xander2077

update. new helmet not in game, based on iridonian spaceman. the iridonian war helmet. i guess according to lore and differing versions of it, they are either really firece competitors with other warring tribes like the mandos, or they are peaceful and synonymous with zabraks(?) which makes no sense to me, but oh well. iridonians are in the game, and from that perspective it makes more sense that if they frequent hives of scum and villainy that they are somewhat fierce. so here you have it, the iridonian war helm. i still have a tiny bit of work to do on detailing and maybe some greebles but its pretty much done with for now. ... ok i think this pretty much does it. i think a good place for this would be in mandalorean camps where they keep it as a trophy item. if i get the urge to edit the iridonian character model i may incorporate this into the design but who knows. it would give several perks but have not decided on them yet. well i thought of that, but im still not sure how to properly put the two together. i have to do more research on custom armor. editing the 2da and uti files is probably not going to be as easy in linux as it is in windows, but thanks to xoreos tools it is possible. its just all a command line interface. if i can figure out how to create a font end application for the command line then i will be able to do a lot more visually than trying to type all the correct stuff in and remember what i did. so this is part of the reason i am lagging on the release of the vanilla mask overhaul for K1, because im limited to the command line. i am also awaiting a reply to an email i sent to the developer of the tools to figure out how to batch convert extracted tpc files to tga using the command line, or if he is trying to add that support in the commands i have to wait for him to do that. what i need to do is find the armor first (all the variations of a type, male female, body model etc) find out what teh skins are named, or make sure they all have the appropriate new skins, stats, etc. and the same color scheme as the helmet. or vice versa, make the texture for the helmet match the existing armors. and in this case i would either want the medium or ideally heavy armor model, even if it was reclassed in the 2da and the uti as something restrictionless. depends on the look i am going for. i think some of the helmets actually would work with medium armor better than the heavy stuff appearance wise. i want to do this for each helmet. what would be really cool is to make it so the helmets work with both medium and heavy classes of armor models. that is the best combination. so i need to create a new heavy armor that matches the iridonian helmet scheme, one that matches the arkanian helmet one or vice versa. and that may be an issue because the only arkanian armor is a lighter armor, not a heavy one. plus viewing the new skin is problematic if i do not have the model for that armor. so far i have no idea how to decode the numbering system for those models, and lucas forums helps a bit, but not as much as i would like. very brief thread on that. i think any mandalorian ones will be a lot easier, since they already have a template, and i can just create a new version of the same armor with a new skin or modify the helmet skin to match the existing variations, but i would rather make it unique to a new version of the same armor model. i also plan on releasing a few new suits of armor with new models, which has been done before successfully, but the thread on that is also not very informative, the teaching for that was behind the scenes. thanks!

nope, as of right now they are different. not a 1:1 copy. i know what your getting at, but no, sorry. by the time i am finished they wont even. if i were that lazy then i would welcome my mod being taken down. The mando hellmet will be based on the TOR idea but it will be a lot different. it already has more detail than the TOR model and there wont be any cap on it either. the other one you refer to is called the arkanian helm by TOR, but was actually built off the original ralph mcquarrie drawing for boba fett. which i prefer to bobas production helmet. TOR recycled his drawing and called it arkanian. i suppose i could call it the same thing just for ease. i wont have the extra attachments on the helmet, and the sides are symmetrical unlike the TOR helmet. it also has much more detail on the dome and the other parts. the textures will also be brand new. some of the details will be different. such as the mouth area, which is different on the mcquarrie drawing. now if you are asking if i drew inspiration from models, i would say yes, in the idea that TOR is set in the same general time frame as KOTOR. But the end product is not going to be a rip. even if the model is used as a template, it will be discarded. the textures will be discarded. so i would not be able to call it a rip. the only models im actually ripping for improvements are going to be from K1 itself. as in Malaks mask. Calo Nords goggles. Iridonian Helmet. and those are in the works. the TOR models are going to be examined, and played with a bit, but they are kind of like study objects. Cool to look at, but not very useful beyond that. they would look out of place if they were ripped and converted to K1 the other mando helm is something im not sure about yet. A lot of the models were sent to me by a third party or downloaded from facepunch. Im going through them to see what they look like, but most of the TOR stuff is starting to look wacky. Im at the point where i just want to finish the K1 mask overhaul mod and im messing around with other ideas for the expansion. Im also at the point where a lot of the stuff im looking at is kinda meh and i want to make my own models instead. update: the calo nord goggles and the ralph mcquarrie style arkanian helm. calo nords goggles will be retextured so they are not the same as his. i also had to lengthen the ear pieces and move the muff objects back over the ears. they will be called low light gogggles. the arkanian style helmet pic here shows how different it will be from the TOR one. the mouth is different, some of the dimensions and details are a lot different but similar. and a picture for comparison. although i may follow the arkanian style texture scheme, it will depend on in game armor, if there is an arkanian suit already there, i may as well follow that color scheme. i cant remember off the top of my head. the other one i mentioned before is the iridonian helm. it was so huge on the head i figured i would just revamp it and make it smaller to fit a character head. so it will be a war helm, it will look similar to the one seen on the spaceman in the cantinas, but not quite the same. as you can see on its second screenshot it is already vastly different from the original character model head. i added a lot of detail and made it smoother. the mesh was so simplistic i would have been embarrassed to release one similar.

as another teaser here is my own creation of something i have never seen in a game. it is based on a ralph mcquarrie drawing of one of his star wars aliens. no doubt some of his stuff has made it here and there in games and such, but i wanted to do my take on one of them. so i call it an ubese mask. whether or not is is a merc mask or a scavenger i will decide later. no texture, just the mask for now. not sure of the abilities either. but it will be part of the expansion. the derivative of malaks mask is going to be changed some to make it not quite identical. im kind of leaning towards it being a czerka offering, and marketed to the sith students. but this one will be seldom bought because of course most students dont idolize their mentors but want to kill them and maybe only one would have bought it. it wont be available from the czerka merchant in its full form, but perhaps he will sell some replica versions that dont do anything. the abilities version will be in one of the rooms though i think. we shall see. it will aslo have its own texture set separated from the malak texture, and altered to fit this model. it will also be completely different in coloration and detailing.

well if you can remove the dependencies and it will work in linux then by all means. im in no hurry, im sure it still has to use perl, but with it already native (perl) that should be the only dependency i can see. im sure the tk reference was not a typo, since it can be run without it in linux, but he specifically made it dependent because he was focusing on windows use. he just didnt see it as necessary to edit the script to allow for linux use. i dont think it was ever really intended to be a linux script. if it was he would have realized the case sensitivity of linux and made a folder with the isolated script as an alternate without the same dependencies as windows. if you do make a satnd alone perl script i would suggest uploading it into kotor modding tools since it would be of great use to anyone modding in linux. as far as the other tools go, i think xoreos is more than adequate for my needs there (extracting bifs, rims erfs and converting files like tga and 2da) it just has one shortcoming. no Ui front end "yet" but im sure that will come along in time, it just takes some coding and the guys at xoreos have not gotten that far yet. if i knew what i was doing i would whip up a no frills front end for it, but im not really experienced in that sort of thing.

ok, so i am nearing completion on the mod, and there is only really a couple of things stopping me: 1: im still bugged by the transparecy on the verpine headbands, and 3want it to look better. 2: i need to do some alpha testing before i release it so i wont be uploading bugfixes or updates soon after release. 3: most importantly for those masks that are derivatives of other people mods, i need to obtain their blessing. and that is taking a while. it is fine to showcase stuff but im pretty sure they want credit if something is released. but in the mean time i also have a tiny teaser for a mask expansion mod as well as additional items mod. there will be several new or even improved upon mask/helmets. (i realize some of these have been done already but not to the same degree and these will be new models based on several inspirations) each mask or helmet will have some special abilities that fit each one. each mask will be a unique item hidden in the game. there will also be suits of armor that work like the sand people and sith tropper disguise, or new items to wear, that will be in korriban and other locations. most of them will be lore friendly to the timeline of kotor. some may be a stretch but i will try to make them fit the timeline some way. and usually that has to do with the texture and not the model. and of the models i am working on i will give a teaser shot. they are still in the early stages so there are no textures yet. im still toying with a few ideas i have for other tales of the jedi related content that i want to add, but it is not in the works yet. i realize darth malaks mask has textures, but they will be replaced completely. im not sure yet what i will call the mask but it will have to do with something that gives the character a boost of some sort whether that is stamina or breathing i dont know. i will think of something. the others will have abilities befitting their origin. for instance, one idea i have is a scavenger mask that will increase the players chance to find lots of useful stuff in boxes and drops. and other similar ideas. some will up certain stats of the character. some will set their disposition and how people react to them. its still a rough idea.

well i decided to just forget the idea. heres the thing. if you break into the perl script, it still calls for win32api depemdemcy, and so you have to run it in wine anyway... but it calls for things in windows in such a way that it will brick wall in linux, there is a clue in the script itself which suggests that nobody has ever used this script in linux use TK::Tree; and linux is case sensitive while windows is not so the guy that wrote the script doesn't care about that, hes windowcentric. so if i wanted it to run from the perl script in linux, it takes a lot to do... but it is basically a waste of time and overcomplicates it all... now if i wanted to install activeperl anyway, and mdlops perl script, it can be done but it would be redundant since the win32 api dependency would mean im basically trying to clone what wine does only in a strange way. and there was a guy helping me try to get it working but for me it is a non starter. and anyway mdlops works in wine just as good as it does in windows. i just wanted a native linux version and even the perl script is not geared for linux, it is designed to make perl run in windows. and here is what the guy said he did but it still doesnt matter about mdlops... just active perl. but since i wont need it to install anything but mdlops (which already runs in wine) it is a moot point...

i can now officially die laughing after reading this thread...

ok the last post is getting too big so im going to make a new one. i can get typing a lot sometimes but i need to post more pics than words so here goes the next round. heavy targeting optics: this is about all i could do with the mask, and it is an improvement. i moved things around a bit to hug the face better instead of sitting way out in front of the face, and i also brought the ear pieces back and in. then there was the texture and UVs. easy as pie and i have honestly been putting it off for too long. more to follow... ... next is the perception visor. i had to get rid of the earmuffs and replace them because they were not over the ears at all, and they were too blocky. but this created some testure issues so this will probably be the only texture i release with two variants for the same goggles as in one vanilla and one for my model. the UVs are so different i had to add some details that were not there before as well as geometry to hide some sanfus on the texture and model mismatch. so i think that is all for the models unless i missed one, but the neural band texture has to be redone as well. and i think if i am not mistaken that it uses an aural amplifier model, but i could be wrong. (?) edit: well no i used the model for the aural amps and it is not the same UVs so im going to have to find the right model. but in the mean time i do have model updates i did earlier today, and those are pretty much just a few vertex tweaks on the goggles i forgot to put sauls head in. as is the case with many of the goggles i sized them down a bit to make them less bulky and fit better. that may or may not be a good thing if sauls head is too small compared with the player characters. but here they are anyway. ... revisited the transparency on a few of the goggles, still have one more to apply it to but i found that 70% is about as low as i can go at least in blender, but i think right around there is a good rule for transparency it seems. the original tga files solved transparency by making the whole texture transparent, but i it can be annoying to look at in blender, but hopefully that wont make these not work right in the game... i also fixed the UVs and texture on the perception goggles so now they can be used (although i dont know how well) with the vanilla model. i guess i will have to reimport them to find out.

thats probably because it is. all i did to it was convert it to a helmet, and add some hoses. this is more or less going to be a replacement for that mask if someone wants the hoses and a full helmet. if not then they can try out the texture im going to release which is just going to be a slight refinement of the one he did. for some reason there are what looks like pebbles on the surface, so i will use the clone brush to heal the spots, and then add some more details, like shadows, and a rougher surface. there is a lot of room on that texture too, so i can also place the hoses somewhere that is not going to interfere with original model, and still have some detail on them. im just not sure if i want to put them on there or not. they look kind of stiff, and they are supposed to be floppy sort of. anyway... well i cant really call it mine, and some of that rust you are talking about is just vertex painting. basically it dirties up the texture a bit by adding shadows to the vertices. sometimes it can be used to fake ambient occlusion, in this instance i was using it to test how the back of the helmet could potentially look if i were to map it to a darker texture UV. i did the same thing for the hoses since i dont have a texture for those yet. i also vertex painted the original mask a bit to try and make the shadows come out more. so really i did nothing other than add a new mesh to the back of it and hoses. its not really my model, but a conversion of the one Quanon made. now once i modify his texture then it will be a tad bit better, but it is still his baby. could i make one of my own? sure, why not? but also why reinvent the wheel? the transparent parts do have an alpha channel, i may just have to adjust them a bit, but i dont want them to be too light or they wont be as dramatic. there is a checkerboard behind them in gimp. and as far as cube map and transparency goes, im not sure, but the mask is not just one part, it is a few, so maybe that can help? i dont know. the vanilla one was 4 parts, and i basically took it and made it into 3 instead because there was no real reason for the body of it to be different parts, but i did leave the light a separate part in case of glow maps and the visor part. im pretty fast with these models simply because they are not really that high poly. i have made some models before that were so high poly i could not rotate around the model without the screen locking up, but im not about to attempt that on this computer. im happy doing low poly ones. and for as long as it took me to get back to this whole mod concept, im in no way as fast as toastyfresh. but now that you mention it i think i will make some toast (getting the munchies) where the real fun comes from is being able to texture these masks and make them look more realistic. pixelization kind of breaks immersion, so that is kind of the reason behind all of this, to provide really nice textures, but it just so happens that i can also improve the models a bit as well and make those textures really work a lot better. well i have been working on some of the other player made masks, and i cant remember where they all came from but i will annotate that when this is released. the next one is a modified sith trooper helmet, that i call the "elite" sith trooper helmet (kind of like the republic commando helmet in a way). i still have a long ways to go with it, but the mesh is modified a lot. no detail was added, but i put sauls head in it, enlarged it to clear the nose and hair, and then adjusted the thing so it is more streamlined but not as high of a forehead. so i brought the rest of the dimensions back in here and there clearing the hair and head. i also gave it a texture of its own instead of calling the texture for the armor, so it will be a unique item. i think the texture will still work with the unmodified trooper helmet by itself, so i will have to release a copy of that too so that the UVs will not be off. that way they can use the same texture. for comparison the default style sith helmet with the new UVs and no changes to the mesh at all. and the modified sith helmet with some differences and the face mask is also different (not transparent) the last one is not mine, and i dont know what to do with it, but it was some kind of mask for a mando i guess, and the texture was x_tukata, and i just happened to have one named c_tukata in my override (from the shyrack and desert wraid mod) funny thing is even after i put new seams on it, and a new UV unwrap, it definitely belonged on that texture, but i only have the c_tukata tga and not the x_tukata one like it is supposed to have. so i have no idea if i mapped it right or not, the front i could tell exactly where it went, cause it just fit there. but the horns i was not really sure about. im not sure what i will do with that one. since i dont have the texture that is supposed to go to it, i may decide to hang on to it for a later date. or i may cobble together a new texture for it based on the one i have since it fits ok. sure it could be better, but most of that has to do with the UVs using so little of a large texture. same with the sith helmet, it is beter to have a smaller texture or one the same size with less space on it wasted as much as possible. so i can actually get more detail out of a 512x texture based on a 1024x one if i UV map it right and dont waste the space. EDIT: this morning i decided to tackle the cassus fett mask again and i got it to where i am satisfied, even with the hoses. will they clip? maybe, depending on head movements, but hopefully they wont. of course i can still just release a few variants of the same mask. one that is a modified mask version, one that is a full helmet, and one with hoses. variety is the spice of life right? now this one i had a lot of fun modifying. first i separated the eyelets on the front from the rest of the helmet. then i applied symmetry to the helmet since it was mapped that way anyway and that helps when you redo the UVs. then i redid the UVs so they were cleaner and took less space ont he texture to make way for the hoses and the back of the helmet. then i went in with the clone brush in gimp and cleaned upp all the pebbles on the places outside of the front of the mask details. the more subtle out there the better. then i placed the rib details over top of the front mask texture to combine their UVs into one part instead of spread all over. then i isolated the borrom of the texture for the back of the helmet and re-unwrapped that for beter placement. then i had room for the hose texture on the other side of the mask by itself. once i got it all together in layers i added a layer for grime and dirt and touched up a few of the areas to blend them a bit better, and then merged it all down. the hardest part is figuring out how to unwrap it the best way so it doesnt take a million years to modify the texture. luckily i think Quanon and i think alike so it was a lot easier to add details to and rearrange. arright. i had to take it back into gimp to rectify a transparency issue. the shadows were see through, so i had to isolate the transparency to only the glass for the viewport. then i messed around with the vertex painting for a while til i got it to where the raised parts were highlighted and the low parts were darker. but not too much. i tried using the built in UV to Vcol function but what it did is just made the transparency worse, so i had to revert to the old method. the problem is that if i take it into blender 2.49 i dont need a texture to fake the ambient occlusion, but for some reason they made it so you cant do that any more in blender 2.74, so i can try that but more than likely if i take it back into old blender then i lose some of the info on the mesh, and if i fake the ambient occlusion there, when i bring it back the vertex colors will reset. so why bother? have to do it the tedious way i guess. until i can figure out why the paint UI is not working in blender 2.74, there is no good way for me to add ambient occlusion to anything, and i have not got the slightest idea how to fix that. i tried with a plugin from blender sensei, but his free plugin took over my program and altered the layout so much i hated it. had to uninstall and reinstall, and then found out the only way to get it back to my settings were to delete his and restore a backup the plugin made of my default blender settings. what a pain. maybe i will try using his plugin again later, but for now no thanks. i cant stand it when people want to hijack your programs just because you use their plugin, i had enough of that in 3ds max and photoshop. ... ok another one, this time the same tukata head mask as before but this time i did a new texture for it, one that is specific to it alone. i also gave the horns more geometry so they are still mean looking but less blocky and more horn like in shape. the rest of the mask i pretty much left alone. now the texture turned out ok considering i had to rebuild a lot of it by piecing it together in gimp and then adding texture detail with various brushes. i also removed the eye since the skull mask is of course from a dead creature. i got to thinking about it and im pretty sure this is also one of the masks included in the brotherhood of shadow. i have never played it yet, but it was in my override. i also added more detail to the horns part of the texture and gave it as seamless of a texture as i could. however, i do have to fix the center of the object since it is way below ground level. i think it is another case of importing a mask that has the correct stuff in it so i can correct that. ... new day, new texturing. it took a lot of trial and error, and some mesh editing, UV tweaking, and other stuff... but i think i have just about got the unique sith elite helmet done. at first the texture i had put on it was ok, but needed some refining. and i kept getting to a place where the details started to look like a smiley face on the helmet, so i had to erase those and come up with something that followed the pat of the UVs better and deliberately looked like a frownie face. cant have happy sith troopers. anyway, i was going for the fact that the star forge is cranking out all this stuff, including the armor, so there is a slight rakata influence in the design (as with all star forge items).

lol, ok so it is X-or (eo) cookies from a greek goddess??? hmmm... must be tasty stuff, does she wear an apron and lab coat while doing differential calculus? well for me being able to extract models with xoreos tools instead of ktool natively in linux is not for the sake of rivalry, but ease of use. for someone like me in linux, who cant get windows tools to always work right, that is H.U.G.E! i am by no means a coder or familiar with C# or C++, or xml, etc, but i do understand that they are important for making tools for games and games themselves. if i can help at all it will be to suggest functionality for the tools from a modders perspective, but i am sure there is a lot to do before the alpha testing of certain things will be done. im just happy these tools are being developed. if i were in windows then by all means i would use ktool and others that i grew to love years ago in windows, but in linux nothing was really viable until you guys started working on the open source versions. thanks a lot for that.

Figured I may as well post a few pics of some new textures on player made masks (really just re-skins of vanilla masks, but in player mods) One is the Sith Templar, and the other is from svösh. I may add more pics later, but for now I am having a hairball of a time with the two vacuum masks that svösh did, and may have to rethink the design a bit, or just revert back to the non helmet mask, because the UVs I had on the vanilla style one look ridiculous on the svösh versions... I’m also trying to figure out whether or not to add hoses to the Cassus Fett mask. But I will show that too, since it is part of my work flow. However that is just a concept and not even close to being final... Since I am tied up trying to figure out mdlops perl version, and some things with other player made textures, I’m juggling a lot of different things, but I’m still also working on the Verpine headband at the moment. Soon I'll show progress on that. ... ok, well it took some doing, and i had to sacrifice a portion of the texture that was unused by the headband model, but i came up with a viable transparent goggle layer with the kind of details that were requested. and i also revamped the model itself to take up less texture space so the ear parts are less intrusive in appearance, so the overall result is more light weight and tech savvy looking. i am not sure yet how i will pull the same off on other headbands of similar design, but im sure i can find portions easier on other ones besides the limited space i had to work with on this one. each one will be different, so i will probably not recycle this texture or UV on any of the other similar goggles. as far as the perception goggles go, i will have to work within the constraints of the actual texture and UVs. after all i want this to be compatible with both the vanilla masks and the new models too for every piece of headgear i do. and while i was at it i also redid the textures for the two additional verpine masks added in a mod i forget, i cant seem to find it in my mod storage folder, but since the textures were in my WIP folder already i went ahead and did them. plus i also found several additional masks and some player modified mdl/mdx files, including armor and revans robes, so i have a really cool mod coming up based off of those but not even close to the base files. i am simply using them as a template for what i really want to add.

Years ago i was fortunate enough to have a beast of a computer, 3ds max, and be a part of a mod community called freeworlds: tides of war. That was where i first learned to model in 3d. after dabbling in things like iclone and daz 3d, i didnt just want toplay around any more, i wanted to create models. so i got a copy of gmax and got to the point i felt the need to get 3dsmax. that was where i got the modeling bug. ever since i have been addicted to it. Well flash forward to the mod i was working on at the time... freeworlds. it is a total star wars conversion of freelancer. While i was there, i modeled well over 1000 different ships, which never got used, because of the untimely theft of my computer, and a bit of confusion when i uploaded my models and they were deleted from the dev server. so tons of hours down the drain and nothing to show for it. but i do still have a few of the pictures i would post in my WIP. Yesterday i was browsing one of my old external drives and stumbled on some of these pictures. i had thought they were long gone, but i found some and i still enjoy looking at these even though i no longer have the 3d models. a few of these were also supposed to be used in a star wars conversion of X3 that never got off the ground either. alas, even though my models are all gone now, i did enjoy the time i spent on them, and i learned a lot about modeling work flow, and i got pretty good at making star wars ships that really fit the extended universe, and the star wars theme in particular. i also tried my hand at making environments (landing stations) but of the few examples i have the final product is something i did not screen cap, so they look pretty amateur (i wont post those). But what i do have are pics of my very fist model (the YT 1930 which i was infatuated with and got me started with the modeling bug) all the way to my last (the nova drive 3z, or is it z3? anyway) i hope someone enjoys looking a these as much as i did making them. but as you can tell i really got immersed in star wars modeling and still have the itch for it these days, just for something other than space ships, space stations, and transport craft of other kinds.

no pics to update my work yet, but i did get a player request from Jorak Uln for something i think i will do. that is making the transparent parts of the verpine headband and bothan visor into something like this :

well that may be true but i like taking precautions, like using a second game directory instead of the one i play, that i use for modding. that way i isolate anything i do to the game to that one folder instead of borking the installation i play. and there is something to be said for the old addage of save, save, save... besides i havent got there yet, so if it really is the all powerful mucker-upper, then i will find out soon enough. i do know that i got it to work fine before, which is how i modified the UVs for a player made helmet before and exported just fine. but again it was in a different directory than my actual play directory. a clone of the one i play but if anything happens to that it is simple as drag and drop and things are back to normal.

nothing is ever irrevocably broken if you 1: save your source file model and isolate it from the game, and 2: make a backup of game files so they are not dameged irrevocably. i figured trial and error is one of the standing methods of modding, its just nice to know details like that, cause it saves a lot of guesswork. what is the point of paving the way if one is not really paving the way? i guess it would be nice to know what works before trying out a billion methods. as far as mdlops being the culprit, it does what it does. it is up to the model to be the format expected or it wont work right. but that was not the issue, it was neverblender, which did not recognize the particular ascii-mdl as a valid file, but recognized the extracted vanilla models just fine. but really the script was not the issue either, it was the model and how the mdlops output ascii-model was different because of how that model was different to begin with. i guess neverblender has to be fine tuned and made to be more sophisticated in the future. so i will let the developer know so maybe they can add some more functionality to the script and force imports if need be. i told them about the issue and asked for an option to import geometry only in the correct orientation and coordinates, and also an option to force one material compatible with the aurora engine.

well i figured that, but the other mdls i imported into blender did not have dummies, instead they import a tiny cylinder as the placeholder and the mesh(es) are childed to those at a consistent distance from that object. im sure the export script compiles the necessary things to make it work in kotor or NWN, all im saying is the specifically player created dummy being the way it was (which was completely different from the imported vanilla ascii-mdls from the game itself) was what threw off neverblender. whatever was done to make that model work in kotor, was not exactly the format neverblender was expecting, so while it worked in kotor, it was different enough that the import script would not recognize it as the same as the other models. comparing the two (the extracted game models to the player made ones) there is usually some kind of discrepency, some are minor, and some are enough to confuse these import scripts. im all about details, so knowing the rules of what a model has to be in order to work in game is important. that is how they compile these scripts for import/export. by focusing on what parameters the model has, and then putting all those things into a script that looks for that checklist of parameters to find a match. if it finds a square peg trying to fit in a round hole, then it wont import and in many cases wont even export, or will do either with errors. so i guess you could say what i want to accomplish is make the models as compatible as possible with the template of the extracted vanilla models, to avoid problems like this in the future. what i would like to find is a list of what kotor models need to have in them to function in the game, and also what is done for you in the export scripts. but usually tutorials do not get that technical. things like coordinates, scale, units, and what has to be in a scene. consistency is important. that is why all these vanilla goggles/masks have the goggle hook in the same place, which is right about where the bridge of the nose is. it is up to the modder to put the mesh the correct distance from that goggle hook for it to look right. but there is more to it than just filling in the blanks... when i imported one particular model, t didnt hurt anything for the empty to be removed, it actually cleared a lot of headaches up. the orientation of the "empty" xyz was different from the global xyz, so trying to symmetrize or extrude became a pain until i figured out to remove it and apply the transformation and rotation. then it was back to normal and behaved more like the other imported mdl files im working on. another thing is the materials attached to the model are confusing. it has a bajillion of them and i suspect it has to do with the way the model had to be imported differently than the others. im at the point where im not sure if i can work with the model the way it is or if it would be better to just export it as an obj and then reimport it to a new scene with one of the other goggle models to use as a template, kind of like importing a skeleton to build clothing or a suit of armor around. speaking of which, i would love to find a way to add a new set of armor/robes to the game, but i have not been able to extract one from kotor or find a player made one yet. usually they just use scripting and other magic to add a new set of armor using the existing files by reskinning those. but in this case i want to add something completely new, which really needs a new model.

wow, im glad someone agrees with me about dotnet. it is atrociaous. now if i get perl running and the modlops installed, im pretty sure i can compile it so that there is a link on the desktop that will run commandline for me instead of typing it all the time. console commands are very powerful tools in linux but if i dont have to use them i would rather not, as far as the plugin goes, it is the newest version of neverblender. it actually is flawless. i have yet to blame that for the issue. well i would not say flawless but it is written to do what it should, which is import actual extracted game models and then export player made ones. actually i found out what the issue really was. i was attempting to import a player made helmet that i had previously converted to an ascii-mdl before, but i forgot i was editing it in max, and 3dsmax is another one of those things that doesnt quite work in linux. i could not do anything in it. just stare at the model, so i gave up on it in max. anyway the nwnmax plugin for that is what i used to import the model to max, so i guess it is much better at forcing models into the program, and i think i remember a button or option that allowed it to be stripped down to just the mesh but anwyay... aside from that i kept trying and trying to get the ascii-mdl to work. i tried downloading the mod again, converting it to an ascii from that folder, and i even tried changing the name and extension to lower case thinking that might help, but nope... what the issue was? well the model had an empty instead of a really tiny cylinder placed as the bone for the goggle hook, and neverblender doesnt know what to do with empties, so it errored out. so i did some reading up and found a forum post where people were discussing different methods of getting models from kotor and other mdl format games, (xentax) and this link took me to a place where there was a zip file containing a blend file for blender 2.49b. this opened up the scripts window correctly and allowed me to run a script from there ( a really old way of doing it) and i was able to run a really really old version of the mdl import plugin to import that ascii-mdl. and once i got it in blender 2.74, i saw it clear as day, there was an empty in the scene. and although it works in kotor like that, (and i dont know how unless kotor only cares about the name of the goggle hook and not what it actually is), neverblender is still not sophisticated enough to import it that way becasue it is not expecting the goggle hook to be an empty. so mdlops was not the issue at all. anyway i sure will look up everything you mentioned and hopefully before long have a working native mdlops. there are other ways i could have done it but i am not really excited about hexidecimal, so hex2obj is something i probably would have tried, but not yet. as far as ktool goes, i have tried re-installing the old version of dotnet and it still doesn't work. the fact i had it working before means i installed it right, but all the recent security updates have borked compatibility between linux and windows for a time so i wont even try to fix that yet. but i also found something very interesting that will hopefully give me an alternative for extracting game models natively in linux. it is called xoreos (sounds greek to me) but anyway. it is an open-engine implementation of NWN with its own set of dev tools so people can manipulate the NWN assets for the engine. i suppose it is somewhat like openmw only for NWN, and as a natural ofshoot of that there would be a whole slough of tools one could use for KOTOR instead of ktool and the others that were designed for windows. interesting stuff... actually no, i have not tried that pyscript yet, but so far i cant get anything but neverblender working in the dropdowns, and that kmdl script is probably one i will have to try by using the scripts window in blender. i have not had much luck installing scripts in either version of blender i use, and it usually boils down to one of my pet peaves, great tool, terrible instructions on how to use/install it. not saying that script is in that category, just what i have run into a lot the last 8 months.

ok, well i have not been able to figure out how to do that. the reason it would be cool is because im having errors with some of the models i try to write as ascii.mdls. usually the player made ones. now i had it working before, but for some reason i misplaced the models i already converted and had working in blender, that i wanted to edit or view (for texturing) and trying to recreate them works (to a degree) but blender wont read them. it will import tons of other models except a few that seem to have something go wrong during the mdlops conversion. as always i think the majority of the problems i have with compatibility of plugins and programs goes back to wine, maybe some missing library or more likely a dotnet problem. anyway, i thought maybe it was a problem with the plugin in blender 2.74, but that one at least works. i cant figure out how to install the import/export plugin into blender 2.49 (which i do have running in wine as a portable exe already packaged with lots of game model importers, everything it seems except for K1 &K2 models?) anyway. i cant get my Ktool working again either. it was going good for a while and now it will not even work, at one point it worked and would not recognize the game directories when it had previously. so i have no shortage of compatibility issues when it comes to native windows programs. if what you say is true and mdlops can run natively in linux using perl, i wish i knew how to get it working. wish there was a native port of ktool for linux too but that project seems to have died long ago. let me try and break it down. wine is sort of like a bridge between whatever windows code there is and how linux works. every time there is a security update, it can negatively effect wine because it may or may no longer know how to talk to linux and emulate a windows environment properly. what can occur when there is this coding mismatch, where wine calls for a function that changed in a linux update, is this, there can be stack overflows, memory errors, and other anomalies that will not allow a program that used to work to function the same way. so wine is not an ideal solution 100% of the time. and the worst part is that there is not always an error window that will pop up to let you know there is an issue, sometimes it just crashes with no explanation or hangs. sometimes the program never opens. sometimes a debug will not reveal the issue or is very technical with hexidecimal and googling that leads nowhere. the culprit is usually dotnet. so what i suspect happened is that wine no longer knows how to get dotnet working in a linux environment, and the compatibility patch between linux and windows programming is borked now, since the coding in linux base changed several times and wine has not caught up with those changes yet. why? well i think it has to do with security, and something similar to the SSL fiasco going on. but it is a dotnet issue. just as they get it working it seems like it gets ruined after every update. so i think i will have to wait til an updated version of wine comes along to fix those issues. that is going to be a long shot though. linux coders are paranoid about dotnet and other parts of microsoft code with blatant exploits, so they usually have to work overtime to come up with a workaround to fix the issues, and as a result dotnet can have reduced functionality, or even not work well enough for windows programs to behave properly. windows programs that depend on the actual windows version of dotnet tend to misbehave in most cases in the wine version, because they are so thoroughly picky, and it is not always possible to fix that by actualy installing the real dotnet from microsoft. sometimes it works and sometimes it dont. so in short a native version of mdlops would be highly desireable, since i think the problem with converting the models to ascii in some cases is effected by these errors producing the wrong output in the ascii model. and as a result blender (running natively) does not know how to read the model so it gives a bunch of errors and imports nothing.

well anything that already uses the same model with a different skin will probably either be scripted to point to another texture or i can import the new model to the one with a player made skin. just for kicks i decided to do a reskin and mesh enhancement of one called mask 77. now i dont remember what mask this is, but maybe someone will recognize it. well i looked it up and it is from the brotherhood of shadow. so maybe it was supposed to have a hood but for some reason it didnt work like they wanted it. anyway, i still modified it. oddly it also had a hood attached to it and the texture UV was on a transparent area. dont really get why that was, but i removed the hood and retextured the mask, i also added some stuff on the front. sure it looks like sub zero (and i got a hunch the same person that makes skins and models like that in every video game was the culprit) but i think it was a good idea, even if it was implemented a bit strange. what i did to the mask was make sure the center and the bone for the goggle hook were all in the right places, deleted the hood, made a new texture for better detail. added the tech greeble on the front and then copied the front of the mask around the nose and mouth. bridged the copy and the greeble. unwrapped that, then moved the UVs around. after that was done i tweaked the new UVs a bit, tweaked the geometry of the mask so it hugged the face better, and then saved the whole shebang. hopefully the faces are mostly the same on the characters and there is no clipping. if the saul and juhani heads are any indication, then this one should be ok too. this next one is cassus fetts mask converted to a helmet version. it was pretty simple really, but one thing i have to do is modify the texture a bit, even though it is an awesome one, there is just a tiny bit of room for improvement. but that is not really a huge problem. now the mask is cool, but it needed some tweaking. the chin had to be lowered and then the whole existing mask had to be rotated to clear the hair. this also brought it closer to the outline of the face and looks more agressive. then i had to add the back part of the helmet, and hollow out the hidden back side of the existing mask model, put the two together, and close off the bottom of the mesh i added. then i moved the parts of the helmet around a bit to clear the ears and follow the head contours, avoiding the hair. the result is a shiny new mando helmet. aural amps are half way done now. the rest is going to be refining the textures. they still look a little too crisp so some aging will be added, and maybe some more details. im still not sure about the neural band since i think (if i remember right) that it uses the same model with another texture. Anyway, with these two i noticed a bit of stretching, so i added some geometry there to account for the bad UVs. i added more to the advanced model than the normal one. it fixed the issue. i also tidied up the UVs that were already there. and i moved some of them to a more desireable part of the texture. now there appear to be more details. looking at some of the screens i realized something else. the goggle hook is not always located in the same place on the face of the head im using in blender for reference. now im kind of thinking the hook has to be somehwere close to the eye so i will try to determine that from game screens and then adjust accordingly. the reason this concerns me is the placement will determine whether or not things clip or other undesirable placement occurs. for instance the goggle hook on the saresh model places it low on the ears in game, which makes it act more like a collar than a headdress. i also have to make sure the other ones like helmets and especially tetas royal band are placed correctly since they depart from the vanilla models quite a bit. the big thing is going to be finding a model that is unedited ( i still have a few) and place it properly to figure out where that goggle hook bone is and then make sure it is consistent in each scene. that means i may have to move around the meshes again and even possibly do more adjustment to them to clear the hair and ears. just when you think things are done lol.

im quite sure it is easy, but i have no idea how, and im on linux so it is not as easy for me to do mods period for any game. so what are these other masks? im taking a look at a few player made ones right now and im finding all kinds of stuff. some of them have decent testures but lopsided models, or really bad UVs (like incomplete seams so there are stretched UVs) but they can be fixed. another mistake im finding is when someone makes the texture they forget to remove the UV template and it is just barely visible in the right light. nothing like a wire mesh (yellow at that) to ruin your day in the game lol. its not really that bad but i cringe. one i really want to make into a helmet again is the mando mask of cassus fett. and theres some missing details on a really awesome texture for that one. if any of the models have the same model as the vanilla ones it is a simple model swap. all i have to do is export an obj, import it to the player mask, and then swap the model out. im still learning how to mod for K1, i sort of graduated to models once my skill level had gone so far that i wanted to do more than simple texture replacers. granted i was already a pretty good modeler, but my UV skills were not quite there yet til recently. ok time for some more pics. i have done quite a few of the helmet versions of the masks that i thought should be helmets, and i finally got two head models imported to blender to help judge the scaling of certain parts. one is a modified saul karath head, and the other is a juhani head minus the pointy ears. with them i was able to use the heads as reference for some of the changes i wanted to make on a few of the masks and adjust the helmets so they would not clip. here goes

ahhh, the bothan visor. this is a set of goggles where i may or may not decide to edit the model later. i tried doing that before and lost track of where the UVs were supposed to be, so i started over to get the layout correct and become familiar with it. then i remapped a few areas on the front. despite it being a really busy texture, there are parts that are not used or will never show and i am not sure why. and this is a set of goggles that hugs the face. weirdly it looks almost like it started out as a spaceship before they became goggles (especially from the back side) and why they went to so much trouble to detail the hidden parts is beyond me, unless it is a model repurposed as goggles or they planned on having an FPS type view and animations at one point (which still does not explain why this looks like a spaceship) but all the goggles have this detail on the interior that never is viewed in game. i guess if there is a scripted event such as an animated scene where goggles get knocked off of someone it would help to have these details though. what would i change? well i might want to increase the size of the visor a bit. it is so tiny on a head up front that it kind of looks comical on the character so widening them a bit (not a lot) could help appearance wise. i also might change the lense of the goggles because it just seems like a pair of those 80s window blind sunglasses that made a comeback a few years back. im not sure what i would change it to. lots of ideas. once i get a head model imported there is a lot i could do. i also dirtied up the texture a bit so it doesnt look as much like a plastic toy. i also worked on the aural amplifiers. now the textures already look decent on the model, but there are a few spots where stretching is a problem. so to help fix it i tried adding a cylinder and extruded the front two faces out like a knife blade for the dominant part of the texture, and it worked well on the normal amplifiers, but i have to rethink my approach on the advanced version because the texture has a lot more going on and what i did on the first set didnt work as well on the second. but until i get that ironed out no sense in showing it off yet. im also adding more details to tetures where appropriate, and some grunge and dirt in some cases or scratches and wear. whatever makes them appear to be more lifelike. i think i have about 3 masks left to retexture, and each one will be evaluated to see if they need any model changes. so that means there are 6 models to possibly add detail to (or not) and three textures left to do from scratch.

im not sure, if someone wants to port them to k2 that is fine. this is pretty much just an override mod, so i am not even sure how to port it to the second game. these models are really not high poly at all, just have better textures for the most part. yes some parts have been redone, like the infragoggles above, but that was only the optic chamber. i have also done some remapping of UVs where necessary, because they realy needed that as well.

next up is the infragoggles. thanks to sithspecter for getting me the vanilla texture as a reference. this is a great example of how a good texture can make a low poly model really come alive. now i would not be ashamed to wear these things. they actually look like something a galactic mercenary would utilize.

thanks dj. sometimes it is simply a new texture and UVs they need, and sometimes they need a bit of model work. the saresh model may need a bit more tweaking though. well all of them really. ideally if i can find a good median for the heads then these will fit nicely. the only pic i found of the saresh model in game was kind of disappointing. it doesnt really hug the face like it is supposed to. so i kind of want it to do that. i did a bit of research on the styles of ornaments and stuff from the time of empress teta (tales of the jedi stuff) and so that kind of style was applied to things like the sith deprivation mask and tetas headband. i think most if not all the textures will get some decent tweaks, even some of those that i thought were done before. any of the textures i did recently on the models are done, but stuff i did months back will be revisited a bit.

last one for tonight. circlet of saresh. by far probably one of the most difficult to update because of the complexity of the texture. but i was determined to get it done.