sELFiNDUCEDcOMA

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    359

  • Joined

  • Days Won

    18

Everything posted by sELFiNDUCEDcOMA

  1. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    Actually, I don't think that the engine would bother loading the model mesh / node names. That's for people to understand what each are, the engine doesn't need it. More than likely these are just ignored and aren't loaded. Can't say for sure, but, as people tend to write game engines to be optimized and memory efficient... That would have been even more so the case when trying to get a PC game to run on an Xbox.
  2. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    Well, it doesn't appear to care itself. The names array is a bunch of strings that are separated by null characters. They can be as long as you like when stored in the model format. Whether MDLops has an issue or the engine itself... not sure, but, I'm a guy who grew up with MS Dos. I tend to establish some kind of succinct naming convention and then I stick to it. I would suggest sticking to the max length found for other string values in the format, that being a max of 32 characters. In some odd cases it appears to be capped at 24 in the model, however, I suspect if the engine has any max cap on strings (names / labels) then it would be sticking to that which is found in the model format: 32. If you want to use less, it won't hurt none as long as you can still read the label and understand what it is. Now whether MDLops itself has a set cap... You'll have to ask someone who cares to look at the Perl junk. EDIT: to help illustrate... There is an index for each name array pointer, there is actually no cap in the model itself. Any cap is in engine or the original tool -- or any mod tool -- that exports into the MDL and MDX files that the game engine reads.
  3. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    Yep, was thinking of Dare Devil having seen the Defenders recently. Though, probably more of an ornamental crest to it and less horns
  4. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    OK, I take it back. Really though, my reasoning was more with this Vader comic I picked up and read a while back. Rated well but devolved into 12 year old boy super cyborg fantasy stuff. Never actually read the comic that the image is from, was just generalizing based on that experience and others regarding EU books. Anyway, I think I'll leave my comment there as I don't want to get too sidetracked. More on track: if she wore something more like a face plate, ornamental armor, that would work as well I think. Kinda like a super hero mask in that it is molded to the face, maybe with fake eyes... @ Malikor: well she plays an adviser role to Darth Nihilus whom she is seen advising her master at times regarding the Jedi -- vague memory. She is also not really a marauder type from my recollection. Meaning, her lightsabre isn't her only tool that she uses to solve problems.
  5. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    Thinking about it, having eyes that are sealed over with smooth skin -- where you can clearly see the bumps of the eyes -- depending on the texture work, could look both beautiful along with unnerving. And legends altogether is not canon, and I wouldn't hold the comic up as a standard. I find in particular a lot of the comic book "lore" to be rather unsatisfactory -- juvenile writing pandering to early teen boys. I think she is meant to be like a "counselor" type, and not really a warrior. So thinking about what works in that context might be best. So, a helmet that fits that as long as it doesn't feel like something a warrior would wear..? Still, it is your work and I think as a creator that at the end of the day, it has to be something your happy with.
  6. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    A new head would definitely work better with the new body, and I do like the above design. However, creating a new head is even more a complicated workflow to creating a new body. You may be better off finding an existing head that matches the above, and then modifying that one with a new texture in order to replace the existing one. Someone else who has done it can speak from experience as to what is possible and how difficult it is to clarify. On a side note "The Miraluka were are a near-Human species that differed from Humans in that they lacked eyes, only retaining vestigial eye sockets." From: starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Miraluka Personally I don't like the no eyes or only eye sockets look. And would be perfectly fine with her having eyes that don't look like they actually see anymore. White pearly orbs for a non-dark sided character, off-white -- like grey rotting teeth -- for a dark side character. But, I raise the point as someone likely will as it wouldn't strictly be SW Legends "lore."
  7. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    Welcome to the world of KotOR series modding, where the tools and pipeline is dated and incomplete, simple changes have overly complicated workflows if not being impossible to do, and most of the technical knowledge about the game model format and how to effectively use these tools, largely resides in the heads of a few modders . But I'm sure that the problem can be resolved, as it is nothing that hasn't been managed before and your getting some experienced and insightful help. The work looks good so far; definitely consider reworking the Visas head texture to better match the new threads.
  8. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    You mean an injector -- API hooking -- along the lines of ReShade? Something I've thought about playing with to see what could actually be added to the game beyond merely injecting post process full-screen shader effects. Never got around to trying anything myself; work took over.
  9. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    I think in some cases I tried to solve it by actually adding a strip of pixels to the other side of the texture -- in cases where the uv butted up against the very edge of the texture. In case it was a wrapping / bleeding issue. Believe it made some difference in various cases. Hard to recall as this is from around 2 years ago if not longer than that. @ olnorton: is your new texture the same resolution as the old one, and if not, what is it? When it comes to retextures of heads based on vanilla textures, I do something along the lines of 4x the original size. I think that may be 1024x1024; though I would recommend at least 2048x2048 with people playing the game at higher resolutions being the norm. When the mipmaps are generated by the video card (opengl) they should be of a larger resolution and hopefully affect whether the black line appears and how severe in effect it is if so -- if ndix UR's analysis of the issue is correct.
  10. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    Try it with your TGA. My brain is not working 100% due to lack of food, but, if you mean TPC (?) the KoTOR image format, it has its own TXI and the engine could be overriding it. My retextures are a combo of TGA and TXI files overriding originals in the Override folder. So far haven't bothered to convert to the native engine format due to tool / pipeline limitations affecting workflow. EDIT: oh, just hit me! Most of my work is in TSL and that is actually a different engine to KoTOR -- especially when it comes to rendering. This *may* limit the effectiveness of a specmap TXI solution.
  11. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    So ill reiterate: If you add a TXI file for the textures in question that has a line that specifies it needs to use a specularity map, you may find that you no longer have a black line as the black is replaced by the spec map used by the shader. May not be perfect, however, it doesn't require all the head models to be re UV mapped and textured so that there isn't a (black) seam in the middle of their faces. I mention it again as I don't think anyone has tried it yet and I currently am not able to -- pretty sure it works from past experience.
  12. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    I've noticed the issue as well; decided it was a UV mapping issue but mipmaps themselves didn't come to mind. Seems very likely it is based on your reasoning. From memory, if you use textures that also make use of a specularity texture via a TXI file, the black line will be less visible if not negated -- depends on resolution. As any retextures I do generally make use of one -- beyond those that need to use the alpha channel for transparency, like Atton -- so I find this problem disappears for me for the most part.
  13. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    No problem -- I know you're a capable modder who knows what they're talking about! If I'm being a bit of a smart arse with my replies, it's because it is a really slooow day in the office.
  14. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    Well, as long as you have
  15. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    No problem; I understand. Have you seen the engine using tangent space normal maps..? If it is only a reference of it in the model file, then, that doesn't mean it is supported. Sure at one point that was the plan before they disabled it as being to processing intensive for the hardware of the time -- think original Xbox. Anyway, if it is more than the references I've seen in the model file, then point me to the info and I might play around with the problem with a tool.
  16. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    Yeah, so I guess that makes the issue clear enough for me and where I should be devoting my time with. Though what I came up with as an idea could work, it would mean the end of the mod here on DeadlyStream; especially as we're not even discussing the most hairy part of it -- that I still need to look into the legalities of. I may do the odd work to progress the mod, however, most of it will be to tie off lose ends so that I can release it. The model tool I'll likely work on, but mostly to develop my tool development skills and, in case I want to take my idea (change of direction) further. The reality is that I have a finite amount of time, and modding, is no longer the most effective use of that time.
  17. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    Yeah case in point ^. Though you are assuming the mod will not be free. You can have a mod that is for free however people have provide the developer with funds to assist with its development. Not sure that is actually a mod that is being sold based on the reading of the site rules... care to comment SH?
  18. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    Yeah, 3D texturing painting is largely useless for the KoTOR games. If your experience is what it seems to be, I think you would find working on a KoTOR mod to be rather limiting. Regardless, you should post a link to a portfolio of work if you want people to be interested in collaborating with you. To explain further the texturing issue, the best the engine can do is basically specular bump maps. No real normal maps, why most of the work posted on the thread is all diffuse + specular maps. The model pipeline -- original model out to editable format, and, original/new model into KoTOR format -- isn't completely supported. There seem to be newer tools like kotormax and mdledit, however, this is likely just building upon the old code base -- FYI have used the tools myself -- which in my opinion is just a flawed mess due to a number of gross assumptions and lack of know-how of when they were made. I've been working on my own model export tool, and though I can scrape the time I have put into it and come to something like 3 months, it's been 3 months over around 2 years -- if not longer than that. It isn't complete yet, and to be quite frank, I'm not sure I want to create a tool that reimports the models back so they can be used in KoTOR/TSL. That is just a limiting dead end, especially as so much time has transpired since I started this mod, that I don't think the work is any longer novel. There are lots of texture replacer mods in particular, that do comparable things to my own. The other elements of the mod, are again, done to some extent by other mods. It doesn't feel very fresh to me. I have another idea in mind regarding the use of the TSL models via the tool I am working on that I doubt that DeadlyStream will be happy about. I'm on the fence about it as mods don't pay, and though I have an idea of how funding could be raised to pay for the mod work -- to fund a team -- I think lots of folks would take issue with it. Not just here on DeadlyStream. So at this point, I do not know whether I will continue working on the mod. I am more likely to work further on the model tool along with use my game development skills working on another project that I can potentially put up via Steam. Meaning, lead to a sustainable income without being someone's employee -- corporate slave.
  19. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    Cool. New tools. Definitely looking forward to playing around with the PNG to TPC converter at some point. Would be better if it had a GUI front-end, but, as the code is available and in C#... I guess someone can make one for it at some point. There's likely a few solutions to add TGA support to your tool. The alpha channel in texturing can be used for a number of things -- anything that is a black and white map really. So transparency, specularity, etc. Newer engines use it to store other things like ambient occlusion. Usually it is used to store everything but transparency it seems .
  20. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    Nice work! Good to see that there is more progress being made with making new areas with updated tools. Would be interested in playing around with those when they're released.
  21. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    I can't recall which were the models. I knew that there were multiple versions of the interiors. However, they aren't all identical. I didn't fix anything, I just replaced .
  22. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    How many Ebon Hawk models are there in the game?
  23. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    Yes, well, that was intentional.
  24. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    Funny, don't recall having to fix that one with hex editing. Remember it just needing a little lateral thinking . Anyway, took you guys long enough.
  25. sELFiNDUCEDcOMA
    I fixed many of those years ago. Some need better tools to get the fixes created.