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


settoken

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Nice Quanon, great work !

 

Here in Quebec the French often refer to us English speaking population as square heads :p So thats pretty funny to me. Skin and reshape that cube like an anvil for a joke mod.

 

When you attach mesh to skin most of it is weighed already. Adopting weights from where it was attached to you usually just have to tweak the Abs vert weights for some of it but it's not too much work really. Or you could import an existing envelope from another head.

 

The thing with new heads is the bones, since the bones act as the drop shadow in the engine. Then the bones shape will have to be edited as well to fit the new heads.

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Nice Quanon, great work !

Thanks, its actually easy if you now where to look :lol:

Its the looking thats hard ;)

 

The thing with new heads is the bones, since the bones act as the drop shadow in the engine. Then the bones shape will have to be edited as well to fit the new heads.

 

Blast, I thought all heads used the same setup of bones, so there's noway we could like make a sort of cleaned version of just to bones, as a sort of modders resource.

 

Jedi Knight modders had a handy skeleton file which they could use to model around and then link the bones.

 

But I guess this means we would have to recreate the facial bones from scratch ?

 

I wonder if this works with bodys aswell, like to add wings or tails ?

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Facial bones I imagine won't have to change much at all they are basically helper objects anyways but I mean the " head_g " bone the main bone for the skull.

 

Here's an example : I recently made some new gear for juhani, since I used the female dark jedi model again I wanted to change the head, the big hood on the model has an equally big bone for it's head.

 

I used the head of the female tusken and with it I replaced the whole head hierarchy on my target model, since the hood and bones are much smaller on that model.

 

All the brow and eye bones were deleted since the fem tusken is masked the head now consists of only 4 bones if i recall, and it works fine in game. Had i not swamped bones then there would have been a huge hood drop shadow on the ground that just looked wrong compared to to the new head. http://svoshsphotos.fotopic.net/p54273781.html

http://svoshsphotos.fotopic.net/p54706139.html in game you can see the head deforms how it should.

 

So i'm not saying we have to build a head bones rig from scratch, always reuses what you have available first ;)

 

Adding New* bones will require new animations for wings tails, unless you can nab them from some creature. I'm thinking tsl, since there is that flying pale guy already, maybe cath hound tails ? Still you would have to add those frames of animation to your model or the supermodel for them to be used at all.

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Adding New* bones will require new animations for wings tails, unless you can nab them from some creature. I'm thinking tsl, since there is that flying pale guy already, maybe cath hound tails ? Still you would have to add those frames of animation to your model or the supermodel for them to be used at all.

 

Hmmmzz, guess my crazy plan will involve a lot more work :p

 

I was thinking on making an alien, from the movie ALIEN.

Was planning on to re-use a bone structure of the Ragkoul or a human body.

 

Though I'm not sure how to do the tail, adding extra bones means redoing or editing the anims, not sure if Setto's method would help with that.

 

Perhaps Danglymesh could be used ?

 

Well first I would have to get this head a ok on the body:

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this is freaking asome good work settoken :D

 

More accurately, good work Quanon for refining and laying out a step-by-step guide, and expanding on settoken's earlier work :D

 

Now if only I had 32hrs in a day, so I could take full advantage of this momentous discovery...

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More accurately, good work Quanon for refining and laying out a step-by-step guide, and expanding on settoken's earlier work :D

 

Now if only I had 32hrs in a day, so I could take full advantage of this momentous discovery...

 

Well don't praise me to soon, I've only got 1 Male head working with this.

 

I've been testing a male twi'lek head, but the animations get killed...

Still need to do a test on female heads.

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  • 6 months later...

Why aren't more people on this? When i first started modding for KOTOR half a year ago I was a little perturbed that you couldn't add/delete verts and what not. Then a couple days ago I stumbled across this thread completely by accident...I was actually searching for this: I was using Mission as a base but then I realized (after I was completely done with the model) that the head tail textures are on the body .tga. So I was wondering if someone had info on how to work around that (by the way if someone knows anything about this I still haven't found my answer).

Anyhoo, I'm so glad that someone figured this out. I basically ran through what Quanon did and added a blockhead. It worked out great once I realized that I wasn't supposed to replace all the hexes on line three of settoken's screenshot.

So thanks go to both settoken and Quanon for doing such awesome work. And to anyone else who contributed to this amazing discovery.

Peace!

Now someone needs to just crack Mass Effect...;)

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  • 2 weeks later...

This is indeed an amazing discovery,

 

i tried myself on Quanon's great tutorial and was able to manipulate some of the heads.

However i realized that i'm only able to add something to the head by attaching (only might be the wrong word here) adding or deleting some of the heads vertics always disconnects the head from the body.

Although this might just be a problem on my side.

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However i realized that i'm only able to add something to the head by attaching (only might be the wrong word here) adding or deleting some of the heads vertics always disconnects the head from the body.

 

I've found that you have to tweak certain parts with the hex editor with different models. I'm working on a head (PFHC05) now that was attached to the neck but none of the animations fired. I messed around a bit and found that a couple of hexes that needed to change according to the screenshot didn't actually need to be changed and everything worked fine. So, I guess what I'm saying is play around and experiment in your hex editor and eventually you'll find your answer.

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I messed around a bit and found that a couple of hexes that needed to change according to the screenshot didn't actually need to be changed and everything worked fine. So, I guess what I'm saying is play around and experiment in your hex editor and eventually you'll find your answer.

 

Héh, nice find. Haven't been mess'n about anymore with heads as I'm more into the whole area modelling thing.

 

Nice discovery, perhaps this is one clue to get the female heads working.

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hexu.jpg

 

Hey y'all here's how I did a replace of PFHC05. The highlighted lines are what needed to be changed. So far this hasn't worked on my current head project of PFHC01. But it's a place to start if you're having trouble. Have fun.

 

EDIT: I've been playing around a bit more with the female heads and have discovered this: I made a new PFHC05 model with a completely different type of geometry added. So I copied the stuff I have highlighted in the pic but I also changed the top row (on my newest one) to match the post-modeling .mdl pic above. So if just changing those highlighted hexes doesn't work, match the top row to match mine and, in theory, it will work.

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How did this hex edit change your head model?

 

If I understand the method that Miro, Quanon, and settoken has posted, the hex edit changes the data inside to say that instead of a certain amount of polys are there from the original mdl, there is a new amount.

 

But I don't claim to understand this method, I'm still working on attempting to understand it. :p

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How did this hex edit change your head model?

 

What it physically did was this: As I'm sure you know if you just straight up import into the Override from MDLops the head will look fine but it will be for some reason centered on the shoulder. When I changed this according to settoken's screenshot the head would position itself correctly but all the animations were nixed. So I did some playing around and when I did it the way my screenshot says everything came out right. It was really lucky, that it worked out this way (remember this screeny is for the PFHC05 model) and it was a simple fix. The PFHC01 that I'm working on now doesn't work that way, and I'm not really sure where to change things around. So that was the long answer. The short answer: it positioned everything correctly, to include animations.

 

If I understand the method that Miro, Quanon, and settoken has posted, the hex edit changes the data inside to say that instead of a certain amount of polys are there from the original mdl, there is a new amount.

 

But I don't claim to understand this method, I'm still working on attempting to understand it. :p

 

Yeah, I really have no idea what it is actually doing. That sounds right, and it's logical, but really I don't even know what a hex is, let alone what exactly they are doing. I'm just a scavenger, working off other people's hard work and discoveries. :D

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  • 1 month later...

Hello again. I've noticed a lot of people denying the fact that you can in fact add topology to an existing head model. Hopefully to reinvigorate this thread and make people aware I'm posting this picture of all of the male heads in K1 with a box added to their head geometry.

 

kotormaletop.jpg

 

One thing to be aware of is that the verticies will latch onto whatever is the closest weighted vert. If you notice in the first Asian head (from left to right) the box is a tiny bit morphed. That's because the bottom part of the box is enveloped with the chin area, or something like that. I'm not too knowledgeable when it comes to weights in 3dsMax. Anyhoo, I hope you are inspired to start creating new heads, so get out there and do it, cause I'm too lazy. ;)

 

Oh and just so you know, doing this with the female heads is a lot more complicated. I've only been able to get two heads to acutally come out right with added topology. Everything else goes wacko. I really wish I knew what I was actually changing in the Hex Editor.:raise:

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Well, I mostly say its not possible to make new heads, because we can't :p

 

Yeah I misspoke. I meant more along the lines of 'diverse' heads rather than 'new'. Yes 'new' is rather impossible or at the least improbable, I was referring to people saying that you couldn't 'add' anything to pre-existing heads. Is that clear?

 

Though, well, altering the heads is do-able with adding geometry but its a real hassle in the whole hex editing thing...

 

I haven't gone too in depth in adding geometry, but just adding those boxes onto the noses of the males was a simple hex edit that was the same across the board. I guess if I were to add more than one box more hex editing might be required, maybe? I'll look into that a little later.

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Hmm, I think it might need another hex-edit if we indeed added more 3D objects.

 

Though perhaps it might stay the same if its just one object, though one that is heavly edited.

 

You could test it out by just extruding, beveling and chamfering a few faces on the box.

That'll add extra verts and edges, though within the same object. Ofcourse it'll be messy with the weigthing affair :p

 

You didn't really misspoke, it was more then obvious with the nice screenshots you've shown. Plus its great of you to put this much time and effort in this.

 

I wish it was only the same bit of Hex code that needed to be copied, for all the heads.

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Anyhoo, I hope you are inspired to start creating new heads, so get out there and do it, cause I'm too lazy. ;)

 

Oh and just so you know, doing this with the female heads is a lot more complicated. I've only been able to get two heads to acutally come out right with added topology. Everything else goes wacko. I really wish I knew what I was actually changing in the Hex Editor.:raise:

 

I haven't gone too in depth in adding geometry, but just adding those boxes onto the noses of the males was a simple hex edit that was the same across the board. I guess if I were to add more than one box more hex editing might be required, maybe? I'll look into that a little later.

 

Well, if you ever try to put some horns on one of these heads (to me they seem like small boxes with at least 12-16 vertices), and can get it in game, then I'd be more than happy to re-skin them. I'd gladly put some fine line Zabraki style tattoos on 'em, and give them nicely textured horns.

 

I've tried a couple of times to use this Hex edit method to add to the model, and haven't succeded. Since that's the only thing holding me back from putting Zabraks into the game, I'd surely like to team up, if you do too :)

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Great to see this thread still going.

 

I myself have tried to add 3D objects to an existing head

http://img36.imageshack.us/i/wipk1pm06c.jpg/

http://img198.imageshack.us/i/wipk1pm06a.jpg/

It still is some kind of work in progress.

But I think this is (in a way) what you ment by "add topology to an existing head model", miro.

 

Oh, and by the way, at least for this head, there where no need for any other hex-edit than the one provided by settoken.

For the ones interested, I added pyramids from the standard primitives tab as hair and attached them to Object01 in the back of the head, but it should work with the head itself as well.

I think making Zabrak like horns ain't so hard to do.

I would do it for you, redrob, but my skills ain't so good as I'm still learning my ways with max.

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Héhéhé, nice hair :p

 

Though, you might not have to edit those planes like you did.

With the pointy teeth edges.

 

Using the power of the alpha channel, contained in the texture, you might just have to curve the extra planes. But, anyway, it looks nice :)

 

If only the female heads would follow and be less stubborn.

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