xander2077

i dont think they are talking about the mechanics of it, but that it is kind of disappointing that there is no payoff for destroying the body. maybe it would seem silly to suspend disbelief for a second, but even having a bag left over afterward with some item in it would be the payoff. not sure how something like that would even spawn but it seems like the way the game works that is a decent tradeoff for believability. im sure this has been discussed before, as possibly a way to find some new quest item.

so this is hex editing? i assume white would be the brightest.

That has got to be one of Shatner's best roles... lol Anyway, yes you can make two cylinders, and then for materials any standard material will do, just go to the material button in properties, and add a new one. To get them to glow or animate I think that has to do with a txi file. To add a little flavor to it, instead of making both cylinders the same, you can have one look like a microscope lens, and the other one be like a big red button that flashes on and off. Or whatever color fits the best. Then you can just eliminate the pink button. An unused portion of the texture can be used to add details for the cylinders that don’t flash. The cylinder cap is all that needs to animate and glow, and it can be split to a separate object by selecting all faces and scrolling up mesh to vertices, then separate by selection.

Awesome mod idea. I have a few to throw your way, but i will send a PM.

not exactly, i kknew it would clip some heads but not the head i was fitting it to...it was more or less there for correct proprtions. as far as clipping goes i thought i had a solution for that, such as restriction from characters that clip. but i also thought maybe there was a possibility that a modified head could be used for heads that clip, and it can, but not the way i wanted to use it. and since i dont really feel like making 6 different helmets for each gender and race attached to every armor in the game just to make them disguises, it kind of kills what i could have done if the engine was not as restrictive. i just thought there was a way i could cheat the gods. plus it is kind of nice to know all of the why and how instead of just arguing a point that it is or isn't... and even then sometimes no matter what, people are not going to understand everything you say. some people just do not communicate well with each other (not on the same frequency). i need nitty gritty details, but that is just me. i didnt understand what you guys were talking about til Quanon explained the why and the how. DJ tried to do the same but wires got crossed somewhere and it was not getting through. the issue is if i use it as a disguise, that limits me to one body type for the helmet. so that leaves me with only a couple of options. 1: go back to the vanilla masks just for the overhaul and save the rest for later. 2: make them a disguise but have a special suit of armor go with each one and raised stats. or 3: both... just one now and one at a later time as an add on. plus if i do the masks now and disguise later, they can both be in the same mod setup.

Drat, well i guess i have to talk to him then to see what can be done, or exactly what steps he went through. Im sure this will take thinking outside the box, much like the deflector shield mod. if i have to make backups of every robe and armor in the game as additional disguises to do so, and get the game to reference them correctly when those masks are on, then so be it. that itself is like larger mod. i am not even sure of the limitations here, if there is a limit to how many disguises can be added or how they can be added, or if K1 can be tricked into using a disguise in place of the base armors when donning these masks only.... heck i may scrap the helmet idea and try out adding a hood to those. or making it so they have to be donned with special matching armor for each mask in question...

it is possible, since Quanon did it with his praetorian mod. but i am not sure of the details. somehow he made it so the helmet would be donned as a disguise when the armor was put on, but also made it so the helmet could be donned by itself with other armor. however i am not sure til he replies to a pm what he did to make it work. or how he was able to trick K1 into allowing other body models. So my guess is either really heavy on the coding and file alterations (which needs tsl patcher too) or tons of extra models to reference due to the code, or both.

Short update, running into some issues with the helmet style masks to replace 3 vanilla masks in the game has this all on hold for release. The models are fine and appear in game very nicely, but clipping is a huge problem I am not satisfied with. I realize I need to learn a lot more about the skinned models, what the game engine expects of them, how to make sure skinned models are correct before export, how to modify the appearance and base items 2da, and how to properly assign weights to models that need it in order to continue. Not on the helmet itself, but in order for it all to work right the helmets depend on a non clipping head, and that has to be skinned and weighted and modded into the auxiliary files correctly to do what I want them to do. I can’t really make the helmet style masks large enough to accommodate every head without clipping or just plain looking idiotic. Of course I may also just have to revert back to the 3 vanilla masks or tweaked versions of those until this is sorted out. As I wait for feedback, I will be working on other stuff as well. So don’t give up.

One of the methods I like to use is making a new layer, and then going over it thoroughly with a grunge brush, just one pass, no need to overdo it, then using the "make seamless" or "resynthesize" plugins in gimp to even it all out. then I turn the opacity down until the dirt looks a lot more subtle and even. If I don't want dirt in a spot, like a screen, I fuzzy select around that detail layer (yes the screen has its own layer or should) and then invert the selection, move to the dirt layer, and then clear that spot only so it does not interfere with the screen. Dirtying the screen would be done another way entirely, since most people using consoles brush the dirt or dust off the screen so it won’t have the same patina. This works good on placeables and some other models, probably not so well on wall panels unless you redo the UVs on all walls in the module and make completely new textures for those. on the edges a subtle and semitransparent brush stroke of scratches in both light and dark colors that match the base color can help a bit as well. If there is transparency on the layer that has the raised portions (bevel and shadows) and all the lights are in layers above the base background color layer, you can underlay something like what Malkior showed above the base layer but below the other details... as long as the worn details on that new underlayer are the correct scale and it is seamless to begin with. the size of the brushed metal marks is important. it has to look correct to scale or it won’t pull off correctly. One way to try is to make sure the dirty brushed metal texture is larger than the actual texture, paste it into this new underlayer, then scale it down until the tiny scratch and dirt details look right on the model. Starting with larger image and finer details is usually the best way to go for under layers like the above metal texture.

This is pretty cool that you tracked it down. I may have to pick your brain on blender import/export and some of the things to make sure are right before export. One of my biggest obstacles is skinned models and weights. Since you use neverblender, like I do, I think it is worth a discussion. Incoming PM.

Let nobody say you are not inclusive...

Yep, throw a party and everything.

That really looks great! I like what you did with the new monitor textures. If you look at the example of the flip book animation from DPs post, then you can kind of figure out what it would take to animate the screens. But if you do one then you will probably want to do them all lol. You can pretty much do it any way you want. Scrolling text, or text typing out and clearing, moving scan lines overlaid on that. The sky is the limit. The central one would be more difficult since it is mirrored so I would probably leave that alone. But this looks tons better than the original vanilla texture. Great job! Yes, sometimes the original devs offset the texture UV mapping. usually in the aurora game tools or other game tools, the texture is tiled in the UV map tool, so whoever originally set the UV layout in the vanilla model was able to see where they were placing the texture because there were duplicates of it all around the middle one, instead of just one that shows in the blender interface. I am not sure if there is a setting to show it tiled in blender or not. But you don’t really need that. If you wanted to you can just select all the island groups in the first group to the left and then choose to translate it right but press x first and then line it up with the texture as it appears. Same for the screen that is offset further left. Once you move the UVs you can save the new UV layout and it will be corrected on export. If the viewport for the UV showed the texture in tiles, then you could also choose to select all the UV vertices and move it up on the y axis and still be able to line it up on the texture, but usually the best way to do it is to put it directly over the texture instead of offset. To explain here is a picture of a tool I use for Morrowind called nifskope, and it has a UV editor for that game model. This tool is set up much like the Aurora game tools the original devs had where the texture is tiled all around the middle so you can offset the texture if you want, but sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. But the offset is easy to fix. And it might be better for the engine to render if it is centered over the texture in blender and then exported with the corrections. It will also allow you to see if any of the UVs need tweaking to line up better, or eliminate stretching. But it appears there are none of those problems on this model. One last thing, the two panels that are blank on the top left and right of each blue screen, maybe adding some sliders there will round the texture out a bit more. I would also probably make those octagonal buttons red instead of pink, but that’s just me. As a side note those could be animated as well to pulse slowly if you were to get all fancy.

Well in the future, some day I would like to add some ancient light sabers and even a force saber or two, and these will be new models. However, there are a plethora of saber hilt models all over the place already made up for other mods and it would simply be a matter of finding them, contacting the mod creators, and then asking if they can be used in your mod. Some of those modders are still active members here, and some have taken a break from modding. Some of the saber hilts are already made up and released as modders resources but never used in a mod.

If there is room in the texture, like wasted space you pointed out, that you can repurpose to have new texture on it, and that will enable two different screen images, then by all means go ahead and do it. I do that all the time when there is wasted texture space, or I crop the image to enable higher detail for masks and such. For a lot of the vanilla mask overhaul I was constantly using the method you are thinking about to enhance details on masks where the texture space was wasted, or I would move the UV island to a better placement. To animate the texture, you simply select all the faces of the screens in question, and then separate them to a different mesh (object) each in the same mdl scene. That will enable each one to have its own texture. So the console can have one texture, and each screen can have its own texture. Then you simply point each screen at a tga with the UV selecting a portion of the texture and then there is some additional editing in the accompanying files to enable the "flip book" animation that DP was referring to. Quanon and a few other guys have done this pretty easily in their texture mods. I would contact either Q, Jorak Uln, or DP for details on how to accomplish that if you wanted to. I’m not sure if anyone has ever tried making part of the unused texture space animated or not, but if it was ever possible then one of them would know. Usually with the flip book style animated texture, the UV moves from the top left to the bottom right like reading a paragraph, in equal portions of the texture until it cycles from beginning to end (AFAIK) so it probably won’t be possible to put it on the same texture you based from the vanilla one. But separating the two screens to their own mesh in the same scene will enable each one to reference its own animated screen texture. Or, if you prefer to just use different parts of the unused texture space for the right screen, so it doesn’t have to be totally symmetrical for now, that will be good enough compared to the original. I totally get it if you want to learn more about animated textures before trying to animate those screens. Since you are using blender, it is really easy to redo the UV maps for each screen and put them where you want to. Just select all the faces on the model and the UVs will appear in the UV window, and then select a texture from the image menu. You will have to brows to the folder containing your new texture. It is important that all the faces get assigned the texture before proceeding further. then if you want to move just one screen or the other, you can choose only those faces on the model and then just those UVs will appear to show you where they are on the texture, and you can select them all in the UV window and move them around from there. To move or transform the parts you want in the UV window, select all the verts in the UV window that show up from the faces selected on the mesh. Use the UV menu at the bottom, scroll up to transform, then translate, then you can drag the texture around anywhere you like. To restrict it to x or y, just press x or y before moving it and it will keep it straight on the x or y. you can rotate, resize and everything from that menu. To select you can choose to select or deselect all, or border select, (to select two mirrored UVs over each other or part of them) then select linked. There is no drop down for it but if your mouse is over the UV window and you screwed a UV up you can always undo it with the cntrl-z combination. if you want to export the UV template, say if you moved the right screen island to another place in the texture, then you can select all the verts in the UV window for that model, then choose UV menu, scroll up to export UV, and then click that, it will open the file browser view and then give you the options for the size and format of the export. Then you can export it to where you want it so you can open it in gimp and make a new layer over your texture so the template can show you where you put the UV. Edit: Sorry - there was an electrical storm and I had to wait for internet service to return for a while. But here is an example of reusing or improving the texture real estate Say I want to redo a model. In this case it is the republic soldier. I redid the helmet, and then resized the texture to add more texture space for the cramped helmet texture. Moved around the UVs and now they are mapped to the upsized texture and I can begin to recreate the texture in higher resolution. I want to end up with something in 512x so I will choose to upsize it even more and then reduce the size for better detail once I am finished polishing everything.

yep, it is easy with your instructions. i remember learning about commenting out previously at some point but never really had to use it for anything til now. thanks for making it easy.

that would not really work very well since the front is on one half and the back is on the other half. then there would be a screen on the back of the computer console, so if it were ever placed with no wall behind it, then there would be a screen where it doesnt belong. and it would still be mirrored on the back like it is on the front. What DP suggested would work much better because only the screen has to be separated and only one has to have the texture flipped the right way. but it also helps if ndix wanted to animate scan lines or scrolling code in the screen texture because the rule is one texture per mesh. Two meshes can share the same texture, but a single mesh can only have one texture.

well, that is true. i hadn't got that far in my thoughts about it.

Well . . . I was not talking about retexturing them. I plan on doing some updated variations at some point in the future, but that would not be necessary for you to release the mod, and it would be fairly simple to integrate multiple variations later by simply doing the edits and including them in addition to the vanilla variations texture names. so if there is a variation that departs wildly from the vanilla, it can be added in addition to the existing vanilla texture names by changing the texture name to the next highest number sequence and adding it to the 2da and uti. (from how I understand it) and this would open up a lot of possibilities for variation. This could also enable one to choose between two different textures that are supposed to replace the same vanilla one but are so different from each other and the vanilla that they kind of warrant being additional textures in their own right. I can’t remember the body type that most people use for armor retextures, but that class has so many additional texture variations it is ridiculous, and you could possibly integrate all of them just by editing the file names and adding them all to the uti and 2da. Now as far as the lightsaber problem, I’m kind of a noob when it comes to editing any scripts or game files besides the models and textures, so I would not know where to begin there, but I am sure there are a lot of experienced modders here who you can talk to for suggestions.

I am just glad this is being tackled. I love to see new lore friendly content and quests introduced to the game to refresh it over again. Makes the multiple playthrough value rise higher. I am also in agreement with Sith Holocron when he basically said that rushing a mod is for those that dont care about quality. It is obvious SS cares about quality mods.

that is kind of a lazy model on the part of the TSL team, since it mirrors the aurebesh backward, (kind of breaks immersion a bit) which could be the true reason behind why they chose to reduce the scale of the texture instead of blur the text and put scan lines in it... since it is that way i would suggest using scan lines over the monitors to break up the text or just scan lines period because it is mirrored... to up the standard a bit it might be cool to animate those scan lines as well. but just an idea.

yeah i figured out the yoda model doesnt have the goggle hook, but i guess it could be added like you said, but it would be purely for stupidity sake or possibly for a modders resource for the yoda player mods out there. i also like to model in quads, and i mix methodology a lot. and this does result in cleaner looking meshes since one can eliminate the unnecessary faces or avoid them right off the bat... and the last thing i do most of the time is triangulate the faces becuase it can make the UV template harder to deal with in gimp. unfotunately i am not a student, and probably wont be any time soon. i guess i could take a correspondence course in something retarded that would grant me student status temporarily and wont interfere too much with RL issues, but that is something i have to look into more before trying it out. im not sure what would qualify, or how many credit hours are needed per semester to be considered a student. right now i cannot commit to a full credit load kind of dedication. but because it is installed in wine, it is easy enough to wipe the virtual drive and reinstall using the same method i just used, to work with it as best i can. wine wont remember that i already installed it, so the record of it wont keep me from using the 30 trial over and over like a real windows install would, and i dont have to find that pesky trial countdown file and delete it once i uninstall. funny thing is now that i have been using blender i want to work in Max like i do in blender and it is total fail lol. i have not used max for a while, so my muscle memory tries to do things like i do them in blender and i have to stop and think instead of working from instinct. but at least now i can convert some model types or scene types like .max files and such to types i can open in blender. of course once i get the hang of it over again i might be able to do a lot more that i could not do in blender as easily, just depends on the integrity of the mdl import in max compared to how it imports in blender. if the max import gives me greater control over the mdl than blender, then it is a no brainer what i will need to use for the skin weighted meshes. it is just a matter of relearning max and learning more about max period. of course i may take another route and do most of my work in blender and then just do weighting in max, depends on how best it works.

This is a very interesting concept. What would make it better is if there were a lot of different textures for each body type, perhaps even using textures intended to overwrite each other as alternates by renaming them to give more variety. especially if the new textures that are replacers are different from each other significantly. I'm not sure if this would conflict with other mods or not, but it is definitely not a waste of time.

No no no, your mask model was great, and i have seen a few other ones you posted as modder resources and they all look stunning. Not messy at all. Just curious why you never released them in a mod? All i really did was clean up the UVs a bit and then alter the texture to conserve space, add some more grunge to it, change the lense to be more like the comics show it, and put hoses and a back on your mask. In the future if i can get them working right i want to try and make it so there is a partial head just for those helmets (like the squashed head model used in the praetorian helmets) just without trying to make everything a disguise. im still trying to figure out the details on that one because for my vanilla overhaul, there are three masks that were converted to helmets and require their own head to function correctly. and i am not really sure how to go about it right now. skinned models may be a pretty big hurdle for me in blender and linux. I would also like to make part of those hoses flexible more like a hair modifier or something, but i wont know how to do that unless i tear apart one of the hair meshes on a head and see how it works ,or if that tells me nothing, just learn what it would take to make them floppy. On a side note i did get a trial version of 3dsmax 9 working, but since i lost my license file and have to enter everything over again, and i cant complete the activation of it in wine, it will only be useable for 30 days and then i have to wipe the virtual drive and start over (pain) So maybe i can figure out how to install NWNmax in case skinning doesnt go so great in blender. BTW your modeling is awesome. I tooka look at some of your modules and they are pretty great. I have never made a walkmesh before so anyone that can do that is a modding god in my book.

Well i knew the were similar, just did not know they were two different alternates. Yes it is not a part of the kernel, since it has to be added to lubuntu if you want some functionality for certain packages. I made the assumption since some distros come with it prepackaged. I guess what would be cool is if it could use GTK instead of TK. But im not sure how that would pan out.