xander2077

well, they may have never had a bump map to begin with and now that they have more detail, they look just as flat as before, just more noticeable now. or the new texture doesnt work with the old bump map. until i figure out bump mapping in KOTOR, they probably will look flat for a while. Or... Somebody who has photoshop and knows how to create bump maps can help me out (hint hint) 512x512 textures probably wont work with a smaller bump map if there is one, or the bump map is so timy the results are laughable. i have actually seen 64x64 maps or smaller in kotor and i just shake my head at that one. the polygons on the model are flat faces with the texture painted on. bump maps give the appearance of raised details so the flat polys dont look flat any more. the problem is to get the most out of the texture map, the corresponding bump map should be at least the same resolution and size as the texture. some are RGB, some are purple looking embossed copies, and some are grey looking embossed copies of the original texture. some even have alpha channel and glow maps embedded. some textures in games have mip maps and all the textures and effects for one model on one tga file or dds file. i would love to present these right away with bump maps, but im still kind of lost when it comes to txi files, and i really dont know where to look for the bump/normal/reflection/ or txi info yet. i just got xn view to work in linux under wine so i am browsing kotor tool to see what i can figure out from the display when i double click a texture file, but some of the txi data is garbled symbols and i cant make heads or tails of it. i'm probably not the first one that has said that kotor tool wont display txi files properly, or extract bump maps right, or even extract txi files correctly all the time. i may have to really dig into the so called tutorials on bump mapping, but so far most of them are just show and tell of what someone figured out how to do and dont really give a step by step tutorial. or they assume everyone already knows how to manipulate txi files or create a normal map that kotor will accept without errors. it can be frustrating at the very least when everyone is talking about windows programs and im trying to do it with alternatives in linux. yet another reason to fix my main desktop PC before too long so i can jump between 3ds max, photoshop, kotor tool, and other stuff without crashing anything. wine is cool, but it can be a pain sometimes. theres no BSOD, but they sure love their unhandled exceptions. you figure by now they would have gotten more things to work in a wine wrapper than they do. or created suitable alternatives or ports of programs native to linux that game mod plugins are designed for. but beggars cant be choosers. back to the ol grind stone.

For now im staying pretty much vanilla and i try things here and there to enhance them, so if i find a change that makes something look a lot better, then it will go into the final pack. i still may rework the stabilizer mask and the vacuum mask, just have not found the magic formula to make them pop, only added more detail than the original. so far the only one that has made a huge departure is teta's royal band. the aural amplifiers texture is a bit different, but not much would make them or the verpine headband better than a bump map. fior instance i like the light on the front of the vacuum mask, and i was lucky enough with a plugin i tried to almost make it look like you can see a chin and nose and some facial shadows behind the light and that was a random accident, but something seems missing on the mask body itself and i wont know what it is until i have a eureka moment. same with a few of the other masks too. what i could do (and i thought about it) is just focus on doing the vanilla masks or close to them (besides teta's headband which will only offer one texture) and then save those all in one folder, but have a second folder for a few of the masks that are slightly different than the original vanilla design. when i first start to retexture these one by one, i just import the original file, blow it up, and then start to interpret them blind (without seeing it on the model to know for sure) and attempt to visualize what the artist was trying to accomplish on the model by adding details to the different things on each picture, so i tackle getting the texture into higher resolution first... then i look at it on the model in game, and sometimes i misinterpet things on the texture, or completely get something wrong, but what helps is to see the texture on the model so i can adjust something. thats when i have a eureka moment, and try different things out. then i try looking at it on the model again, and if i like it i keep it, if i dont then i hit the undo button and overwrite back to the last version of it and then try something else. with a few of thses screens, now i have been able to look at them and really be picky going over them, and i can see quite a few things i want to change in the breath mask besides the color scheme of some parts, and that will translate to doing the same on the advanced breath mask as well. i may also change the weird blinds on the ocular enhancers, but i have to keep it somewhat similar since there is a transparancy layer on that part of the mask texture. but i dont see these things until after i finish the textures and try them out in the game. i probably wont be satisfied with things until i am sure it looks just right. figuring out how to do that depends on glow maps, transparency, reflection maps, and other factors that sometimes only show up by accident because they are already there, and just have to be figured out.

last three for tonight, i have to use the cheat console to get the advanced breath mask and i need to get to bed. anyway the sith mask may end up getting reworked a bit, but i think a bump map would help a lot even if i dont rework it. and i may also rework that breath mask a bit since to me it looks a bit off, but it does have more detail so im pretty happy. the ocular enhancer came out pretty good and i dont think i can improve on it, but one thing i noticed is the mapping placement could be improved a bit... but i dont really have the know how for that, max is not showing me the menu for textures, its just a big blank space when i open the material menu. something tells me im going to have to fix my other desktop pc in order to get a dual boot system so i can work in windows natively instead of things not quite working in max... first one is the ancient sith deprivation mask (sith mask one according to texture name), second is ocular enhancers, and third is the breath mask.

here are a few screens of progress so far, but i had to take a break from the game because the temp was rising pretty high on the puter due to the extra effort it was taking with in game screen shots. so here are a few and more to follow... the one with bling is teta's headband... an empress has to have bling... hopefully you guys can tell why i say there needs to be bump maps on these, mainly because the models are so low in detail that the only way to make them appear more detailed is to have bump maps to raise the details off the plain surface of the model. but that is something yet to figure out. i still have a few more pics to post but for now thats my max allowance for this reply. im still missing about 3 or 4 mask screen caps. first pic is aural amplifiers, second is the vacuum mask, third is teta's headband, fourth is the stabilizer mask (texture says sith 2 but the texture names can be misleading) fourth is advances aural amps, and the last one this post is the verpine head band, but the angle is not the best on it.

Xanders Mask Overhauls: A WIP. NOTICE: just to make things clear. the masks overhaul part 1 is for vanilla masks only or derivative masks of models that are already in K1. any other mask overhauls will correspond to their respective mods, and more than likely be handed over to the mod maintainer for an upgrade to that mod. so if it was not in K1 shipped with the original game, it wont be in the mask overhaul. and this will aslo be a basic override mod. part 2 masks overhaul will be various player made masks that i will or have overhauled the model and texture for. they will be all the masks for their respective mods together in one package, but will be dependent on the original mods the masks came from. this is for those that don't care to download each whole mod over again and i can only see it being a problem if somehow the name of the model changed, then i would just recommend downloading the patch from the mod maintainer. all player made masks are either in the process of securing permission to overhaul, or i already have secured permission. part 3 will be a masks/ armor/ clothing expansion. this will include entirely new models based on ralph mcquarries and other source material, like the tales of the jedi and art depicting people from the same end of the timeline. i already have several models done and waiting for the textures (workflow) but the expansion mod is hugely pending right now. it will depend more on scripts. some of it will build on the vanilla mask overhaul as well and replace certain headgear with more appropriate ones. Permissions procured from Quanon, Sekan, and Silveredge9 for any masks they introduced to the game. Those by T7 still pending. Still researching any others there may be. Yeah i know, masks are stupid looking in KOTOR, but i am giving them a "facelift". (pun intended). Anyway, so far i have tackled about half or so of the textures and my most recent one is Teta's headband which was restored to the game by Insidious. let me tell you, the skin looks great, and not bashing the hard work Insidious did, but the model placement on the head sets it too far from the eyes so it looks ridiculous, but the skin looks great. here is a short rundown on the WIP so far and what has been reskinned in the textures 1: aural amplifiers 2: advanced aural amplifiers 3: verpine headband 4: sith mask 1 5: sith mask 2 (stabilizer mask) 6: vacuum mask (neural band 2) 7: breath mask 8: advanced stabilizer mask 9: Teta's royal headband (teextured to look more SW lore friendly, like an antique with gold and silver ornamentation, and be fit for a queen a system is named after) all textures are 512x512 and fit the models just fine. i am doing a lot of recoloring and so some of the textures will look way better and more like SW tech should look in KOTOR. if i can figure it out i would like to do some bump mapping for them to give them more detail, and some of the models could use an overhaul, but im not holding my breath since im attempting this all in linux with a limited collection of tools. some of the models are just fine, like the smaller headgear, they just need retexturing to look better and a bump map. but some need to be shaped better and look less blocky without increasing the poly count too much. trying to get all the vertices welded together in max is a pain, and im having a hard time remebering how to do that so i can work with the models. wine in linux problems. just texturing is a lot harder to do in linux and gimp, and importing models to 3ds max in wine is ok, but harder to work with since the controls dont work like i remember them, so it is a steep learning curve for me. to view the models i have to fire up the game to see the new textures, and then decide what doesnt fit right, or what i have to redo because some of the glow maps were rushed and they missed areas that probably were intended to have glow maps but just didnt. so those areas get retextured to reflect the lack of a glow map where there are supposed to be glowy things. one of the biggest eyesores to me is any of the goggles, like daviks goggles. they just did not do the mapping very well on those and it looks rather anticlimactic and blah. so that is why 512x512 textures are being done, then things wont look as grainy when put next to the other hi res texture packs. the other eyesores are goggles that have the long cylinders in front of the eyes, which look more like extruded pentagons than cylinders, much needed overhaul on those. but that is only a small part of the otherwise ok model. this pack will be released once it is done in one zip file, and is for all the people who dont want to use the invisible headgear mod, but cringe when they see headger on their characters. if i can get around to repositioning the placement of tetas royal band, then that will help the old antique look better. i really wish there was a bump map for a couple of them, namely the verpine headband, and the sith mask, because both of them look rather flat and pasted on with just a reskin. even in hi resolution. a bump map would make them come alive with detail. and perhaps a reflection map on the sith mask would make it look more like something from the time of exar kun like it is supposed to be. but i may rework both of those anyway even after all the time i spent on them since i figured out some new plugins for gimp. and i can also generate normal and bump mapping in gimp now from the textures so that is pretty cool. anyway, i dont have a good way to put up progress screens of the models unless i can figure out how to zoom in on character heads by any other means than a screen during a conversation, so for now i jaut have to hold off on pics of what i did. stay tuned for updates! if anyone wants to help out that has windows and tools that work better natively in their OS, then im open to it. as long as it doesnt delay the release too much. if you are wondering why the grammar may not be right on this post and the letters at the beginning of each sentence are not capitalized, my spell check on everything seems borked and wont do it automatically, and even after spell check it wont do it. so i guess we just have to suffer with lower case words. annoying i know.

Alternate Textures for Sithspecter's "Canderous' Mandalorian Items" View File I really thought that Sithspecter did an outstanding job on the original mod, however, i always got the feeling i was looking at things from other video games like CoD, MoH, or Wolfenstein. So, i decided to reskin the mod in a more star warsey look. Not one of my best skins, but considering it was done in linux with no way to know what it was going to look like until i fired up the game each time i made an adjustment, i would say i did alright. The worst part of it was the shins, and i think if i would have had a proper modeling program to draw the textures on and control how they were wrapped then it would have been tons better than gimp and using the game to view the results. Anyway, here it is for anyone who might like to use it. *NOTE* you must have the original "Canderous' Mandalorian Items" installed for this skin to work in your game or it wont ever show up. Update: now with new icons made by djh269. Thanks again DJ! For anyone who wants to update this skin or refine the skin to greater detail (in lieu of my feeble programs), i don’t mind if you do, as long as Sithspecter gets credit for the original mod. Submitter xander2077 Submitted 12/27/2015 Category Skins K1R Compatible