[TSL] HK-51 as he appears in SWTOR

[Sith Holocron]

OK, a new request. Those that despise SWTOR may wish to avert their eyes.

 

I'd like to get a skin for HK-51 that resembles his appearance in the teaser trailer. They do show his whole front -excluding the arms - in a slow upward pan. I attempted to stitch them together so folks would have a reference to compare against. (Due to the way the scene is lighted, the stitches in the picture compilation are very noticeable.)

 

Note the lights that are not only on his eyes, face, and chest but also the blue lights coming out of the top of hip joints.

 

 

Clicking on the picture should bring you to the Photobucket page where you should see the picture in its full size after you click on the magnifying glass. (It's large, I tells ya.)

[Shaggoth]

i say, we must port almost everything from tor )) (by port, i mean remake from scratch, or reskin) cause graphically, tor is better, but kotors are way more enjoyable in many ways )

[majesticmadman]

Do you want this just as a skin or as a new model? Also is it to replace HK-47 or the HK-50 bounty hunters

[Sith Holocron]

Do you want this just as a skin or as a new model? Also is it to replace HK-47 or the HK-50 bounty hunters

Re-read the third sentence in my request.

[DarthParametric]

I'm not sure how practical a straight reskin is, at least not with the level of detail you want. The texture layout is not super conducive to straying from simple blocks of colour. Ideally you'd remap the HK model, but unfortunately, like most of the KOTOR models, it's a mess. It's made up of about 35 individual meshes, many of which themselves comprise multiple separate poly groups.

 

 

I have to wonder if you wouldn't be better off just making a new model from scratch.

 

Leaving that aside, simulating the emissive would be difficult. You can't get that sort of effect even with an engine that supports emissive textures (the actual TOR in-game model is nothing like that). You could maybe try and bake some lighting into the texture, but I can't see it being possible with the mapping of the vanilla HK model, as there would be too much bleed/overrun onto other parts of the model.

[Sith Holocron]

If someone wants to make a new model for HK-51, I am also open to that as well.

 

Leaving that aside, simulating the emissive would be difficult. You can't get that sort of effect even with an engine that supports emissive textures (the actual TOR in-game model is nothing like that). You could maybe try and bake some lighting into the texture, but I can't see it being possible with the mapping of the vanilla HK model, as there would be too much bleed/overrun onto other parts of the model.

 

Also . . . if someone wishes to base the skin for-51 as he appears in the actual SWTOR game -with less lighting - I am also open to that as well.

[majesticmadman]

I myself can't do very good "creature" modeling and texturing but would like this to use in my combined galaxy to, if that's alright with you sith holocron as it's your idea. If so anyone who is willing to create it can I have permission to use it to. Thanks

[Sith Holocron]

Just as long as if someone does this skin, it is also released separately.

[majesticmadman]

yeah, you just use the look file and I can take a version and copy it in. That's fine

[DarthParametric]

So I took a crack at a new model. Went for a body that more or less imitates the SWTOR version (although added some gubbins to the forearms and reused the original HK hands because I'm lazy). I don't like the look of the head of the TOR version though, so I took the original HK head and gave it a a bit of a facelift, adding some edge loops to smooth out the bumps, adding in some geometry for the vocabulator, and generally cleaning up the typical horribleness of Bioware meshes. My model actually ended up more detailed than the TOR version, as they use normal maps to fake everything and keep the models low poly, whereas I used actual geometry seeing as KOTOR lacks any normal mapping ability.

 

 

I've done a brief test in-game and it seems to work ok, flashing eyes included (going to see if I can co-opt the effect for the chest light as well). I did notice when running through his animset in Max that he gets a bit of hip dysplasia in certain extreme animations though. I'll have to see what I can do about that (might have to move the hip socket geometry over to the pelvis trimesh, or perhaps add them in as meshes weighted to both the pelvis and upper legs).

 

 

No texture as yet, as that's not really my thing. I might have to do something basic and leave the proper job to one of the skinning pros.

[majesticmadman]

looks good, like it quite a lot, but not sure if just me or camera angle but the chest looks a little to high so you see to much of the spine but just my opinion

[Phildevil]

Hang on... was that from scratch? Because if it was, congratulation, that's amazing!

[Sith Holocron]

That's looking great, DarthParametric! Once you have animations conquered, it seems you'd be ready for release.

 

Edit: Would melee animations be included?

[DarthParametric]

Hang on... was that from scratch?

Yes, aside from the head and the hands, which are from the original HK model, as I mentioned. Although the head had some extensive reworking:

 

 

If you crack open HK's head and peer inside, you'll see some typical early Bioware half-assery in action. You could argue that the internal intersections are out of sight, so it was probably done to keep things light for the Xbox, except doing it properly takes less polys. I just put it down to laziness.

 

Would melee animations be included?

It uses HK's existing animations. There are a couple of simple melee ones in there, but there's nothing new. This is just a simple model swap. When I mentioned animations, it was only in the context of fixing the model to work properly with the animations without distortion/breaking, not adding new ones.

[milestails]

This is great work!

[Shaggoth]

i'll be damned 8[ ]

[DarthParametric]

Ugh. Now I remember why I stopped modding KOTOR last time. Damn MDLOps. Bane of my freaking existence. Anyway, after about 20 or 30 attempts, I finally managed to get a model in-game without a mangled UV map (if you look at my earlier posts, you'll see grey "stripes" on various parts on his body - that's where MDLOps screwed up the UVs).

 

Also got the chest lights hooked up:

 

 

Now I just need to figure out some textures....

[Sith Holocron]

DP, this model of yours is so nice that perhaps I should expand the scope to adding skins for HK-47 and HK-50. What do you think?

[Fair Strides 2]

DP, this model of yours is so nice that perhaps I should expand the scope to adding skins for HK-47 and HK-50. What do you think?

 

Hey, I'd be happy with the model as-is, as a modder's resource!

[LDR]

DP, this model of yours is so nice that perhaps I should expand the scope to adding skins for HK-47 and HK-50. What do you think?

 

Maybe it could be an HK model replacement?

 

And DP, this is absolutely stunning. Keep it up!

[DarthParametric]

Yes, I always figured it would be a replacement for all 3 HK variants, with just a texture swap as appropriate. Possibly I may even model the SWTOR head for HK-51, or just as an optional extra all round.

[Xarwarz]

Such excellence in modelmanship hmm i was planning to do some robot reskins in the future after my current project.

[DarthParametric]

Got a first pass on 47's texture done:

 

 

Still need to fix a few spots, maybe tweak the colour a bit.

 

In lieu of any provision for spec maps (man, you really notice it coming back to KOTOR after working with modern engines), I was hoping I could mix in a bit of envmap to shine up a few spots, but it ignored my alpha channel for some reason.

[Xarwarz]

Looking good man i wish it could retain the rendered look while in game play. nevertheless top notch work

[DarthParametric]

I redid 47's texture. I think it is pretty much done now, aside from a couple of minor tweaks. Some pics:

 

 

 

 

Now on to the 50/51 textures.