[tsl wip] Improved HK-47 Model

[Darth_Tempust]

I felt it was time old HK-47 got an upgrade of his model.

 

The original:

 

 

WIP:

 

 

Areas updated so far:

 

head

left upperarm

right upperarm

right forearm

right knee

upper torso

 

Has been tested ingame and works perfectly, all animations play.

[Sam Spain]

I'd be able to appreciate your improvements more with a wireframe or wireframe over shaded shots

[Darth_Tempust]

Yeah those shots don't really show off the real differences.

 

Original:

 

 

Updated WIP:

 

 

I've made a seperate model that's lower poly than the textured model for HK's floor shadows to try and help with performance.

 

The original mesh is also used as the bones that has the 4000+ frames of animation. Rather than editing it and risking screwing up the animations, I've hooked my updated mesh to the bones and turned off their rendering.

[Fallen Guardian]

Looking good. However I think non-droid heads and clothing/armor models better suited with an upgrade. Because while HK having a pointy model is not great, humans and aliens having pointy models is even worse. Just my two cents... but in any event, HK looks better. Nice work.

[Darth_Tempust]

I'm going to start on KOTOR II player choice heads next in which I will re-render the head textures into better UVWs. This will allow me to make the surface splitting (you need to do this in order to keep the UVWs from skewing along the UVW island edges) more strategic.

 

After that, (depending on my workload for freelancing & MB3) I'll start on making the best likeness to TOR's female Exile. I'll swap it with an existing head, so it should be compatible with RC mod.

 

 

Off Topic:

 

Does anyone have the updated nw export script for the latest KAurora which can compile lightmaps? The .zip in the thread doesn't have it.

[Sam Spain]

Looking good. However I think non-droid heads and clothing/armor models better suited with an upgrade. Because while HK having a pointy model is not great, humans and aliens having pointy models is even worse. Just my two cents... but in any event, HK looks better. Nice work.

 

I'm going to be working on that. I'm going to use the weekend to read up on the possibility on replacing the character body and head. I will be making a character model with weapons and armour anyway for my final major project for college which I thought could be the first step in making my idea for a mod for KoTOR. Only downside is I can't start modelling yet so all I can do is research and plan.

 

Also, great work. You cleaned up a lot of the geometry for the model which is awesome. Keep at it!

[Darth_Tempust]

Thanks.

 

Updates at the moment include a better spine, that will now bend when moving.

[Sithspecter]

I'm liking where this is going.

[redrob41]

I've made a seperate model that's lower poly than the textured model for HK's floor shadows to try and help with performance.

 

The original mesh is also used as the bones that has the 4000+ frames of animation. Rather than editing it and risking screwing up the animations, I've hooked my updated mesh to the bones and turned off their rendering.

 

Wouldn't adding a mesh overtop of the bones hinder performance? You're basically doubling the number of polys (or in the case of making it smoother, it's more like 2.5x to 3x).

 

I think that if you just edited the bones, you wouldn't mess up the animations. I've edited a model for RoR (it's a secret character, so I'm not gonna post spoiler images), and I've added polys to both the mesh and the bones, with full animations included in the model. Mind you, I only added about 72 polys to the foot bones, just so the shadow would look right.

 

Maybe you could do a test of just the higher poly bones without the mesh attached, and see if the animations still work out?

[Darth_Tempust]

Wouldn't adding a mesh overtop of the bones hinder performance? You're basically doubling the number of polys (or in the case of making it smoother, it's more like 2.5x to 3x).

 

I think that if you just edited the bones, you wouldn't mess up the animations. I've edited a model for RoR (it's a secret character, so I'm not gonna post spoiler images), and I've added polys to both the mesh and the bones, with full animations included in the model. Mind you, I only added about 72 polys to the foot bones, just so the shadow would look right.

 

Maybe you could do a test of just the higher poly bones without the mesh attached, and see if the animations still work out?

 

HK47's animations are in the one file with the model so while I could edit the bone mesh, I'd rather not just incase if somehow the improbable happens and it does stuff something up.

 

Having a seperate mesh will only cause performance issues if I have both the bones mesh & and the new mesh rendered which I've turned off the bone mesh rendering. It has a custom shadow model which is lower in quality than the stock HK47 model (but still gives good shadows) to also save on performance.

 

 

Just an FYI to everyone:

 

For models to render floor shadows you must have your mesh using the "trimesh modifer" as the "skin modifier" will just cause them not to render at all. Generally, models use their bones for floor shadows but I rather a custom shadow model.