DarthParametric

So with the performance gains I decided to try getting rid of all the sprites and seeing what happened. This is what I came up with, 180K polys worth of static meshes: Somewhat surprisingly, the performance hit was fairly minimal. Something like 5-7fps. I'm interested to see if that improves with a condensed, monolithic mesh version, assuming I can get MDLOps to compile it. I'm not a fan of the apprentices/Sith, but they are placeholders. I'm wondering whether I should use some of the TSL models, maybe in conjunction with a separate mod that replaces all the K1 Dark Jedi with those as well. Edit: OK, god damn, it took MDLOps well over an hour (!) to compile, but I finally managed to test the monolithic mesh version of the crowd. As with the level model, it was a noticeable improvement, once again returning to a solid 60fps. So it seems that the real issue at play here is entity count? Too bad there's no practical way to animate the crowd as a single mesh (I think it would only be possible with PLA - point level animation). @ndix UR: What is your analysis of this performance issue?

Probably shorter, if anything. The source female model was scaled and skinwrapped to the K1 Dodonna model, so the body is more or less the same, but the point of attachment for the head is a bit higher in the K1 model. Aside from special ceremonial exceptions. I'm pretty sure every single military force has had consistent officer uniforms, with the only real distinction being various badges of rank. Not necessarily true. I believe you could cobble together something along those lines from TOR body parts. It would probably require custom textures though.

The source model is m44ad_01a. MDLEdit can successfully load and compile the vanilla ASCII. It crashes on loading the condensed ASCII. Initially I thought this may have been because one monolithic mesh contained more than half the level's polys (~26K out of 44K), so I split that out in to what I figured was more manageable chunks, topping out at around 4K for the largest. But it still crashed MDLEdit when loading the ASCII. https://www.darthparametric.com/files/kotor/misc/K1_m44ad_01a.7z Edit: @bead-v - When trying out variations of my crowd model, I managed to crash MDLEdit again on load by virtue of the condensed version where I combined all meshes sharing a texture into single meshes. I think this must be some upper face or vert limit per mesh that MDLEdit can't deal with.

Ahah! After what seemed like an eternity (must have taken like 15+ mins), MDLOps finally compiled the model. Much to my surprise, not only did the game not crash, but the framerate (for an empty scene) was now locked at 60fps except for one very brief drop of a frame or two in the pan to Revan's face. Very interesting indeed.... It seems like @ndix UR and @bead-v will have to compare notes on their level model compiling.

The water appears to be having a negligible effect. I deleted the water plane and at absolute best I maybe gained 1fps, but that could easily be explained away by the margin of error in my pretty sloppy testing. I also tried changing the CPU affinity to a single core. It didn't really make any noticeable difference when farmed out to an unused core, but I did notice that it maxed out utilisation the entire time it was running. Although that was for an empty scene. I'll need to try it again with a model-heavy scene.

I can drop the mesh count from ~330 to ~60 before it starts getting too tedious to bother. But given the way the light maps are split, there's actually not much to be gained by welding. A lot of the rejoined meshes are physically separate chunks. And presumably most of the welded geometry would be split again on export based on UVs anyway. I'll export this version and see what effect, if any, it has on framerate. Edit: This may require the assistance of @bead-v and @ndix UR, as MDLEdit chokes on my condensed version.

For any elements that share the same texture and light map, it should be a simple matter to join them back together.

Yeah, the LS version is on the agenda. At the very least I want to swap out the "Council" for the actual Dantooine Council. The weird thing though is loading that module into Max, all the references for the NPCs are way up in the air and I seem to be lacking the ramp where they all stand on. Not sure what the deal is there. I guess I need to check I used the right layout. Not sure, will have to check. I also wondered about the water. I'll have to try a version with the water plane deleted. As I referred to in a previous post, the main chunk of geometry is broken up into lots of tiny pieces. I can only assume this was done deliberately for performance reasons on the Xbox, because it would be an absolute bastard to try building the level that way. Not exactly nobody. In addition to the player and Bastila, there are also the four Sith officers. In the latest version I removed the two at the back, as they are more or less unnoticeable anyway. Trying that with the empty version, I gained a few fps back in that last shot, so just them standing there with idle animations was having an effect.

Being so ancient, the game is single threaded. As I am running a Ryzen, the game is likely entirely CPU bound.

The positioning needs to be adjusted to better fit the camera angles, and the sprites at the back are probably a bit too dense, but this arrangement seems to give a pretty acceptable level of performance. Dropped maybe ~10fps in the final shot, which is consistently the worst performing section. I used lite models for the Sith officers. I could possibly play around more with that, see if I can bulk out the numbers whilst camouflaging the low poly stuff as much as possible. It's also lacking any sort of Sith/Dark Jedi, so some of those need to be sprinkled in.

Dodonna in action. Seems like she has some claw hands going on though, might need to play around with that (or even just try and swap out the gloves for a native KOTOR mesh - damn fingers are hell).

It seems like it runs pretty terribly even in its vanilla state though, as I said above. I wonder what it is about it. It shouldn't be too taxing, theoretically. Most of the level geometry is a single room model running about 40K polys, but there's nothing particularly outrageous. The heaviest individual meshes are the Rakata statue parts, weighing in around 800 polys each. Edit: So I did a test to see what happens in the best case scenario. Editing the room model with all the references that spawn in the stunt models and deleting them all, I still get a 5fps drop in the final shot as it pans over the now non-existent crowd. Swapping out about half of the sprites for static meshes with shadows disabled gave around a 25-30fps drop. I think you could probably cull a bunch of those anyway. There's something like 140 sprites, but you can't even see a good chunk of them because of the camera angles. Sprites would be fine up the back where you can't really tell the difference anyway. Then closer to the front could be a thinner crowd of actual meshes. The droids could probably be thinned out by 50%. They are packed in pretty tight.

Testing out the Dodonna model sidetracked me to a new tangent - fixing those god-awful stunt models in the endgame cutscenes. First up is the Dark Side version, replacing the droids: Interestingly, my framerate in this scene is pretty terrible even in the vanilla version. I have a GTX 1080Ti so I'm not exactly hurting for raw GPU horsepower, but it drops to sub-40 fps in certain places. The replacement version of the droids can see it dip below 30 with shadows enabled (it's about 5fps better with their shadows disabled). Next up is the cardboard cutout people. Bioware didn't use a flipbook (animated texture) for those. Instead they have a bunch of planes with static textures in slightly different poses, and they animate the alpha values of the meshes to blend between them. It seems an odd choice, but perhaps that was a more efficient use of memory or GPU for the Xbox. The DS versions are particularly terrible, as they just sort of wobble side-to-side. At least in the LS version they are clapping, which looks a lot better.

Yeah I think you need to fix your alpha mask. Edit: I'm not sure if this will be an improvement or not Alternative2_LDA_leaf02.7z

Try this and see if it is an improvement: Alternative_LDA_leaf02.7z Although at least part of your problem is that your alpha mask isn't solid. It has grey values, so you are going to have semi-transparent edges, probably not a great idea for leaves.

That screenshot is too tiny to make anything out (at least for an old blind man like me). You'd be better served posting the actual texture.

OK yeah that works, cheers.

Ah, yeah. When does that happen? After the Malak fight? Edit: Just checked, there is indeed the Dodonna/Vandar death sequence straight after you defeat Malak. Thanks for the reminder. Although regardless, I still want the LS ceremony sequence so I can check the animations work ok.

I need a save to test out an Admiral Dodonna model edit. My recollection is that you only see her regular appearance in the award sequence at the end of the game for LS characters, so a save right before this would be appreciated. I have DS saves to test the hologram appearance (which is a separate model) during the pre-Star Forge sequence.

Making assumptions based on filenames is often going to lead you down the wrong path. For example, the gardens in the Residential 082 East/West modules (203TEL/204TEL) use DAN_Grss for the ground texture. Extracting the level models is the only practical way to know for sure what textures are being used. That said, TEL_fl02 does appear to be used in the TSF room in Entertainment Module 081 (202TEL), so if an edited copy in the Override is not showing up then something else is going on.

List the specific file names of the textures you are editing and the module you are trying to change them in.

What's your TXI semantic? I imagine the original would have used blending punchthrough Edit: Looking at the original TPC it appears not. No TXI data at all. Also, make sure your diffuse background extends beyond the borders of your alpha mask, in order to prevent bleed causing the outline you describe.

As I said above: Like the full-on Clone Trooper stuff? While I like the look of some of it, it has never really struck me as lore-appropriate for the period. Edit: I've converted the female version, at least for TSL: You can see the occlusion conundrum in the last two videoes. In the current hierarchy configuration, the arms properly occlude the legs when crossed in front of the body. Yet as a result they are also visible through the legs when behind the body. If you change the hierarchy to fix the second animation, then the legs are visible through the arms in the first animation.

I think I have most of the hologram issues sorted out now, at least within the limits of what is practical with the engine: I've also added a ceremonial sash, similar to what is painted on the original K1 Saul uniform, but this one is an actual 3D mesh (swiped from the TOR Imperial Officer model): I'll do a female version for Admiral Dodonna in K1, although her hologram version might be a pain. K1 did holograms differently to TSL. I was thinking I can also do a plain version with no shoulder bars and changed up rank insignia for the captain, nav officer, etc. Edit: Added the Cede and captain versions: Although I've since gone back and also removed that black block on the collar. Still haven't swapped the boots yet though. Now on to converting the female model.