Sorry this is so long. I used to do a lot of 3D work back in the day so I noticed a lot of things most wouldn't notice. I'm writing it because I often wished someone had done the same for me when I was doing this regularly. Sometimes you overlook things only because you've been staring at a mesh for too long LOL.
I really liked the cabinets until I looked at them in Nifskope. I still like them but they could use some work. I downloaded them for a shop I'm working on but decided to apply the noble textures to them so they'd match the rest of the shop. I knew I'd have to tweak the UVs; that was a given and something I do frequently in Nifskope. I was really surprised by what I found in Nifskope. There is an impressive amount of detail in the meshes (along with little issues like gaps and z-fighting). Sadly the UVs are all very, very simplistic so those super detailed meshes get lost resulting in totally unnecessary polygon usage. Those beveled edges on the tall cabinet doors are beautiful, but again that detail is totally invisible in the game even using your textures. The tall cabinet (_sruppertallcabinet_001_animated) appears to have just a square gold band on it in game. When I looked at it in Nifskope, I was stunned to see an amazingly detailed beveling (it clips into the cabinet on one side). I'm puzzled as to why you would so much work on the mesh only to basically undo that work with super simple UV mapping.
As for the little issues, there are gaps in several of the cabinets. The doors don't come together on any of the taller cabinets - which you could argue as "shoddy craftsmanship" (via the 'unseen cabinet maker' in the game, not you). On _sruppertallcabinet_001_animated, however, there are big gaps between the the bottom of the top set of doors, the gold band, and the top of the lower set of doors. That could be remedied by making the center shelf (closest to the gold band) thicker which would cover the gap. The doors on the lower part of the cabinet have a very warped UV mapping. If you look closely at your textures you can sort of see it. If you flip the texture 90 degrees it becomes really obvious. I can show you screenshots of what it looks like with other textures if that will help.
The hinges _srupperwardrobe_cabinet-animated should just be cylinders (with tops). Right now the inside and outside have z-fighting and the lack of a top piece looks odd - especially considering how detailed the rest of the cabinet is. When i imported that cabinet in to the CK and started filling it, I noticed that the back piece doesn't cover the entire back of the cabinet. When the doors are open you can see a space between the back and the right side pieces.
Some of the UVs need to be redone to remove all the texture stretching. The feet on the wide cabinet (_srupperwardrobe_cabinet-animated) are only mapped correctly on the front and back. The sides and bottom are stretched out. The bottom is irrelevant but the sides are visible in the game.
You could also work on optimizing the meshes in Nifskope a bit. Right now every single piece, even though they share textures, are separated in Nifskope. All of the wood pieces for each door should be one branch, not several. Since I haven't personally imported any of my meshes into Skyrim, I don't know the process (sorry!).
I'm very sorry if this sounded harsh. I certainly didn't mean it to be, I was just trying to offer a helpful critique on making your beautiful meshes better. Even with the issues, I have pressed on with applying the Noble furniture & Sovengarde Gold textures. They look really nice, although if I could totally remap them, they'd be better (the tools I used have no tutorials for import into Skyrim nor have them been updated since 2011 - I need to learn Blender).
Im Very New To UVs, I Don't Really Understand How To Do It efficiently. Im Still Learning, If You Know Of Any Places On The Internet That Explain How To Do The Things You Pointed Out I Would Really Appreciate It. You`re Not being Harsh I Just Did The Nifscope By Trial And Error....
UVs --- This Is The Second time I Unwraped Them, I usually Just Create Simple Things That Are not so Complex.... I Thought That I Would Give More Complex Things A Try..... So Any Pointers Or Help Would Be Great.....
I Never Tried Blender, I Use 3DS Max 2012 And Photo Shop I Did Notice That Sometimes In Max If You Don't Have The Mesh Turned Just Right You Miss Seeing The Small Gaps
I used 3DS Max when I got my BFA in digital art (2011) but my prof didn't know (or care) much about 3D modeling or UV Mapping. She just had us use flat colors for everything. Blender is a free 3D modeler btw, an open source cousin of 3DS Max. I learned to UV Map using software that's long been abandoned - still works, just not with Nifskope. Using the basic tools I had when I modded The Sims 2 caused me to approach my models differently so I'm probably not the best one to give advice. I tend to think of the mesh and UV simultaneously so I stop modeling periodically to create UVs even though the mesh is still changing. It's easier to tweak than to start from scratch (or was in my case).
I totally understand missing the gaps. That kind of stuff drove me crazy when I did modeling too. No matter how you look at or for how long, it is so easy to miss the little things.
I did have a adjunct prof, who had a gaming startup, teach me a lot in terms of concept though. He said the big thing is to put as much detail in the textures and less into the mesh. Polygon counts should always be kept as low as possible for games, even as computers improve. You can make a wine bottle with 1000,000 polys but why tax the hell out of a computer when you can make one nearly identical with a few hundred polys. The better the UV Map the more detailed the texture map so even a simple mesh can look amazing. I wish I still had the screenshots for an example I had.... A woman created a simple fairy doll that was ugly as hell the way she textured it. Someone else took the same mesh, redid the UVs and textures and it was gorgeous. You'd never guess it was the exact same mesh.
Do keep in mind that you can select faces and UV them separately from the rest of a mesh. Take the cabinet doors with the large flat area surrounded by a beveled edge, for example. Select the faces for the cabinet front and map that, then map the beveled edges. You can use different mapping techniques on the bevels without altering the size or shape of the cabinet front. On the feet of the cabinet that I mentioned in the OP, it look like you planar mapped it. It gives you the front and back of the mesh but not the sides, top or bottom. The tool I used had a "box map" option which UVs all 6 sides of a mesh, handy as a starting point for the cabinet feet. You can overlap parts of a UV map too. The maps for the front and back of the two feet can be overlapped into one shape (you'll need to flip them so they match). Then you can do the sides so they have a real texture rather than one row of pixels stretched across them. The outside edges can be overlapped as can the inside edges. The inside edges, since they are angled, would have to be tweaked a bit. Finally the top and bottom can be overlapped even with the size difference as the top is longer. In the end the complete map would have, at most, four sections (top & bottom; front & back; outer edge, inner edge) even though it maps both feet. If you wanted to be ultra-conservative, you could overlap all the sections - something done when texturing for gaming consoles since space is limited.
I noticed on one of the tall cabinets that each of the four shelves was mapped very differently. I probably would have created one shelf, UV Mapped it, then duplicated it three times. That way all the UV Maps are identical and I have less work to do at the end. To make each shelf appear different, you can flip and rotate UV map. In the end each shelf's map will look identical but the texture will look different.
As for tutorials, Autodesk has a ton of tutorial videos and a very helpful community. I remember having to use the videos frequently in my 3D classes since the profs didn't teach anything....other than where to get free tutorials online. I found a really old one, from before the 3DS Max interface was redone in 2012. The concept is the same even if the tool has changed significantly. Hopefully it will give you a small basis for deconstructing a mesh for UV Mapping: http://www.republicofcode.com/tutorials/3ds/unwrap_uvw_mapping/.
Here's a link to the 2 cabinets I redid with Nifskope's really basic UV editor: https://www.dropbox.com/s/08s3w6d6xjwkgej/_cabnets.7z?dl=0 I renamed them so they won't overwrite your other ones. I included several screenshots showing the gaps in the CK. They really become visible once you start putting stuff in them
They match the common tier stuff nicely! If you split the bottom part of the tall cabinets from the top part, it can be also matching small cabinets. Great for kitchens.
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I really liked the cabinets until I looked at them in Nifskope. I still like them but they could use some work. I downloaded them for a shop I'm working on but decided to apply the noble textures to them so they'd match the rest of the shop. I knew I'd have to tweak the UVs; that was a given and something I do frequently in Nifskope. I was really surprised by what I found in Nifskope. There is an impressive amount of detail in the meshes (along with little issues like gaps and z-fighting). Sadly the UVs are all very, very simplistic so those super detailed meshes get lost resulting in totally unnecessary polygon usage. Those beveled edges on the tall cabinet doors are beautiful, but again that detail is totally invisible in the game even using your textures. The tall cabinet (_sruppertallcabinet_001_animated) appears to have just a square gold band on it in game. When I looked at it in Nifskope, I was stunned to see an amazingly detailed beveling (it clips into the cabinet on one side). I'm puzzled as to why you would so much work on the mesh only to basically undo that work with super simple UV mapping.
As for the little issues, there are gaps in several of the cabinets. The doors don't come together on any of the taller cabinets - which you could argue as "shoddy craftsmanship" (via the 'unseen cabinet maker' in the game, not you). On _sruppertallcabinet_001_animated, however, there are big gaps between the the bottom of the top set of doors, the gold band, and the top of the lower set of doors. That could be remedied by making the center shelf (closest to the gold band) thicker which would cover the gap. The doors on the lower part of the cabinet have a very warped UV mapping. If you look closely at your textures you can sort of see it. If you flip the texture 90 degrees it becomes really obvious. I can show you screenshots of what it looks like with other textures if that will help.
The hinges _srupperwardrobe_cabinet-animated should just be cylinders (with tops). Right now the inside and outside have z-fighting and the lack of a top piece looks odd - especially considering how detailed the rest of the cabinet is. When i imported that cabinet in to the CK and started filling it, I noticed that the back piece doesn't cover the entire back of the cabinet. When the doors are open you can see a space between the back and the right side pieces.
Some of the UVs need to be redone to remove all the texture stretching. The feet on the wide cabinet (_srupperwardrobe_cabinet-animated) are only mapped correctly on the front and back. The sides and bottom are stretched out. The bottom is irrelevant but the sides are visible in the game.
You could also work on optimizing the meshes in Nifskope a bit. Right now every single piece, even though they share textures, are separated in Nifskope. All of the wood pieces for each door should be one branch, not several. Since I haven't personally imported any of my meshes into Skyrim, I don't know the process (sorry!).
I'm very sorry if this sounded harsh. I certainly didn't mean it to be, I was just trying to offer a helpful critique on making your beautiful meshes better. Even with the issues, I have pressed on with applying the Noble furniture & Sovengarde Gold textures. They look really nice, although if I could totally remap them, they'd be better (the tools I used have no tutorials for import into Skyrim nor have them been updated since 2011 - I need to learn Blender).
Places On The Internet That Explain How To Do The Things You Pointed Out I Would Really Appreciate It.
You`re Not being Harsh I Just Did The Nifscope By Trial And Error....
UVs --- This Is The Second time I Unwraped Them, I usually Just Create Simple Things That Are not so Complex....
I Thought That I Would Give More Complex Things A Try..... So Any Pointers Or Help Would Be Great.....
I Never Tried Blender, I Use 3DS Max 2012 And Photo Shop
I Did Notice That Sometimes In Max If You Don't Have The Mesh Turned Just Right You Miss Seeing The Small Gaps
I totally understand missing the gaps. That kind of stuff drove me crazy when I did modeling too. No matter how you look at or for how long, it is so easy to miss the little things.
I did have a adjunct prof, who had a gaming startup, teach me a lot in terms of concept though. He said the big thing is to put as much detail in the textures and less into the mesh. Polygon counts should always be kept as low as possible for games, even as computers improve. You can make a wine bottle with 1000,000 polys but why tax the hell out of a computer when you can make one nearly identical with a few hundred polys. The better the UV Map the more detailed the texture map so even a simple mesh can look amazing. I wish I still had the screenshots for an example I had.... A woman created a simple fairy doll that was ugly as hell the way she textured it. Someone else took the same mesh, redid the UVs and textures and it was gorgeous. You'd never guess it was the exact same mesh.
Do keep in mind that you can select faces and UV them separately from the rest of a mesh. Take the cabinet doors with the large flat area surrounded by a beveled edge, for example. Select the faces for the cabinet front and map that, then map the beveled edges. You can use different mapping techniques on the bevels without altering the size or shape of the cabinet front. On the feet of the cabinet that I mentioned in the OP, it look like you planar mapped it. It gives you the front and back of the mesh but not the sides, top or bottom. The tool I used had a "box map" option which UVs all 6 sides of a mesh, handy as a starting point for the cabinet feet. You can overlap parts of a UV map too. The maps for the front and back of the two feet can be overlapped into one shape (you'll need to flip them so they match). Then you can do the sides so they have a real texture rather than one row of pixels stretched across them. The outside edges can be overlapped as can the inside edges. The inside edges, since they are angled, would have to be tweaked a bit. Finally the top and bottom can be overlapped even with the size difference as the top is longer. In the end the complete map would have, at most, four sections (top & bottom; front & back; outer edge, inner edge) even though it maps both feet. If you wanted to be ultra-conservative, you could overlap all the sections - something done when texturing for gaming consoles since space is limited.
I noticed on one of the tall cabinets that each of the four shelves was mapped very differently. I probably would have created one shelf, UV Mapped it, then duplicated it three times. That way all the UV Maps are identical and I have less work to do at the end. To make each shelf appear different, you can flip and rotate UV map. In the end each shelf's map will look identical but the texture will look different.
As for tutorials, Autodesk has a ton of tutorial videos and a very helpful community. I remember having to use the videos frequently in my 3D classes since the profs didn't teach anything....other than where to get free tutorials online. I found a really old one, from before the 3DS Max interface was redone in 2012. The concept is the same even if the tool has changed significantly. Hopefully it will give you a small basis for deconstructing a mesh for UV Mapping: http://www.republicofcode.com/tutorials/3ds/unwrap_uvw_mapping/.
Here's a link to the 2 cabinets I redid with Nifskope's really basic UV editor: https://www.dropbox.com/s/08s3w6d6xjwkgej/_cabnets.7z?dl=0 I renamed them so they won't overwrite your other ones. I included several screenshots showing the gaps in the CK. They really become visible once you start putting stuff in them
If you split the bottom part of the tall cabinets from the top part, it can be also matching small cabinets. Great for kitchens.