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Showing content with the highest reputation on 08/23/2025 in Posts

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    You will need the KOTOR Blender plugin. I used the 3.3 LTS version of blender but it looks like it has now been updated to newer versions. I still recommend using a LTS version. First you need to switch to the lightmap UV. If you don't, the lightmap will be baked on top of the diffuse texture. You can find this under UV Maps in each meshes Object Data Properties. Select each mesh and click UVMap_lm. Yes, it is tedious but it's required. To bake the lightmaps with the plugin, click the KotOR menu -> Lightmaps -> Bake(Auto). You should click an empty space, first, to make sure no meshes are selected. If meshes are selected it will only bake for what is selected. At this point you may notice the lighting looks bad. The UVs need to be unwrapped and some lightmaps will need to be resized to a higher resolution. This is optional but it helps me keep it organized. Look through the list of meshes and see which ones have lightmaps. I then rename the meshes to start with the lightmap name (lm0_Object19,lm1_Box01, lm9_mesh456,...). When unwrapping the UVs this makes it easy to select all meshes that share a lightmap, which you may be doing multiple times. There's 3 ways to unwrap the lightmap UVs. Each has different advantages and disadvantages. The best to use will depend on each group of meshes, sharing a lightmap. 1) Lightmap Pack (Most efficient) - This one will work for most but sometimes the triangles of a face get separated, creating an ugly seam. 2) Unwrap (Medium efficient) - Keeps the basic shape of faces the same bust doesn't pack as efficiently. This one requires you to select all(a key) UVs first or nothing happens. 3) Smart UV Project (Least efficient) - This one maintains the shape of faces perfectly but each UV takes up a lot of space. May require you to increase the lightmap resolution really high to look good (1024x1024 or more). While in the layout workspace, select all meshes that share a lightmap. Then switch to the UV Editing workspace. All meshes need to be selected in the 3D view, for the UVs to show in the UV editor. Then select one of the unwrap types in UV -> Unwrap. Remember, if doing regular unwrap, selecting all UVs is first required. Now, go back to the Layout workspace and bake the lightmaps. Some lightmaps may have weird artifacts or look low res. You can compensate for that by resizing the lightmap texture. Go to the UV Editing workspace and select the lightmap to edit. Then Image -> Resize. I try not to resize higher than 512x512 and I keep less detailed meshes between 16 and 128. The larger the texture size, the more memory it takes in game and the longer it takes to bake. Then go back to Layout workspace and bake again. To save the lightmap texture, go to UV Editing layout then Image -> Save As. You will need to do this for each lightmap once and make sure you choose TGA when saving. After, you can use Save All Images. I haven't even touched on lighting but here's a few tips: - Under World Properties, the surface color will affect your lighting a lot. I prefer to just remove the surface(or make it darker) and it gives me more control over the lighting. - Point lights fill the room with a lot of ambient light. If you want more control over the shadows use spot lights. - The game engine will add even more lighting on top of the scene. You can control this in the light's Object Properties -> KotOR Model Node -> Light
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    I still need to fiddle with the lip sync for the Dantooine Ruins scene, but since that's horribly laborious, I decided to look at some of the other scenes. Here's a first crack at recreating the Star Map visions - albeit without the black spiderwebs/fog effect. It's not exactly 1:1, but close enough. With the animated camera setup done, it should be pretty simple to transfer it to the other three maps to capture their movies, and get the footage for the cross-fade during the revelation scene. Edit: Tweaked the setup a bit after working on the Kashyyyk map. Edit 2: Added the Manaan and Tatooine map sequences. One thing I don't understand is why they are so inconsistent. Some barely show the map opening before they end, others show the later section of the anim where you can actually see the galaxy map. I think it would probably be worth offering alternate versions that follow the Tatooine map's timing. Edit 3: Maybe the timing differences are because they used those same clips to create the Revelations sequence. I personally took a different approach in order to properly sync their animations and get a seamless transition between each shot.
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    OK so here's another comparison, this time with the star map timing adjusted and with the (re)addition of the vanilla lighting, as requested by @Sith Holocron. Although I did tweak the light in the first room to switch it from the original yellow colour to the blue of the light in the star map room. I've since made a minor FoV tweak to the last shot (from 11° to 12°) which hopefully should bring every shot to parity - or as close as I can make it - with the original. I think the only remaining changes are to open the door leading to the room where you encounter the droid (and Nemo's corpse), and delete the flag placeable in the computer room just visible off in the background of the close-up on Malak's face. Strangely the lights fixed the issue with the shading around Malak's eye sockets, which was a nice bonus. The only thing remaining that really bugs me now is the desync between the star map opening and the sound effect for it. This is present in the original video, so it's a problem with the audio track. I'm guessing they must have made a late adjustment to the animation after they had already finalised the audio. Or maybe it was just a mistake. Not sure what can be done to fix it. We could overlay a duplicate of the map opening SFX, but then you'd get a weird duplicate/echo thing going on. Maybe that back end of the audio track could be adjusted/stretched? That might screw up the music though. I guess I can try playing around with it.
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    The Dantooine dream stunt anims exist, although Revan and Malak's positions don't line up with the Ruins layout so they'd need adjustment. The animated camera does line up with the layout though (starts outside the star map chamber). The models are M15aa_c01_cam, M15aa_c01_char02 (Malak), M15aa_c01_char04 (Revan), M15aa_c01_char03 (door). For other stuff like the Bastila/Revan fight and the revelation sequence, most of it should be able to be recreated with mostly generic anims. It would probably need to be done in TSL, just because you can script all anims there, unlike K1. There might need to be the odd custom anim cobbled together. The star map fly-arounds would be simple enough. It's really only the Hawk's take-off/landing sequences, Taris fly-overs/bombardment, and endgame Star Forge battle sequences that would be difficult. They can't really be done in-engine. I did play around with the idea of redoing the take-off/landing videos, but it would be a ton of effort. I had a brief fiddle with the first half of the Manaan take-off before moving off to focus on other things. That would really require a team of people, not just because of the workload but because you'd need people to handle different facets. Like all the missing VFX in this shot for example. Manaan_Take-off_WIP_Render_Test_2b.mp4