New Head (Zabraak Style) (was: euh...)

[Sithspecter]

Looks very good, Settoken! I await the release. Maybe next, we can scratch model new heads. If you skinned, weighted and enveloped it, I bet it would work.

[settoken]

I don't think I will release it, it's not made to be played but to be a NPC in a future mod.

With my tuto, everybody will be able to make his own hopefully.

 

But if someone wants to use the model for reskins or editing or whatever, let me know and I may release a "Zabraak for modders pack" containing the model and the UVWmap, let me know.

 

Edit: Also, if some of you have good ideas of head, screenshots, feel free to post it here.

Actually I just plane to make another Zabraak with a different style, some hair may be, I'm tired of that bald one.

But may be other species would be good...

 

out

[Sithspecter]

Maybe you can create a .utc, generic clothes, and that sort of thing as well. You might do a reskin as well for variety. But anyway you put it, those horns look WICKED.

[settoken]

Maybe you can create a .utc, generic clothes, and that sort of thing as well.

 

:)yeah, of course...

 

But what are exactly utc, generic clothes, and all that sort of thing ?

[HodgePodge]

:)yeah, of course...

 

But what are exactly utc, generic clothes, and all that sort of thing ?

 

I think what he means is that you create an actual character using your model, (that would be the .utc part) and some clothing for the the character. Maybe base it off of Bao Dur's, as he's really the only other Zabrak in the KOTOR universe. Even if you don't do that, this is still amazing. How did you do those horns in max?

[redrob41]

I'm eagerly waiting for your tutorial, because that Zabrak looks awesome. As for images of Zabraks, there is a wide variety of them at Wookieepedia. I personally like the ones with the short horns and short hair cut.

 

As for the method that you used (I'm guessing that it involves a lot of hex editing), would I be able to add helpers (GoggleHook and MaskHook) to NPC heads? I'm hoping so, 'cause that'd be great for adding variety to the number of PC heads that could be used as bases.

 

Thanks for all your hard work, and for refusing to accept the word "impossible".

[settoken]

Adding helpers is by far the easiest thing to do, no matter with that.

 

Also there's just a few lines of hex edit...It's very simple, but I'll make a tuto on the whole process to prevent questions and help beginners.

[Quanon]

 

EDIT: DAMN!! You triumvirate guys are crazy modders!!

It works, no UVW map to redo, thx Quanon

I've now got my pretty horns right in place

 

Héh, its great it works now, its one awesome Zabrak head you got there.

 

Hey, why don't you do a female one, (she could be bold ?) I don't think I"ve everseen a female Zabrak somewhere.

[Papership]

But what are exactly utc, generic clothes, and all that sort of thing ?

Heehee! I really love the breadth of spectrum of expertise on this forum. There are a few of us who no doubt could write you a book on utc/p/s/i, generic clothes, etc... But in return we’d have to turn back and ask you “but what exactly are lightmaps, hexes and meshes, and all that sort of thing?” ^.^;; I’m probably making no sense. But I know what I’m talking about, so it’ll do!

 

Alright I'm finally done with this...

here is a quick render of the Bad guy

EDIT: here2 and here and here

Now I'm gonna make a new head and a tuto

Thx to everybody who helped me, even just with your encouragements.

This is my first personal work from the model to the texture and I'm proud of the result.

 

You – sir – are an artist! That isn’t just good, or impressive, that’s amazing.

 

-Amazing-.

 

I eagerly away your tutorials.

~Paper~

[Miles Edgeworth]

here is a quick render of the Bad guy

EDIT:here2 and here and here

 

Now I'm gonna make a new head and a tutorial.

 

Wow! I'm really looking forward to your tutorial!

 

(She could be bald?) I don't think I've ever seen a female Zabrak somewhere.

 

Most female Zabraks have a pony tail of some type, then again Maris Brood(From Force Unleashed hair is braided hair.

[settoken]

Thx for the links

 

No bump but I've forgotten to give respect to who it's due,

 

so thx to all those old times modders overhere that made it possible for us to mod kotor and TSL. By sharing with us wonderfull tools and knowledge, giving us a great understanding in moddeling, scripting, skinning etc...

Some of them are no longer present, but they spend hours searching and figuring out what we are using actually, so big up for their work.

 

that needed to be said.

[settoken]

Alright

 

I'm not working on a new head right now so You'll have to wait for a tutorial

 

I'll just give you the hex edit and it's up to you to do the rest.

If you have a problem you can ask me questions here and I'll reply if I can.

 

 

You have to copy those lines from the original mdl file to your new one and you will have your head right in place on the neck.

It seems to be more complicated with females but I had good results with pfha01.

 

I gave the information to Magnusll so I hope he will understand the exact signification of those lines...

[redrob41]

So, I'm guessing that I would make my changes in NWmax (adding verts, etc), export it normally, covert it to binary with MDLOps, and then finally hex edit it with the lines you've highlighted in dark blue? There isn't any other hex edits that need to be done as well?

[settoken]

No that's it

But you'll have to edit the skin carefully if you want the face to animate properly

Try it with a non edited model and you'll see if it works.

Just import and export a head without any modification, it won't work.

Do the same and hex edit the final mdl and it will.

It's very simple

[DarthXANA]

im assuming its going to be different for certain types of models .ex. If i used the jawa's model as a base for something the hex you showed there isnt going to work...also what should we open or files with to hex edit? i know that KOTOR tool will let you look at the hexes for the games own models...also it would be different if we created the head and body attached kind of like what you see if you import the jedi malak...just using that one as an example cause i know the head is attached to it....

[settoken]

I haven't tested it because I don't see the interest of putting a custom head on Malak's body...

But it might be good to test it...

I'm no more on the head stuff at the moment so may be later

 

To hex edit there are lots of tools: Hex workshop, UltraEdit etc...some freewares or trials I guess

The best to do is to test what you have in mind, that way you'll be able to figure out what you want.

[DarthXANA]

Ok, thanks. I only mentioned malak since its one of the npc models with the head and body combined instead of in separate files...but I ment more along the lines of how to hex edit any models we make that are like that...but since your not currently working on that..i see what i can uncover....

 

I guess you could say im furthering the research.

[Papership]

Gosh, now you two have totally lost me! =] Yeah... you lost me somewhere in the hex editing bit O.o But you know what? I totally understood this bit:

 

You have to copy those lines from the original mdl file to your new one and you will have your head right in place on the neck.

It seems to be more complicated with females

Yeah, that bit makes perfect sense ^.^

 

so thx to all those old times modders overhere that made it possible for us to mod kotor and TSL. By sharing with us wonderfull tools and knowledge, giving us a great understanding in moddeling, scripting, skinning etc...

Some of them are no longer present, but they spend hours searching and figuring out what we are using actually, so big up for their work. that needed to be said.

Well said! People who make tools and tutorials are awesome. I eagerly await yours

 

Still cheering for you!

~Paper~

[jonathan7]

I am most excited by all the progress that has been made here! Awesome work settoken

 

It seems to be more complicated with females

 

Whats new, isn't that always the case

[settoken]

Oh yeah !!

that's a fact

 

Paper don't worry, I've had at least one female head edited with success

[svösh]

This is awesome news settoken I don't know how it's not on page one everyday. With all the request for new heads.. But I feel I speak for all of us at HL when I say could you please take 5 min to write out the steps involved. You can skip the max part unless there are some restrictions we have to adhere to. Otherwise there are plenty of tuts on that already. What I want to know is what sections are you replacing from the original bianary mdl ?

 

I had some luck linking 4 rings to my characters head via arourabase and getting it aligned to her body properly by fallowing your hexedit pic but the animations where lost here you can see my first test. http://svoshsphotos.fotopic.net/p54719873.html

 

In the ascii model you can read it all as plain text. So seeing where the model lines are positioned in the binary model in hex I can only assume some of these top few lines come in to play ?

 

I used Kt double click method to build my ascii extracted the mdl and mdx manually after

 

S_Female03

classification Character

setanimationscale 1

 

beginmodelgeom PFHC04

bmin -5 -5 -1

bmax 5 5 10

radius 7

 

 

I used edit pad pro it can hex edit very well between many files in tabs making copy and replacing so easy. I love this app.. anyways. Basically by studying your pic and counting the bytes you have in dark blue in your pic I copied what you have, by finding the similar characters. And replaced the string from the original game bin mdl to my new mdl

 

0000803F535F46656D616C6530330011

304BF711000000000000000000000000

000080 3F B9 08

 

 

^^I'm unsure are the last 3 bytes in orange in your pic are they included as well in the sting of bytes ? or was that your search highlight, And I don't need to include them ?

 

What version of mdlops did you use for this ? 0.5 , 0.6.1, or 0.6.4

 

Last of all I assume you complied this like any other skin mesh like body's ?

 

Whats always puzzled me is mdlops can compile full bodys and all the animations remain on the body, heads and faces too but it couldn't compile just heads without them being corrupted, and floating off the side of the shoulder.

 

Thanks for you time. Being one of the few original kotor modders since 2003 when the game launched and Having written a number of tut's myself. The only way we will grow is by sharing our knowledge. I hope you will share yours with us too.

 

svösh

[settoken]

First of all sorry for not responding earlier, I'm not really often on holowan this time.

 

If your rings are not animating properly then it might be because you haven't included them in the skin modifier in 3ds max...

they have to be part of it and they'll follow the rest of the head properly.

For small edits like that what you can do is saving the skin datas from the non-edited model and re-using it in the custom one.

I don't have the name of that option but it's in the skin modifier panel.

 

The orange bytes are the most important..

 

I'm very busy sorry but I'd enjoy someone to get an understanding in the head stuff so we could go faster establishing a standard process.

[svösh]

Thanks for getting back to us

 

So here is what I have done so far,

 

using

max 8, nwmax0.7, mdlops 0.5 skinmesh / animations off

 

I decompiled my model with anims off, this may be my first mistake.

causing my head to not be animated in game ?

 

Then Compiled like body skin mesh, Then hex edit like your pic above.

 

I'll try again with mdlops 0.6.4 skinmesh / animations on and export from max with anims as well. Then hex edit like I did before.

 

Maybe nwmax0.8 is required as well ?

 

It's not my rings that are the problem it's my head having no facial animations. Or very few the head does sway left and right ever so slightly and the rings fallow it like they should. I linked the ring's trimesh to the heads parent helper. but after studying a number of heads it's probably best to link them to head_g the heads main bone.

 

Just like adding rigid tri mesh objects to a body without attaching to the skin envelopes. ex: http://svoshsphotos.fotopic.net/p23156720.html

http://svoshsphotos.fotopic.net/p23156719.html

The gun and holster on my new body model was just linked to the right leg bone. I left the model skinless to prove new body's could be done back then. It's An early version of that model, that was with Sions' boots , padawan outer cloak and arms and the rest is my mesh.

 

If you look at many of the female heads they have dangly mesh and it's just mesh attached to the model's head bone with a aurora flex mesh modifier not part of the skin mesh. This is basically how I have linked up my rings on my test model, only they are just trimesh.

 

There isn't really any reason for them to be skin mesh that I could see, they don't have to deform and would basically be weighed as rigid objects anyways.

 

If I do make the rings in to skin For a small edit like this, I would just drop below [skin] in my stack and use attach in [editable mesh].

( Attach the rings to Head ) Then hand edit the new weights in the Head [skin] on the head_g bone envelope. To adjust for the new verts from the rings.

 

Well I'll keep trying. If you could tell us what versions of both mdlops and nwmax you used that would help too. Do we decompile with animation on and later export with them as well ?

 

Thanks

 

svösh

[Quanon]

OK,

 

I've tried this stuff out this afternoon, I think I get the method now:

 

1) Extract MDL & MDX manually, don't use KT double-click function

 

2) Compile with MDLops 0.6 with anims on. ( I used the alpha 4 version)

 

3) Import head with the anims, add anything you want, I just used a Cube to test this out.

 

4) To "connect" the new mesh, I select the Head, and clicked on the Editable Mesh, under Skin.

 

Max throws a warning at you, hit hold yes.

 

Then I used Attach on the cube. I did not correct the UVW, but like in Svosh tutorial, you can add an UVW unwrap inbetween Editable Mesh and Skin.

 

5) After the edit export out with the anims. I get a sanity check window, just hit yes.

 

6) Look up the exported file and add a little extra to its name: like _Z .

Looks like so then pmhc01_Z.mdl

 

7) Take this file to the place you have the orginal model.mdl & mdx

( I had small memory drop out about this step )

 

8) Start up MDLops and use the read and write function

 

9) Open the old orginal mdl with a Hex edit program. Use Setto's screenshot to know what lines you need to copy.

 

10) Open the your pmhc_Z.mdl and then use Setto's screenshot again, to find the lines, most Hex edit progams have handy paste& replace functions.

 

I used Hex Explorer ( thx Svosh !); It gives a really nice organized view of the code and it was easy to find the lines that needs to be edited.

 

11) Save and exit, take your files to the override and remove the _Z part.

 

12) Load up a game or start a new one to see if it worked out ok !

 

 

The results of my silly expirement.

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I think this could be the way to edit the head models more heavly then we could before. Though no doubt that would involve more work.

 

Correcting UVWs and re-weighting bones and such.

 

EDIT: This was just a short overview of what I think is the way to do it. Don't take this as the 100% correct way to do it.

I'll see if I can get this in a word file with some images to the explaining in more details

[settoken]

:lol:

nice result

 

yeah it's looks like it s the good way to do this

glad to see that it also works in kotor2.

 

but the real hard work is to adapt the skin to the new parts of the haircut or whatever you modified...it was quite simple with horns, but it took me the most time to figure out the way to have it working properly

Anyway I'm really happy about the progress you guys are making on that head thing

keep up