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JCarter426

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I ran into some smoothing problems with the Duros and Bith. I imagine the same would apply to Sion and Malak, unfortunately. Ithorian head was a bust... looked like he was sucked through a vacuum cleaner. And I forgot Aqualish before... I think that should work too.

A brief progress report of all the ones I've tried so far:

Works
Sullustan
Rodian
Trandoshan

Needs Work
Quarren

Smoothing Doesn't Work
Duros
Bith

Doesn't Work
Ithorian

Now, regarding the ones with smoothing issues... that happens because MDLOps discards the data, and there is no tool to correct that like there is with the animations. But even without such a tool, this could theoretically be fixed by remapping the head. This isn't really my area, so I might include those heads anyway, so someone else could finish them.
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Well, I can't believe that worked...

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I finally sat down and figured out how to get new heads to properly animate thanks to VarsityPuppet's HeadFixer. I took a full body model and separated the head. I knew this was possible, but in the past something would always go wrong... anyway, I finally did it. I plan to eventually convert every alien that uses a full body model into a separate head, at least every one that's feasible. That means the aliens will be able to wear any clothing in the game, like the Twi'leks and Devaronians can.

 

Off the top of my head, Duros, Rodian, Trandoshan, and Weequay heads should be feasible. I made a Sand Person head without animations before, so that's feasible as well. Nikto, Ithorian, and Selkath heads are questionable. Chadra-Fan, Gand, and Gran are supposed to be short so I'm not sure if they're worth doing... maybe if shorter body models could be made as well, but I'm not sure I could do that. Wookiees and Gamorreans are right out. Am I forgetting anything?

 

I also might take a crack at animating some of my other heads that lacked animations. I've posted the mercenaries here before, but I've also done Mandalorian heads. They'll be a bit trickier to set up, though, as I didn't save the bones... might have to redo them. Once everything is finished, I'll release all the heads as a resource, along with some other heads that I've been saving up.

 

Bout time someone started using the damn thing! (redrob too :) )

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I remember Dak Drexl being able to make a playable Duros head. You could take a look at his files here to see what you're missing.

 

Nice work by the way. Go trandoshans! :urpdude:

 

As I recall it, Dax was only able to fake a Duros head; he morphed a Human head and then went with the fact that the Duros wore gloves to facilitate not having to retexture the outfits...

 

You should know by now how much of what modders do is sneaky tricks, cheats, or fakes, man.:) At least, I know I've pulled around a dozen when working with you and ZM!:p

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Some more pictures:

 

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Now for the progress report:

 

Works

Gran

Quarren

Rodian

Sand Person

Sullustan

Trandoshan

 

Smoothing Doesn't Work

Bith

Duros

Weequay

 

Doesn't Work

Ithorian

Selkath

 

Smoothing Probably Wouldn't Work So I haven't Tried

Aqualish

Atris

Jedi Malak

Sion

 

That weighting on the Quarren was a huge pain... but I got it. And because so many heads had smoothing issues and I knew the Gran wouldn't, I decided to do the Gran.

 

In addition, there are several heads I made that I never released. These were ones that were simple hex edits, they had no animation issues, they were perfectly fine... I just didn't get around to releasing them. So I'm adding those to the pile. In total there are forty heads so far, and I believe I have twelve left to do (my Mandalorian and mercenary heads). Unless I'm forgetting some.

 

Now I'll take a moment to explain how I'll be releasing this. In addition to the models I'll include some basic 2DA work - all the necessary head information in heads.2da as well as some lines in appearance.2da, just basic ones, one or two per head. If you plan to include my heads in a mod you'll likely have to do some further editing on your own, but this should at least help get you started.

 

I did run into some problems with female heads. I don't know what the cause is, exactly, but when I apply a female superbody to a head, it becomes distorted. Keeping the male superbody for the head is fine, but with female animations on the body it looks really silly; the head is at an angle for the idle animation. So far I have only done one female head, a Sand Person, and they don't use the female superbody, so it's not a big deal; I had planned to use the Sand Person animations in place of the supermodel anyway. I don't know if I'll have this problem with the female Mandalorian or mercenary heads, but it's a possibility. In that case I'll apply male animations, as I had done when those heads lacked animations, for the same reason. Of course, you won't have to use the body models I include. But that's my suggestion. I do know how to edit the superbodies, so in theory I could make one with all the female animations but without the stupid head angle for the idle animation, but eh... I dunno if I'd actually do it. Animating... 3ds Max... bleh.

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That might give Redrob41 a few more heads to work with, huh?

It was always my intention to try something like this, but I couldn't find the time. I'm pretty happy that JC is cracking along on it :D

Bout time someone started using the damn thing! (redrob too :) )

Hey, I've been using the HeadFixer for a long time now, and I'm damn glad you made it :xp:

 

On topic:

Now, regarding the ones with smoothing issues... that happens because MDLOps discards the data, and there is no tool to correct that like there is with the animations. But even without such a tool, this could theoretically be fixed by remapping the head. This isn't really my area, so I might include those heads anyway, so someone else could finish them.

 

I'm still holding out hope that smoothing is just a yes/no stored somewhere in the mdx or mdl binary files. If it is, and we can find it, then a tool could be built (or add to the HeadFixer). The problem is that I'm just fishing around blind in the dark corners of hex editors :fist:

 

As I recall it, Dax was only able to fake a Duros head; he morphed a Human head and then went with the fact that the Duros wore gloves to facilitate not having to retexture the outfits...

 

You should know by now how much of what modders do is sneaky tricks, cheats, or fakes, man.:) At least, I know I've pulled around a dozen when working with you and ZM!:p

Same here with Nindo Bahr for RoR. I used a bald human and moved the verts around until it resembled a Duro. That way, I could use Taina's method and it preserves the smoothing.

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Been a bit busy working on... other things... writing, mostly. But here's some progress:

 

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I had to do the weighting for the Mandalorians from scratch. I was forced to use the male animations for the female Mandalorians, too... but I think it works.

 

Also I noticed there are slight smoothing issues with the Quarren's tentacles... but I'll release that anyway.

 

Interesting... Sorry to ask and put more on your plate, but have you tried Kreia's Head model yet?

I hadn't thought of that... but I don't think it would work.

 

Now for the progress report:

 

Works

Gran

Mandalorian

Rodian

Sand Person

Sullustan

Trandoshan

 

Smoothing Doesn't Work, Releasing Anyway

Quarren

 

Smoothing Doesn't Work, Not Releasing (Yet)

Bith

Duros

Weequay

 

Doesn't Work

Ithorian

Selkath

 

Smoothing Probably Wouldn't Work So I Haven't Tried

Aqualish

Atris

Jedi Malak

Sion

 

Haven't Tried for Some Other Reason

Kreia

 

Oh, and yes, I'll be releasing red and gold variants of the Mandalorian heavy armor, as well.

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Now for the progress report:

 

Works

Gran

Mandalorian

Rodian

Sand Person

Sullustan

Trandoshan

 

Smoothing Doesn't Work, Releasing Anyway

Quarren

 

That's great news :D

So, are some of these heads going to have Mask and Goggle hooks? I realize that some would look kinda weird with visors sized for human heads (they might end up clipping), but others might work. It's something to think about, anyway.

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Yeah, obviously the helmeted ones cannot have them... some might work, but I'm not going to try it yet. I'll leave that for a future update.

 

So, progress:

 

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And yes, I'll be including those armor textures as well. I think it adds up to four new heavy armor variants - the red and gold Mandalorian armors, and then two mercenary armors, one pictured above and one in black and green.

 

Now, the final progress report:

 

Works

Gran

Mandalorian

Mercenary

Rodian

Sand Person

Sullustan

Trandoshan

 

Smoothing Doesn't Work, Releasing Anyway

Quarren

 

Smoothing Doesn't Work, Not Releasing (Yet)

Bith

Duros

Weequay

 

Doesn't Work

Ithorian

Selkath

 

Smoothing Probably Wouldn't Work So I Haven't Tried

Aqualish

Atris

Jedi Malak

Sion

 

Haven't Tried for Some Other Reason

Kreia

 

All that is left is to set up all the 2DA files and the TSL Patcher. Next time you hear from me, I'll have the full release.

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I wonder, could you purposefully replace female animations on all the models to use the male ones instead? Because, let's face it, Obsidian dropped the ball on those. Especially considering female exile is canonical, and looks ridiculous with that waddle-running.

 

Should be possible. I've done it before though I feel like there was some weird side-effect. I think the heads end up with a sort of weird orientation to them.

 

Makes me want to try it out now!

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  • 1 year later...

Been a while... here's some stuff I've been working on recently.

 

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The MDLOps update is a huge boon, so I've been playing around with it a lot. I've been going through heads one by one to update my modding resource for that, and I'm also working on something else... but I'm not prepared to show anything from that yet.

 

And Sithspecter helped me figure out the particle system, so that's what's going on in picture #2. I made some water placeables.

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Been a while... here's some stuff I've been working on recently.

 

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swkotor2%202016-01-31%2023-42-01-58_zpsdehl57jt.png

 

The MDLOps update is a huge boon, so I've been playing around with it a lot. I've been going through heads one by one to update my modding resource for that, and I'm also working on something else... but I'm not prepared to show anything from that yet.

 

And Sithspecter helped me figure out the particle system, so that's what's going on in picture #2. I made some water placeables.

 

Those water particles in No 2 look really nice

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Update concerning the heads:

 

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I've confirmed that I can get my heads in K1 without starting over. When I tried it before, I got heads with no animations. I thought I would have to rig the whole thing from scratch for K1, but that's not the case. The problem I had before was due to a simple mistake in my process - specifically, the binary model MDLOps reads during conversion must be a head from the same game, or else the Head Fixer will not be able to fix the head later on. I was exporting heads for K2, then switching the box in MDLOps to K1 and running again... but nope, you can't do that. You have to swap out the binary model too for some reason.

 

So, thanks to this development, the heads update will now be for both games! But I don't know when I'm going to get to it. And the K1 version will only include heads from that game's assets. But it's a thing that will happen.

 

With that in mind, I'm bringing back the list:

 

 

Original Heads for K2

Gran

Mandalorian

Mercenary

Rodian

Sand Person

Sullustan

Trandoshan

Quarren

 

Upcoming Heads for K2

Aqualish

Atris

Bith

Duros

Jedi Malak

Sion

Weequay

 

Might Try for K2

Chadra-Fan¹

Vandar¹

 

Upcoming Heads for K1

Aqualish

Bith

Duros

Jedi Malak

Mandalorian

Rodian

Sand Person

Trandoshan

 

Might Try for K1

Chadra-Fan¹

Gran²

Quarren²

Vandar¹

 

No Plans to Try These

Gamorrean

Ithorian

Rakata

Selkath

Wookiee

 

¹ I've learned how to make tiny body models... so I might have a go at it.

² I'm not sure about the quality of these. I recall them being of lesser quality, equivalent to the "lite" NPCs with blocky faces, in which case it wouldn't be worth the attempt.

 

Anything not listed is probably something I forgot. If you think I forgot anything, let me know.

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  • 2 months later...

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