Redesigned Elven Units

**Curufin** · December 28, 2011, 09:44 AM

The only time the Vanyar were in middle earth was before they went to valinor and during the war of wrath. Other than that they did not come to middle earth.

When ever a elf does have golden hair in the books tolkien always point it out, e.g. whenever we see a Vanyar (silmarillion) or galadriel.

**Ciloron** · December 28, 2011, 11:51 AM

Yes the Vanyar are high elves, but Vanyar dont live in ME. With the nation HE in TATW, the Noldorin are meant not the Vanyar. The HE nation are the Falathrim and the Noldor, thus no blondes.

**Ngugi** · December 28, 2011, 12:16 PM

Originally Posted by Amaranth

I really wish I could get golden, silver haired elves back. I loved that variety in high elven units in 2.1, new ones have nice textures, armors and such but I don't know. They look too plain to me this way. Too human. It may just be a minor detail but it's still bothering me. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all the hard work done in this mod, I just don't like change, can't help it.

While not quite lore, and knowing that Amaranth is aware of it, I do not mind the thought.
The problem will be, as a mainly lorewise adaption is of interest, the pure technical challenges as LL put clear;

Originally Posted by Louis Lux

As far as modding is concerned yes it would be a bit hard for a layman to do what you want, easiest way would be to replace the brown or black hair with blonde. (half the unit will be blonde this way). Noretirno units have a sandy blonde (or golden-brownish if you want) hair variation and mithlond nobles have a silver hair variation.

**son of romans** · December 28, 2011, 12:31 PM

What will be great is the return of Elven Arcers as an AOR unit,they are beautiful and elven....+mithold warriers with reworked helmet and blue armor...the same as AOR unit maybe with name ''Elven marines'',this units"

**Bobz** · December 28, 2011, 12:42 PM

I really wasn't fond of the old Elven Archers unit. They were a mish mash of bits of different coloured chain mail, combined with random parts of plate armour. Not to mention the ugly shoulder guards sticking up randomly. The new medium Homeguard archers are a vast improvement.

**Amaranth** · December 28, 2011, 12:51 PM

Originally Posted by Ngugi

While not quite lore, and knowing that Amaranth is aware of it, I do not mind the thought.

Thank you! For understanding exactly what I was trying to say all along, I never wanted to turn this discussion into a challenge of lore knowledge.

Originally Posted by Louis Lux

As far as modding is concerned yes it would be a bit hard for a layman to do what you want, easiest way would be to replace the brown or black hair with blonde. (half the unit will be blonde this way). Noretirno units have a sandy blonde (or golden-brownish if you want) hair variation and mithlond nobles have a silver hair variation.

I noticed that, and I actually already done that

. However the lack of variety still applies, this time like you said half of the units are blonde, and the rest is dark or brown. Cause there are only two hair variations in the texture. Although I am quite familiar with image editing with Photoshop and such I have no experience in 3d programs to add more variety to these units. So I'm not sure if I can manage to achieve what I want unless I have very clear instructions like a step by step guide but I doubt that's possible.

**Louis Lux** · December 28, 2011, 01:06 PM

You would have to download milkshape and get a license for it, convert the .mesh file to .ms3D. Open the new file, identify the hair group (it's named hair so it's easy), you would have to duplicate the hair group a few times and relocate the texture mapping of one of them (it's easier than it sounds).

In the texture file you would have to resize the existing hair texture to make room for one more, duplicate one of the hair texture and edit it so it looks like blond. Redoing the normals file would be a good idea too.

**Amaranth** · December 29, 2011, 06:40 AM

Originally Posted by Louis Lux

You would have to download milkshape and get a license for it, convert the .mesh file to .ms3D. Open the new file, identify the hair group (it's named hair so it's easy), you would have to duplicate the hair group a few times and relocate the texture mapping of one of them (it's easier than it sounds).

In the texture file you would have to resize the existing hair texture to make room for one more, duplicate one of the hair texture and edit it so it looks like blond. Redoing the normals file would be a good idea too.

What's easy for you may not be that easy for me

but I can always try, wouldn't hurt right. I think I can handle duplicating the hair texture part and fit one more by slightly resizing the other two, though I'm not so sure about re-mapping them in Milkshape, since I never used it before. Well I'm sure I can find some tutorials for basics, I'll give it a go and see what happens. Thanks.

**Curufin** · December 29, 2011, 06:45 AM

Remapping should be easy, all you would do is duplicate a head, change its name to head_03 or something, then go to the comments part of the model and change that to head_03.

Then with the head selected press ctrl T and the uv mapping section will appear.

**Oslow** · December 30, 2011, 06:37 AM

New elves unites have a better face, for instance the woodland warrior but the old silvan unites have a kind of human face not as fine as the woodland warrior. The work should be on that, I think.

I'm not a lore expert, but when we add fair haired texture we risque to have a disproportionate number of them in one single unite, I think

**webba84** · December 30, 2011, 09:56 AM

One point worth mentioning is that many of the HE faction units are described as being mostly not comprised of Noldar. Only the Eldarinwe units are predominantly Noldar with the others comprising mostly of other races of Elves living in those lands (Sindar, Telari? been a while since I last read a lot of Tolkien.) This would suggest a greater variety of hair colour is quite plausible for the HE milita units.

**Louis Lux** · December 30, 2011, 10:09 AM

Like stated dark hair is the predominant color for all ME elves and not just the noldor. Teleri have the occasional silver hair and Noldor the occasional red hair.

**webba84** · December 30, 2011, 10:26 AM

Originally Posted by Louis Lux

Like stated dark hair is the predominant color for all ME elves and not just the noldor. Teleri have the occasional silver hair and Noldor the occasional red hair.

Not disagreeing with you, just pointing out that most of the HE roster is not actually Noldor. In any case there is still quite a lot of difference between black and light brown which might help make the bareheaded units slightly more varied.

**Jean=A=Luc** · December 30, 2011, 10:29 AM

Originally Posted by webba84

Not disagreeing with you, just pointing out that most of the HE roster is not actually Noldor. In any case there is still quite a lot of difference between black and light brown which might help make the bareheaded units slightly more varied.

Originally Posted by Louis Lux

Like stated dark hair is the predominant color for all ME elves and not just the noldor. Teleri have the occasional silver hair and Noldor the occasional red hair.

**Benox** · December 30, 2011, 10:32 AM

in some parts of the world the predominant head color is black, but you can still see blondes or redheads, i think the units is great but i also like variety in units, gives the feeling of people not robots or clons

**lolIsuck** · December 30, 2011, 10:44 AM

The point is that if you add some blond hair texture stuff a big part of your unit will have blond hair

**Protestant Knight** · December 30, 2011, 10:46 AM

I under stand both points being made but to make new hair for just 4 of the new High Elves units just seems like a waste of time for the developers right now, when you can only see the hair color when your all the way zoomed in anyways the developers could be improving a different faction or some other element of game play with the time spent on making new hair so that's just my two cents on the matter

**webba84** · December 30, 2011, 12:53 PM

@Jean=A=Luc
Yes, I know dark hair is the predominant hair colour of elves in ME, thats why I replied to him with the comment you quoted (the one agreeing with him) about varied hair colour in the range of brown to black which I believe could be considered as dark hair. Im afraid I dont understand why you posted that, I am in agreement with him, and you I think.

**Amaranth** · December 31, 2011, 09:27 AM

Originally Posted by Pentecostal Knight

I under stand both points being made but to make new hair for just 4 of the new High Elves units just seems like a waste of time for the developers right now, when you can only see the hair color when your all the way zoomed in anyways the developers could be improving a different faction or some other element of game play with the time spent on making new hair so that's just my two cents on the matter

Yes I know, I wasn't suggesting for anyone to change that just because I want to see my elven units blonde or silver haired. I'm trying to make that change for myself, I managed to add two more hair colour to the texture files, however I'm having difficulties applying them on milkshape, cause I never used it before and I just have no idea what I'm doing, I'm reading tutorials and following the instructions but since there's no specific tutorial for it that takes a bit time for me. I'm having the problem that is called (if I'm not mistaken) "stiff man" or something, unit's are standing still and the texture is all over the place.