About this mod
This is a texture overhaul of the Sabre Cat, Sabre Cat Snow and Vale Cat (dlc01), including the related clutters
- Permissions and credits
- Donations
This is a texture overhaul of the Sabre Cat, Sabre Cat Snow and Vale Cat (dlc01), including the related clutters.
This mod is just textures, it doesn't take any slot in your load order.
The vanilla files edited were found inside:
textures\actors\sabrecat (six files)
textures\actors\dlc01\sabrecat (two files)
textures\clutter\sabrecatpelts (three files)
textures\dlc01\clutter\ingredients (one file)
The sabre cat looks like a sort of lion, but there are not big cats with such long teeth now day. Considering Skyrim does include animals like Mammoth and the name itself, it should be a prehistorical feline, a Saber-toothed cat.
First of all I have to say that I am not satisfied, meshes were too squared, the mane was and still a mess, not least the animation of this animal it is too simplify in my opinion. Also, the vanilla look really too painted and with a keen eye there were many evidences seams along the back and legs. I tried to make it to look more believable whenever possible and to correct those seams. This apparently easy creature was one of the hardest re-textures I have done till now because, silly me, I decided to make a whole new fur. Doing this you can't indeed simply put a random fur above a selections, you have to make it to match in each - damn - junction point. This means dozen cut - hairy - polygons edges. A puzzle.
Furs are not squared objects, furs take almost any direction and this animal it is all fur over squared meshes, plus I wanted the hairs look as smaller as possible. Doing such crazy work do require a lot of patience, polygon after polygon, cut after cut, try after try.
To make things worse, after I started, I noticed that the colored map (diffuse) had a complicated gray-scale alpha channel that I had to reinvent completely trying to make it match with the whole new fur. It work (bad imo) by shades of Grey...!
The vanilla seams were enough evident, I tried to patch the most important according the new fur, but I could spend a life to make them completely invisible. Some others have no solutions, indeed, as I said in my other works description, sometime the seams depend on the fact that they are being stretched over the meshes in a part while they are not in their counterpart junction. It is a mesh issue. I hate seams as they "help" to make things look for what they are: fake. So that's why I still not satisfied.
Like the Troll and other characters it also uses additional meshes to simulate the mane, made by taking pieces here and there along the body. I never liked this solution, there is nothing you can do to make it appear likely I guess, and nothing to make things match if you don't start from a whole new mesh. "Luckily" the Vale Cat didn't had it but then again, other visible seams appeared without the mane in its place. About the Vale if you look the original Bethesda, paying attention, you will see it miss some triangles pieces textures, they were errors. Vale Cat was another panic. This is also why I left and then I decided to recover and publish this work anyway.
At end, I also decided to remove the spotted signs on the snowy cat as I didn't like the look so much. This re-texture result in a whole "poetic license" as they all appear enough different from vanilla, most of all the vale cat that I tried to make it to look a bit more like a sort of panther then a Christmas tree! If you dislike it you can avoid it during installation anyway. Doing all these changes, starting from new furs they could not result so much similar to the original one, indeed the only vanilla thing left in here are the meshes, that are not included, of course. I do hope it still look lore-friendly next to its context in any case.
Have fun!
Kajuan
Video on the left by Gundamzeppelin (youtube channel: It'sAGundam).Video on the right by Hodilton (youtube channel: Hodilton)
Video on the left by AbsoluteAesthetic (youtube channel: Absolute Aesthetic) - Video on the right by Merkcy (youtube channel: Merkcy)
DOWNLOAD:
This mod comes in four packages. The clutter have the same vanilla size.
- 4k compressed diffuse and normal skin's maps.
- 4k compressed diffuse and 2k normal skin's maps.
- 2k compressed diffuse and normal skin's maps. (Vanilla size)
- 1k compressed diffuse and normal skin's maps.
INSTALL and UNINSTALL:
As usual, anything you like, they are 7z fomod installers. You have to check sabrecat+snow and/or Valecat during installation or it will not install anything.
COMPATIBILITY:
They could not work as intended if you installed some different meshes then the vanilla ones.
THANKS and CREDITS:
Bethesda.
Nexusmods.
ENBseries by Boris Vorontsov.
The whole modding community.
TOOLS USED:
DDSopt (by Ethatron) to extract the files.
Photoshop to work on textures.
NifSkope to extract the UV map and quick preview the textures over the meshes.
PERMISSION NOTES:
If you show in same way my assets in public places you must and should always credit the author.These files are Nexusmod exclusive right now. My files follow the Nexusmods rules.Users cannot upload my files to other sites, any type of sites, included file sharing host (unless I give specific permission and instructions). Users cannot modify my file; including releasing bug fixes or improving on the features my file adds to the game, and upload it as a separate file. Users cannot use my assets in any mods/files that are being sold, for money, on Steam Workshop or other platforms. Users cannot use assets contained in my files in their own files without my permission.
I saw someone breaking every rule. So if I'll give the permission to release my mods now on, I'll report bottom here the site name that had my permission, about each mod, for real, automatically all the others have to be considered cheating and will be reported.
MY RELEASES: