Retexturing aliens and droids

[Princess Artemis]

I'm curious what the process would be on retexturing aliens and droids, especially if I wanted them to have DS transitions.

 

Say, I wanted a pink Rodian, or I wanted Zaalbar or Hanharr to change fur color (maybe T3-M4 to change lens color) according to their alignment. How would I go about doing that?

 

I know how to do this with characters that have a seperate head and body texture and models, but I can't seem to figure out how to do it with characters that only have body textures and models.

 

I suppose in the case of a pink Rodian, it would involve creating an entire appearance.2da row using racetex to call up a texture of a pink Rodian. But how would it work with characters like Zaalbar and Hanharr?

[Darkkender]

You reskin aliens and droids the same way you would with a character model. The difference comes down to how you test it in game. I use KSE and change the appearance of my character to that of the on I plan on retexturing and save it. Then I play with the texture file toss it in overide open my KSE altered savegame and take a look at my character and see if the results match my vision or if it's back to tweaking the apearance.

 

Now if your going for the DS transition routine that will require alot more work. While it's not covered in the tutorial it could be possible to have DS transitions for Droids or Aliens like rodians by using the same methods I used in my painted droid armor mod.

 

Here's a link to the tutorial. -> http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=148585

 

Pay attention to the appearance.2da changes section. As we can somewhat ignore the baseitems.2da editing. If you like I can try to tweak with this over the next week and come up with a detailed process of how to go about this subject. But alot of it will be trial and error anyways.

[Princess Artemis]

You reskin aliens and droids the same way you would with a character model. The difference comes down to how you test it in game. I use KSE and change the appearance of my character to that of the on I plan on retexturing and save it. Then I play with the texture file toss it in overide open my KSE altered savegame and take a look at my character and see if the results match my vision or if it's back to tweaking the apearance.

 

That's very similar to how I test DS transitions or new face textures--use KSE to change the PC's appearance then the DS/LS level (being that there are four, it takes a bit to make a full set, they're at 40, 30, 20, and 10.) I've also found that K1 is much more tolerant of being alt-tabbed out of, and any changes in the texture I'm testing show up immediately in game. K2 is a little more testy about it, but it will take multiple alt-tabs and texture changes before it crashes.

 

I would have thought that having just one DS transition would be relatively easy with an alien/droid--if they don't have a line in appearances.2da about racetex, adding something to the column texaevil--that's how the characters with seperate heads do it, anyway, use texaevil to call up Sith Underoos...I thought I could use that, but nay. It makes me wonder if I could make DS versions of K1 characters without resorting to Sith Underoos as well.

 

I can see how your tutorial would make it possible to re-fur Zaalbar or Hanharr using items...hrm. ::scratches head::

[Darkkender]

Since I never tested for DS transitions before this will be the only thing that might pose a hangup. However when you change the way the texture is read into the game in appearance.2da I believe it might allow for this same texture to handle the Texaevil columns without issue. However as I aluded too in my first post it might require some tweaking and playing around to find the method that will work properly.

[stoffe]

I've also found that K1 is much more tolerant of being alt-tabbed out of, and any changes in the texture I'm testing show up immediately in game. K2 is a little more testy about it, but it will take multiple alt-tabs and texture changes before it crashes.

 

I would have thought that having just one DS transition would be relatively easy with an alien/droid (snip)

 

Some models aren't set up to allow their textures to be changed externally. I don't know if this applies to creatures like Hanharr, but I've noticed some models only use the texture specified within the MDL file. To change those you'd have to use separate models for each dark/light texture variation (unless the model can be modified to accept external texture assignments).

 

This would probably require one appearance.2da line for each alignment type, and use the ChangeObjectAppearance() function (KotOR2 only) to modify the appearance in a script depending on the alignment of the character.

 

As for alt-tab switching, when I'm testing something I usually run the game in Windowed mode instead. This allows me to switch to other applications without minimizing the game window, and it has never caused any crashes at all so far.

 

Alot of this is caused by the 2da entries.

 

I was talking about models that ignore whatever you put in the 2da files. The game only reads the textures set internally in those model files no matter what changes you do in 2DA files. Some models seem to work this way from what I've seen.

[Darkkender]

Some models aren't set up to allow their textures to be changed externally. I don't know if this applies to creatures like Hanharr, but I've noticed some models only use the texture specified within the MDL file. To change those you'd have to use separate models for each dark/light texture variation (unless the model can be modified to accept external texture assignments).

 

Alot of this is caused by the 2da entries. Depending on how the model and texture are linked in the appearance.2da file is how the game will treat the texture. Many of the textures that seemed linked to the model are because of the entries in the 2da file. These entries use the race model entries which don't have the same setup for texture overiding like the modela through modeln columns.

[Princess Artemis]

I think the issue with aliens, and human characters retexturing their underwear models, is that the models for PCs use, for example, PFBAM as modela, then PFBAMA as texa and PFBAMD as texaevil, while the models for player characters in K1 use, for example, P_JoleeBA in both modela and texa, in K2, the few characters that have underwear models, most use PC notation for them--in other words, they don't have unique models, and if they do, they don't have a texa specified, only a texaevil.

 

Hmm. I wonder, is it possible to look at the ::shudder:: hex in the models to see how models accept texture reassignments and perhaps change them with models that don't accept them? Sort of the same way that you have to do some renaming on weapon models to get them to accept a new texture?

 

Yeeks, I was think of doing this mostly on a lark--someone requested DS transitions for K1 characters and I had a few lying around I could use, and I like making them anyway, and it's gotten all complicated on me!

 

stoffe--next time I'm testing textures in K2, I'm going to take your advice and run windowed. Wish I'd thought of that sooner

[Darkkender]

I was talking about models that ignore whatever you put in the 2da files. The game only reads the textures set internally in those model files no matter what changes you do in 2DA files. Some models seem to work this way from what I've seen.

 

I understood that as what you meant. Many of the droid models seemed to act that way untill I played around with the droid armor mod shortly after making it and found that it was controlled by different options in the 2da file. When I get home this evening I'll be able to look at the files and give a better description. However if you know of any files off hand that act that way I can directly test and play with those for results.

 

As to hexing the model files reference to textures you don't even need to go that far. Simply use mdlops renamer function as this is why Chuck had created the function.

[Princess Artemis]

As to hexing the model files reference to textures you don't even need to go that far. Simply use mdlops renamer function as this is why Chuck had created the function.

 

I did that, and with the proper changes to appearances.2da, I basically went the long way around to reskin Zaalbar (with a pass through Invizaalbar and making a pitch black Wookiee with glowing blue eyes--very cool--did that by changing model type from F to B.) Not quite what I had in mind, but nice to know how to do it.

 

MDLOps isn't helping me track down how a model can be set to accept multiple textures, though, which is what I think I need to do to get aliens with specific modela's to use both texa and texaevil depending on their alignment. For instance, pfbas.mdl is one of K1's PC underwear models. It accepts, at least according to the 2da and the lack of models with the following names, pfbasa (texa) and pfbasd (texaevil). MDLOps' renamer function shows that pfbas01 is the texture the model likes, but doesn't show anything else.

 

Is there something else in the game that is instructing these models to map different textures to them other than appearance.2da?