u/Correct-Ad6645

Slowly but steadily, I'm covering more aspects of the mod. Due to some issues, I had to rethink some of my methods, but I have now covered at least 90% of the first entrance area. Having to only import one asset and then copy-paste it is slow, yes, but a huge time saver, especially on the sheer amount of texture it uses for each independent part. Also, I found just the right spot to put the Academy, and it fits quite well in the map; it's incredible. Gonna share some photos in the comments.

Last time, I told you all about this silly project of mine. Since then, a lot has happened. I made a lot of mistakes, I improved my skills quite a lot, my Microsoft account got hacked, and I lost all my stuff since the dawn of Xbox 360 (goodbye, my first edition of Dark Souls, you will be missed). But, in all of this, I didn't stop working on this mod, and I can now say I've finally reached a breakpoint in its development. Allow me to share:

TLDR: madman found a way to build the Academy brick by brick

At the start, my idea was to export the assets from ER, put them into Blender, scale and build them based on visual reference, then export them back. I then realized that ER for each asset has multiple textures, while Skyrim can't do that. So I had to separate each piece of each asset into Materials. To make you understand: a single piece of a bridge could become 20 different pieces, each one its own mesh with its own textures. A single bridge could go up to 50 or 60 meshes (or TriShapes in Nifskope), to which I had to: put the texture, fix the Specular Strength (or the bricks of the stone could shine like glasses), and ultimately put them into CK. And this doesn't count the fact that most of these materials are one and the same, just on different stuff.
I realized pretty soon that it would have taken YEARS for just a single piece. So I tried to find easier ways, like merging similar materials, but that proved inconsistent at best. It was then that a revelation hit me in the head: ER buildings are mostly copy-pasted assets assembled in the world map; why can't I do the same?
So, I took a HUGE low-res poly model of Raya Lucaria, and I've exported it into Skyrim. In CK, I placed the places, and surprisingly, it fitted quite nicely where the College was. Then I simply started making singular pieces and nifs, and every time they get repeated in ER, I repeat them too in CK. While this takes quite the time to do, once an asset is exported, I can simply duplicate it and place it everywhere I want. But since ER reuses many of the assets everywhere and also the same textures, once I have all the models down will be just a matter of patience. Also, the low-poly Raya in the Skyrim map allows me to place the pieces by following its shape.
For the time being, I'm focusing on the first entrance. I decided to start from there because it's where the map of Raya Lucaria starts when I load the map in Smithbox, and also it has proper scaling with the Skyrim character. I even tried to walk on it and... you won't belive who cool the view is from there. Can't wait to see it finished.

Long story short, I can't go past the skeleton and the animations as I'm not that good with 3d modeling. So for the time being I chose to pause my Dragon project.

Then I remembered that InfernoPlus is porting Morrowind into Elden Ring and I asked myself: what if I do the same?

And that's how in the past few days I managed to put some stuff from Raya Lucaria into Winterhold. My plan? Swap the entire College with Raya Lucaria.

Will I be able to do so? Honestly, I don't think so but it's worth the shot.

After the last animation I faced a dilemma.

I tried to pair the Skyrim skeleton.nif of dragons to that of Elden Ring's Dragons. It was a huge achievement for me. While the animation wasn't perfect, I break a milestone I didn't think I could reach. But also I realized that no matter how good I get, the issue is that the skeleton.nif of dragons is, at the end of the day, just a giant flying mega ultra chicken.

To make the animation mod smooth I need to rework the base of the skeleton. Which will means redoing all the meshes too.

What started as a simple "patch" is probably going to be my most ambitious project as of yet (bar the flying FF9 airship one).

Wish only I had more time to dedicate to it. So far, the skeleton is 50% done. Pic in the comments.

I'm happy to say that my work on the dragon animation has reached a solid point. I barely did one animation out of ALL OF THEM, but from not knowing what to do to do it... Well, I can pat myself on the back!

At first, I wanted to make Skyrim dragons move more like Elden Ring ones. After some trials and errors, I managed to come really close. The only way to have a clean and 1:1 animation would be to build the entire skeleton from the ground. Instead, at least for now, I decided to go for something different. I tried to mix them up.

For the head/neck and spine, I followed the Elden Ring bones and skeleton, especially the neck bones. That gave my dragon a real "arched spine" before striking.

I then added some mixed animation to the wings. My idea came from a video: some birds tend to spread their wings wide open to appear much larger. That is usually either for defence or when attacking. I thought that there was no way a dragon wouldn't do the same, since they already are big and they can easily do that and still be as imposing as ever.

I then played a bit with the lips, so the dragon bared his fangs more before striking.

My only real limit was the legs and claws, as I couldn't really translate them from ER I had to make the animation "eye by eye" trying to mimic them. Not perfect, but better than nothing.

Overall, I think I made quite a good animation even though I knew nothing of the sort a few weeks ago. I'll put a video in the description, and I've decided to work on a "kinda-tutorial" to explain what I did.

Now I just need to decide if I want to continue this way or make a whole new skeleton that will follow that of ER more closely. Stay tuned!

If you remember, I started this path because I wanted to make True Dragon - 4 Legs good 2 legs bad compatible with DCA.

At first I was having any kind of issue just importing the skeletons and meshes.
Then I was having all sort of troubles with the hkx and the animations.
Then, I thought "why not making animations of my own?" which very quickly became "why not making the skyrim dragon move like those of Elden Ring or the Froms game?

So I managed to extract the animation from ER, find what I wanted and even import into Blender. Yesterday then I did a post on FB telling everyone how hard that task was and I may just had to be happy to fix what I could.

Today I officially managed to pair the Elden Ring animation to the Skyrim dragon skeleton. Not perferctly, but it's a start.

I rest my case: I think I'm insane in the membrane. Do you agree?

Dragon 4 legs good 2 legs bad with Dragon Animation Replacer won't work out of the bat as the animation was not made with the forelegs in mind.

Soon they will 😂