Clean Ancient Headdress (v1)     -     Modders resource with a sample plugin (and I stress the word, 'sample')
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By Phijama
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Details
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This initially started life as a simple request from my daughter, to make a feathered headdress that looked 'vaguely' Egyptian/ Mayan. It somehow snowballed and now includes pauldrons, bracers, several simple necklaces (one with animated textures) and some Chakra (offensive and defensive war rings), oh... and a temple. Aleanne kindly gave permission for me to use one of her exceptional dresses which uses Nioliv's(sp) mesh as a base. The dress has been recoloured by myself, but pales in comparison to Alaennes work.

Due to work commitments, I have been unable to spend as much time on this as I'd have liked although the majority of meshes were produced in the first week.  I'm afraid I have not had the time or inclination to place the items in a huge plugin, the construction set is not my friend! With this in mind the meshes are being released primarily as a modders resource. I have included a simple plugin that does place the items in game. They are unceremoniously dumped in a barrel named 'Aztec', which is at the top of a Mayan temple. The temple has been placed very close to Seyda Neen just a bit North/ West.

Installation
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The test plugin has been tested with tesame and packed with Tesmu2. For best results just unpack with Tesmu2 allowing any files/ texture/mesh to overwrite old files. I do reuse and update my own textures from time to time.

All textures go in the main texture directory and should be allowed to overwrite any textures with the same name.
The Phijama meshes folder should be dropped into the main meshes folder. If a Phijama folder already exists, then just cut and paste all new meshes in to the Phijama subfolder.
The Aphij Icons folder drops straight into the main Icon folder. If an Aphij Icon folder already exists, cut and paste the new contents into the subfolder.


There are several points worth noting:

1) The dress takes up the left ankle slot and due to my texturing is a little 'thin' - it may be wise to add some panties, otherwise young ones may be shocked.

2) The necklaces are designed to take up the Neck body part. They can be added as clothing or armor items.

3)  A full headdress and a helm is included. The full headdress is complete, feathers and all, but does not use forced 1 bit alpha. This means that some details will vanish if viewed from above water but the feathers do look much nicer although they can flicker from time to time. The 'helm' is a separated version of the headdress. The inlaid gold parts do not use forced alpha but the feathers, which are a separate mesh, do. These feathers are physiqued as a 'Knee' body part - they will not vanish if viewed from above water and do not flicker.

4) Many of these models are high polygon and use isolated reflect map techniques. This technique requires mesh layering, hence the polygon count. I have had no issue with my machine which is not the best in the world! These meshes were primarily created for my daughters use.

5) The Chakra self sheathing script requires Bloodmoon to function. Due to where I placed the item, it may duplicate in the inventory. I'd suggest placing the item in an interior cell if using the script, on leaving the cell the script will function as it should. The chakra sheathes, bracers and pauldrons have been set up in the CS to use only one of each slot. 

6) The flickering texture on the bracers is due to conflicting masked textures. Niolivs mesh is a full sleeved dress. The sleeves have been 'masked out' to make them invisible, but it does interfere with Chakra gold inlay. Nothing I can do about that!

7) The items are unenchanted for a reason, reflect maps can conflict with the plasticwrap enchant effect. I did accidentally enchant the defensive chakra at one point and it actually worked, but appeared grey underwater/ in the rain.

8) The 'Dragon Sceptre' pictured in several screenshots is not actually part of this resource. I will be released it very soon with the Deaths Doorstep add on. It does fit in well with this resource though!

Usage/ Credits
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As this is a resource, all meshes are for open use. All I ask is for a mention in the 'read me' of any mod that uses them and if you could also thank my daughter, 'Rhianna', that would be wonderfull! Aleanne will also deserve a mention for her wonderfull dress design and Nioliv for the actual mesh.  I'm afraid I feel I have 'butchered' these fine pieces so I highly recommend downloading Aleanne's clothing/ armor plugins which use Nioliv's meshes and use those instead!

Please feel free to have a go at retexturing. I haven't made theses meshes particularly user friendly, but it can be done. The best bet is to try changing the reflect maps and altering the color/ hue of the existing textures (do back up though). The feathers are probably the easiest thing to alter and I suggest doing this with the separate feathers mesh, copy and rename the original texture, then redirect the feather NIF to this texture.

In the event that the primary host(s) goes down, these meshes may be redistributed to alternative sites. 

Credits
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Many, many thanks to all on the official forums for kind words of support on this 'little' project - it's been very much appreciated.

Special thanks go to Alianne for giving permission to use her lovely dress design and Nioliv for making such a fine mesh. Thanks also to Lady Rae, AlienSlof and Rogue Shadow for testing - Rogue, I owe you an apology for causing the delay of the Deaths Doorstep add on - I will get back on track straight away!



Contact
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I can be pm'd on the Official Elderscrolls forum in the case of any major issues. Constructive criticism is also welcomed, but any complaints regarding such things as item values/  item placement/ stats etc, will simply be ignored. I do not mean to be rude, it's just that I have stressed that this is primarily a resource  -  the meshes, textures and icons are the things that count, if you're unhappy with the stats, change them!

Cheers,

Phil

Afterthought, sorry about the fish - I forgot to delete that one!



