Darth Cortana: or How Do I Make a Cooler Hologal?

[REDJOHNNYMIKE]

I would like to try and start some npcs early, several are holographic representations of ship integrated A.I.

 

The most important one is the ships main operating and control system, She is the most natural looking hologram and won't have many drastic differences from the standard holocommunication forms, but I still want to add some new effects to make her look more technical (similar to Cortana from Halo (2))

 

What can I add to or subtract from the holograms to achieve non-standard effects? And how would I go about spawning a holographic npc?

 

The other two I'm planning are...

a. Ship Combat Protocol (looks like a cross between an energy shield and the "police chief" from the Tron2.0 game)

b. Resricted Access Security (looks like the A.I. in the resident evil movie, has the creepy little horror-movie-girl act down cold)

[The_Maker]

To make a hologram npc, under the npc's .utc file for Kotor 2, go to the advanced tab and checkmark "Is Hologram".

 

I am unsure what you mean by "non-standard effects"... can you please explain?

[REDJOHNNYMIKE]

By nonstandard effects I mean that it doesn't simply look like your seeing a real person over a video connection, there would be parts missing (like Cortana), there would be little parts of data moving around (like Cortana, or the matrix), and possibly other effects, I don't want to make one final concept until I know the full extent of what I can modify.

[T7nowhere]

I suppose if you didn't want to use the games utc hologram function you could make a special appearance and animate the textures, but I think it would be more trouble than its worth.

[REDJOHNNYMIKE]

Well, she's going to be a recurring character (like andromeda) so I could put a little extra into it, I just don't know what options are available???

 

edit: I was just looking around and I couldn't find any decent pics of cortana, if someone has some would you post one so everybody knows what I'm talking about?

[T7nowhere]

Really? Google has a ton, though I admit I have never even heard of that character until now, so I can only assume thats the hologram your talking about.

 

Well you could edit the hologram texture, though this will affect all holograms or you could add a slightgrey alpha to your npc's head and body texture and then create an animated texture to be used as the envmap. I have no idea how it would look, but its worth a try.

[REDJOHNNYMIKE]

 

oops, heh heh, I thought that would bring it up for easier reference

 

link fixed, I'm off the ball tonight:lol:

 

That's pretty much the effect I'm going for (might go with different model type (longer hair), and different coloring) but that's what I'm hoping to get:)

[goldberry]

How would I make a hologram out of a human in K1?

[Patriarch]

Heya

 

Why dont you just apply a visual effect to the hologram and set it in a loop. For reference You could use a_masterteach.nss...

 

Then once you have a workink script for visual effects then put it in the onspawn in the scripts section of your holo.utc

 

void main() {

object oMaster = GetObjectByTag( "nihiholo" );

int nAnimation = ANIMATION_LOOPING_READY;

 

ActionPauseConversation();

AssignCommand( oMaster, ClearAllActions() );

ChangeToStandardFaction( oMaster, STANDARD_FACTION_FRIENDLY_1 );

SetLightsaberPowered( oMaster, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE );

SetFakeCombatState( oMaster, TRUE );

AssignCommand( oMaster, PlayAnimation( ANIMATION_LOOPING_READY, 1.0, -1.0 ) );

DelayCommand( 1.5, AssignCommand( oMaster, PlayAnimation( 10151 ) ) );

DelayCommand( 1.5, AssignCommand( oMaster, PlayAnimation( 10151 ) ) );

DelayCommand( 1.5, AssignCommand( oMaster, PlayAnimation( 10151 ) ) );

DelayCommand( 3.0, AssignCommand( oMaster, PlayAnimation( ANIMATION_LOOPING_READY, 1.0, -1.0 ) ) );

DelayCommand( 4.0, ActionResumeConversation() );

[REDJOHNNYMIKE]

@Goldberry, I don't know if this will work for KI, but I just did it today for TSL (this isn't the cortana look I'm going for, just the standard hologram;))

Use kotor tool, look through the erfs section, double click on the texture files (player textures should be under "P") to view them, look down through them until you find the underwear textures(I'm going for a shapely look so I haven't tried it on different clothing/armor models) and the head textures, for simplicity match the skintones of the head and body textures, once you have found the ones you want to use write down the file name of each (PFHB03 for the head I used), then look under the "H" texture section and at the bottom is a file called "holotex", click on it to bring up it's viewer, then click on "write file" and save it to your override with the filename of the head texture you wrote down, then click "write file" again and save it to override with the underwear texture you wrote down (make sure to put .tga at the end)

Now start a new game, select your PC based on the skintone of the underwear you chose (each shade has a different underwear texture, in the filenames A=asian B=black C=caucasian H=hispanic) and the facial appearence you chose, when you start the game you should show up as a transparent blue hologram.

This probably isn't the best way to do this, but it's the only thing I've tried so far;)

I haven't tried it for other characters yet.

 

@Patriarch, what kind of effect does masterteach produce?

[REDJOHNNYMIKE]

Well, a bump is better than two threads;)

I've come across something strange, I've got alpha channels working properly ingame (all except her eyes and facial outlines disappear as planned) but in the PC portrait select screen most alpha areas appear black around the edges, in larger transparent areas there is a little bit of clear area, but it's pretty much solid black in small areas, has anyone else had this problem?

How can I get rid of the "coastline" around solid areas?