds" and delete or change name to the other icon file with the male version.
- The set is very OP for using in DAO, so I rebalanced it. Thanks to Crypto217 for the idea for all the new stats. you still find the original (.uti) files of the original mod in the main file, so you can use them and replace the rebalanced one if you prefer.
- Integration in the game: I added integration in the game plot in Optional Files. Thanks to Crypto217 for the ideas. One set should be in the two smith's chest in the Crime Wave quest (NOT TESTED). Another set is scattered in the Upper Ruins during Nature of the Beast to be found (TESTED).
Installation:
Extract the archive in you override folder.
Note: Beware the texture has a different mapping of the parts, to reduce size. It is quite straightforward to adapt the retextures you found on Nexus, you just need some cropping of the parts. Only gloves (male and female) have a bit more remapping, but it can be done in few minutes. See the guide in the miscellaneous files section.
Notes:
Please tell me if you have issues or problems with it. I left normal maps and specular maps at full resolution. Beware that the true texture resolution is 2k as in the original mod. If you note stuttering, you can downscale normal maps ("_0n" and "_0s" files) by 2x, with barely notable effects. I have already set all diffuse maps "_0d" with no transparency to DXT1 format (reducing VRAM needed by 2x).
The original Underworld Armory is not strictly needed. This mod overrides 99% of it. The only scripts I do not override are the ones for automatic spawn of one set of armor in the player inventory at first load of a savegame. Due to unknown reasons, this script seems to work only from the .dazip installed .erf files of the original mod and not when I put them in override folder. Another DAO mistery.
You can acquire one set of armor at a time with the console: "runscript underworld_armory" as in the original mod.
By showing the face in the helmets, there are also ears. This results in clipping in male and female elven models (damn dalish ears!). However, I can live with it (many other helmets models suffer from the same problem). I have tried to embed a modified face without ears to the models, but in this way, I lose the possible customization of the character.
Credits:
Fraper for Underworld Armory.
katorius for Underworld Armor Set Retexture.
foxunit for Underworld Retex.
Description:
After looking at Underworld Armory models and textures, I have found some bugs and errors, due to the porting from Oblivion, and I tried to fix them. In particular:
- Many textures were wrong, especially normal maps and specular maps. Some of them were corrected in other retextures found on Nexus, but only for female. I fixed them for both male and female.
- The mapping (UW) of the textures was quite bad, resulting in a waste of VRAM. In the original mod, a 4096x4096 map was loaded three times (for armor, boot, and gloves), while the real textures models used in the models were at max at 2k. I remapped all textures to smaller size for boots, gloves, and helmet, in both male and female versions. Anyway, there is NO LOSS OF RESOLUTION. You have the same resolution as in the original mod.
- In the female models there was a bad clipping in the armor neck region in both human and elf versions, and a not working transparency in the upper chest region. I fixed them.
- Many materials models defined were wrong or not used. I fixed them.
- Helmets: All models used the options to not show the face in .gda files. This resulted in a awful black face (at least for my taste). A see-through helmet is more suited for this type of helmet (being a sort of mask). I decided also to remove the fake dark hair from the helmet. I opted for no hair in the male version and for true hair in the female. Now, when you equip the helmet in females, you will see a long ponytail hair with the natural color of the corresponding character equipping it.
- I added unique icons for the armor parts, to make this set more recognizable in the inventory. For the armor chest I used the male version. If you prefer the icon with the female armor version change "ico_arm2_snja.dds" into "ico_arm_snja.dds" and delete or change name to the other icon file with the male version.
- The set is very OP for using in DAO, so I rebalanced it. Thanks to Crypto217 for the idea for all the new stats. you still find the original (.uti) files of the original mod in the main file, so you can use them and replace the rebalanced one if you prefer.
- Integration in the game: I added integration in the game plot in Optional Files. Thanks to Crypto217 for the ideas. One set should be in the two smith's chest in the Crime Wave quest (NOT TESTED). Another set is scattered in the Upper Ruins during Nature of the Beast to be found (TESTED).
Installation:
Extract the archive in you override folder.
Note: Beware the texture has a different mapping of the parts, to reduce size. It is quite straightforward to adapt the retextures you found on Nexus, you just need some cropping of the parts. Only gloves (male and female) have a bit more remapping, but it can be done in few minutes. See the guide in the miscellaneous files section.
Notes:
Please tell me if you have issues or problems with it. I left normal maps and specular maps at full resolution. Beware that the true texture resolution is 2k as in the original mod. If you note stuttering, you can downscale normal maps ("_0n" and "_0s" files) by 2x, with barely notable effects. I have already set all diffuse maps "_0d" with no transparency to DXT1 format (reducing VRAM needed by 2x).
The original Underworld Armory is not strictly needed. This mod overrides 99% of it. The only scripts I do not override are the ones for automatic spawn of one set of armor in the player inventory at first load of a savegame. Due to unknown reasons, this script seems to work only from the .dazip installed .erf files of the original mod and not when I put them in override folder. Another DAO mistery.
You can acquire one set of armor at a time with the console: "runscript underworld_armory" as in the original mod.
By showing the face in the helmets, there are also ears. This results in clipping in male and female elven models (damn dalish ears!). However, I can live with it (many other helmets models suffer from the same problem). I have tried to embed a modified face without ears to the models, but in this way, I lose the possible customization of the character.
Credits:
Fraper for Underworld Armory.
katorius for Underworld Armor Set Retexture.
foxunit for Underworld Retex.