Category: Ahtar

Ahtar / Screenshots

Ahtar – Magic from the Skys

February 18, 2018

After Robbie made the lovely Fireglass Armory, mod author JasonSplendor put together a quest mod, Magic from the Skys which is absolutely lovely. It’s almost impossible to get a good clear shot of how it looks in-game, but I tried.

 

Why Ahtar?

He’s one of the few followers who never seems to get a better attitude. I like that.

I’ve had to keep tweaking his skin and hair tones- the various ENBs and skin mods all wreak havoc on the darker tones and make it very difficult to balance out shots with other characters. I think  I was able to do pretty well for Ahtar here, but the Spring Forest Overhaul and Snowfall Weathers helped quite a bit. The grass mod is either Short Grass or Veydosebrom depending on the shot.

ENBs which have good interior settings don’t work well with darker skin tones– they tend to render them much lighter. I think there’s a limit to what can be done without making an interior area that has outdoor lighting.

None of these pics have anything to do with Ahtar’s backstory for me, sadly– but they turned out so good I couldn’t let them gather dust.

 

Ahtar / Pairings / Screenshots

Dar’mazhan and Ahtar

February 13, 2018

 

Quick credit before I forget– armor seen is RefurbMadness Forsworn replacer

Ahtar / Screenshots

Introducing Ahtar

February 12, 2018

 

 

 

 

Ahtar is an unusual NPC for Skyrim, and one that’s pretty frustrating to mod due to his status as the executioner– and lord help you if you try to disrupt that scripted role.  Just try to get rid of his default outfit, and you’ll see what I mean.

I like him due to his unrepentant bad attitude and his continued testiness despite your relationship status. “Yeah? What?” is about as much as you get out of him.

Where did he come from- and why is he living amongst the Imperial-allied Nords?  It seemed pretty much a given that he’d be living with the sharpest-tongued lady in Solitude.. but what’s he doing sleeping in the downstairs bed?

I thought Ahtar deserved a little bit more of a story, so I gave him one.

I tinker around with Ahtar’s hair and skin tone quite a bit depending one what I’m doing with screenshots. Redguards vary quite a bit depending on the ENB so it’s tricky. Ahtar’s body is made up of quite a number of mods and unfortunately I had to make some choices which means he’s got some graphical issues.

The body scars and the brand on his left arm are made via pasting assets onto his body normal map. The burns on the right arm are from BI Phenotypes — the burn scars from the Mage resource files, cropped and inexpertly pasted onto his normal map. It was a pain. I believe I grabbed the long scars either from there or one of the other files. The brand on his left arm is one of the glyphs from the in-game journal. It’s better in some shots than others as I struggled with the dpi. His body normal map is Smooth Body Textures for Better Males by Urshi, which has some artifacting, and unfortunately that’s sometimes visible in the shots.

I think his diffuse body texture is also Urshi’s, but there’s quite a number of other resources in it. The chest hair is from resources culled from MBHROP (very NSFW site).

I believe that Ahtar’s subspecular map is also Urshi’s. I made the specular map myself using greyscale images.

Ahtar’s facial scarring is also from BI Phenotypes— I pasted it onto the normal map, and the diffuse map of the scar was painted from that resource as well. The eyeliner and warpaint hopefully are concealing some of the klutzier bits of that. I also made Ahtar’s facial specular map as I wasn’t happy with anything available.  I believe his eyes are from Improved Eyes-Skyrim.

 

 

 

 

 

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