Seeing that this has become an actual project with it's own website, I decided to register to these forums and post my thoughts about it. In my opinion, replacing all original Morrowind meshes with updated, more detailed versions is a great idea, and with proper organization and enough people participating, it could be reached at some point. The question is whether it will be possible to make new meshes for all assets that are close enough to the originals to keep the original atmosphere intact but still improved enough to make them look like from a much newer game. In a lot of cases, this is certainly possible, but I see some problems for others. Trees, for example. Now the project's iniatior has started with remaking trees first, but I wonder whether it is a good idea to try to remodel the original trees as closely as possible. The vanilla trees are not particularly spectacular or even natural-looking, they have only a few branches and sparse foliage. Over the years there have been numerous replacers for all trees in the game, many of which are truly great works of art and greatly enhance the look of the game, although they differ quite a lot from the vanilla ones in terms of shape, size and often even type of tree. I don't believe many people who use graphics mods for Morrowind in general are not using tree replacers. For most regions, if not all, there are at least two possible versions to choose from by vurt alone, not mentioning replacers by other modders. Also, unlike many other meshes, trees have the advantage that they are placed quite freely in the game world and don't have to match other meshes in size or position, which makes it easier to diverge from the vanilla shapes. The vanilla trees are all quite similar in shape and size, differing only in their textures, while with the replacers, each region can get a very unique look and feel. To be honest, in my opinion trees are not the most urgent field of assets that needs mesh replacements. I don't see the need or the significance to have a replacer that tries to match the look of the vanilla trees, to be honest. But maybe someone will prove me wrong.
However, there are lots of other assets that could really profit from new and better meshes. Berandas already posted a selection of existing mesh replacers here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2318&start=20#p26539
While I am honored to find both my weapons replacers in this list, I just want to mention that the iron weapons are not just meshes but also new textures, and the meshes
cannot be used without these textures! If you want a pure mesh replacer, you should stick to Psymonizers
Iron Mesh Improvements, which I based my texture replacer on. My steel weapon meshes, however, are designed specifically to work with vanilla textures or Darknut's weapon textures (though I intend to make new meshes for them, too). But having worked with vanilla textures in the creation of these meshes I must say that making just mesh replacers which use vanilla texture mapping so that they can be used with the vanilla textures is maybe not enough to make the game look like a newer one. Apart from not having normal maps and other graphical features we have gotten used to in the years since Morrowind's release, the vanilla texture layouts are sometimes just plain awful and a pain to work with. On some of the steel meshes I really had a hard time to improve the mesh just because of how awful the texture layout was. Often it is impossible to eliminate stretching and texture seams on an improved mesh that was already present in the vanilla meshes. A prime example of this is the steel club, where most improvements of the mesh and additional details get just lost by the distorted, dark, and undetailed texture. And there are other cases, too. For an asset to look good, mesh and textures need to be attuned to one another, in a way so that the texture follows and enhances the detail of the mesh itself. A highly detailed mesh is useless without a texture that reflects these details, and a high-res texture still looks bad on a crude mesh (which is the problem many pure texture replacers for Morrowind face). A two-step approach, like I intend with my improved weapons, where I first adjust them to work with vanilla textures and then create new textures which allow better uv mapping, could be a good idea, though, but I will have to make many changes to the uv maps and the meshes themselves in order to retexture them properly.
For other assets, this might not even work. My
Comberry Bush and Ingredient Replacer, for example, would look awful with vanilla textures, and I don't think it would make much sense to try to create a mesh that would look better with them. They would most likely still look flat and undetailed.
Also, while I know that this was originally meant to be a mod specifically for the OpenMW engine but is now planned to be a Morrowind mod, given its large scale it might not be enough to coordinate it from these forums, since most likely only people who are interested in OpenMW visitthem, and there might be a lot more people needed to make it happen. Technically, it is not connected to OpenMW any more, anyway, so it would make more sense to discuss it on the official forums, in my opinion, so more people get to know it and can be recruited to participate. This would also be useful to make sure that there are not too many assets remade or improved more than once, since there are a lot of people already working on mesh improvements, independent from this project.
Which brings me to my own attitude towards it. While I will not try to keep anyone from attempting to make their own improved weapon meshes I intend to continue my own remodels and retextures with the ultimate goal to replace all vanilla weapons meshes and textures of the main game and the add-ons. I admit that it could take some time, and if anyone feels appointed to make their own replacers for weapons I haven't covered, yet, just go ahead. If they are good, I might even decide that it won't be necessary for me to remake them myself, just as I have used Psy's iron meshes for my retexture instead of creating my own. Also, I might decide to make other mesh improvements besides weapons and armor parts, which can be found in my
WIP thread. If this project persists and takes shape, I would be honored if my own replacers would be a part of it. I am really excited to see what will become of it!