tried both and you have two choices here 1 get the dark looking realistic one, looks great but you'll have a generic stone statue with black ashes on it 2 get the steel one, it looks epic and "magical" which is I think more in tune with all that skyforge marketing they spam in Whiterun lol upped a pic of the steel one
In my opinion the brighter colors of the head, together with it's smooth surface should show that the eagle's head is made from Steel. probably skyforge steel. In your reskin it looks like stone. Really good texturework anyways
with having the head without the dark/smoke effect though, kind of gives it a vibe of being new and unused. black looks better, providing character and being old/worn and aged imo.
Although I agree that the head of the eagle seems to be made out of steel in the vanilla version, I can't help but wonder how much time did Fralia and Eorlund spend each week to scrub the wall of the forge...
Blacksmithing is a dirty job.
For a forge that had been found burning by the companions of Ysgramor and was kept lit through the centuries, it sure looks well kept. Power-washer level well kept actually, and nothing awe inspiring like the description from Songs of the Return, Volume 7: "a monument of a bird whose eyes and beak were opened in flame". Bethesda cut short their effort and missed the opportunity to make a really bad ass looking landmark.
To be honest, the first time I saw it, I was really not impressed at all.. "oh, they stuck a chicken head on top of those boulders. Meh.. Yeah, those boulders do look like spread wings, I guess.. Hmm.. so SKY-forge.. very eagle.. much original! Moving along, what's there to steal around here?"
It would be nice to have some coal streaks on the belly of the statue, running up from the fire pit, and animated glowing eyes and beak, like a furnace mouth, with black coal smoke deposits on top, for contrast and a fierce look. Ooor.. even better, a hollowed head custom mesh, with a fire source inside, visible at night through the eyes and opening of the beak.. I bet that would warm the heart of good old Eorlund!
This is a tutorial that shows you how too add texture glow in 3DS Max. I don't actually mod so my understanding is low but couldn't you just import the asset into 3DS Max, follow this tutorial and export it into the game? Or is there more to it than that?
Actually it is much simpler than that. It just requires adjusting the mesh in NIFSkope and making a glow map in GIMp or Photoshop
EDIT: Actually in this instance to add it to the eyes is even more simple. Bethesda already did. But not until the legendary version. I was using a parallax mesh for the skyforge and the node where the eyes needed to glow was just turned down on the Emit Multiplier in the BSshader properties. turned it up to 4 and get this:
I didn't notice it until I started playing Skyrim again this spring, and I played through the game atleast six times in 2011-2012.
Also, I had never noticed Mehrunes Dagon on top of his shrine. I didn't even notice that the offer shrine was a statue of Namira or that the wall in Nightcaller Temple was a statue of Vaermina before AnTiWoMaAgNoT worked on them. Bethesda should really had made them stand out more.
It's probably more convenient to dl them separately, like they are, since they are all constantly getting updated or have different options. This way you don't have to constantly dl one large file and can easily get the updated version on its own and the author doesn't have to make (and we don't have to sift through) 20 different versions, or one complicated fomod, for all of the different options. If I were the author I'd never combine them for that reason alone.
edit: Great work, by the way. Every time I think you have to be running out of statues to fix you manage to find a few more. Thanks!
Well once he has most of them complete it would be good. Still why wait? You can switch later on. I like that he improves the statues, not following the plastic surgery trend (that trend is still nice/funny)
The steel ver. is probably good for those of us who don't use rock texture replacers. The rough one just looks as out of place as the vanilla does if you were using a texture replacer for the rest.
Fantastic work as always, good sir! If I might make a suggestion, the Falmer/Snow Elf statue in Irkngthand desperately needs some work. Despite being hugely important to the Thieves Guild questline, it's blocky as all hell. I'm not really sure what you could do with it, but it's supposed to be awe-inspiringly, jaw-droppingly beautiful and imposing. It definitely needs some serious 'wow' factor added to it. Anyway, keep up the good work!
Ooo I would like to this too! Also the Nordic murals in the ruins could use a little love too ... I never realized how much statuary and carvings there is in Skyrim till now. xD
You know what'd be even more brilliant than an all-in-one? A single page with all the mods on it. Or, even better though some may not like the idea, a FOMOD installer so we can choose which statues we wanted.
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Stunning Statues of Skyrim
Bella Dibella
Neat Nocturnal
Astonich Azura
Terrific Talos
Ysterical Ysgramor
Melancolic Meridia
Madness Malacath
Wakened Winterhold Statue
Clever Clavicus
Bucolic Boethiah
Necro Namira
Magnetic Mara
Malefic Mehrunes
Vehement Vaermina
1 get the dark looking realistic one, looks great but you'll have a generic stone statue with black ashes on it
2 get the steel one, it looks epic and "magical" which is I think more in tune with all that skyforge marketing they spam in Whiterun lol
upped a pic of the steel one
Blacksmithing is a dirty job.
For a forge that had been found burning by the companions of Ysgramor and was kept lit through the centuries, it sure looks well kept. Power-washer level well kept actually, and nothing awe inspiring like the description from Songs of the Return, Volume 7: "a monument of a bird whose eyes and beak were opened in flame". Bethesda cut short their effort and missed the opportunity to make a really bad ass looking landmark.
To be honest, the first time I saw it, I was really not impressed at all.. "oh, they stuck a chicken head on top of those boulders. Meh.. Yeah, those boulders do look like spread wings, I guess.. Hmm.. so SKY-forge.. very eagle.. much original! Moving along, what's there to steal around here?"
It would be nice to have some coal streaks on the belly of the statue, running up from the fire pit, and animated glowing eyes and beak, like a furnace mouth, with black coal smoke deposits on top, for contrast and a fierce look. Ooor.. even better, a hollowed head custom mesh, with a fire source inside, visible at night through the eyes and opening of the beak.. I bet that would warm the heart of good old Eorlund!
This is a tutorial that shows you how too add texture glow in 3DS Max. I don't actually mod so my understanding is low but couldn't you just import the asset into 3DS Max, follow this tutorial and export it into the game? Or is there more to it than that?
EDIT: Actually in this instance to add it to the eyes is even more simple. Bethesda already did. But not until the legendary version. I was using a parallax mesh for the skyforge and the node where the eyes needed to glow was just turned down on the Emit Multiplier in the BSshader properties. turned it up to 4 and get this:
-Y
Also, I had never noticed Mehrunes Dagon on top of his shrine. I didn't even notice that the offer shrine was a statue of Namira or that the wall in Nightcaller Temple was a statue of Vaermina before AnTiWoMaAgNoT worked on them.
Bethesda should really had made them stand out more.
edit: Great work, by the way. Every time I think you have to be running out of statues to fix you manage to find a few more. Thanks!
I like that he improves the statues, not following the plastic surgery trend (that trend is still nice/funny)
There are lore friendly versions but those three have new features.
Rest are mostly down to higher poly meshes and higher res textures.
The rough one just looks as out of place as the vanilla does if you were using a texture replacer for the rest.