Quanon

I think that the twi'lek in your avatar would be a better model for your advertisements and billboards.

It's the same model Just in gray scale and a different camera angle.

But I can see it actually looks better then what I have so far.

Looks sah-WEET!

Thanks mate!

As long as we get a sweet desktop render when it's all done

Haha, it's a rather moody sky to look at  

Here's another update, added more rocks, started to scale it all down. So now you get a better feeling of cliffs far away and up close.

Full size: http://postimg.org/image/cg9vhuf4h/full/

Looks beautiful but how will you deal with the weird box shape?

I'll do my best to work out that problem. IIRC from my previous attempt, there's a small shift, only 1 or 2 pixels wide on the sides of the skybox.

1.Can I get an updated high definition render of the skyline? Love it for a desktop!

 

2. I don't know when I would get around to it, but I could look into the weird seams in the skybox

Follow this linky for the full size: http://postimg.org/image/aydcxe8v1/full/

Any help on that odd seam problem is welcome!

@Quanon: Wow! The malachor skybox looks amazing! It adds a lot of flair to the scenery - cant wait to see it ingame...

 

about your animated sign:

Glad there more guys doing animations - the pic looks promising - but it looks like you adding the pic sequence per hand...seriously???

Ive mentioned it a long time ago when i started modding, if you want to use animations in Kotor -> use a professional software - i work a lot with Genetica.

The good thing is, you can do your textures with Photoshop or whatever and then just import the finished image into Genetica and basically make ANY animation you like.

There are no limitations...

Well, I used 3Ds Max to render out 16 frames, slowly backing away from the twi'lek. I then paste the frames in the large overall texture. Using Photoshop for the various effects to get the look I want.

I've tried out Genetica before. But it just feels a bit odd to work with, just my 2 cents. I'm a very visual person

I'll keep tweaking the skyline. I've noticed it lacks depth because the rocks don't have enough scale differences. And I might have to do some new renders of the rocks themselves.

Been checking the games skybox texture; the perspective is differaent, more of a top down view, bird perspective. Mine is more 'level', in between the peaks.

Been tinkering with Malachor skies again.   Edit: Better version, did further tweaks on the fogs and less colors in the rocks.
 

Creative juices are flowing. Was in the mood to create fitting commercial signs for my Nar Shaddaa area.
Twi'leks take the top spot; everything just sells better with a handsome alien chick on the cover

Here's a test, messing about with a few filters. The aim is to create an animated sign. Slowly zooming out. And some text scrolling by.
Feel free to comment. Oh, ignore the lower half, that hasn't been used yet

Looks great! Nice to see it wasn't just the cliche apophis (snake head design) .

 

That said, I personally like that design the most

 

A Stargate crossover mod would be awesome!

Well, I always liked the movie masks waaaaay more then the series aphosis snake thing. It's a shame they never used the Anubis mask.

Once I get the neck and shoulder armour ready, it shouldn't be too difficult to add different heads.

Anyways, I wasn't in the mood today for all this curvy business; so I did the last tweaks on the Bandon reskin.

I've added in the helmet, to show the complete outfit. It's shaping up nicely. I'll do my best to do a set that's closer to the colors of the Bandon armour

Took a little side tour modding-wise. I stumbled on this old Star Gate mod I made, waaaay back.

I decided to flex my 3D muscle, this is all curves. Sheer madness, but I like what I cobbled together so far
It's far closer to the orginal movie masks.

Minor update on the Darth Bandon armour. Added gloves, belt and boots. Plus some minor tweaks to the armour plates.

Very nice, Q. I especially like the chest section.

Thanks!

Yeah, those are just not loading for me.

That's odd, I always use photobucket to show my WIP.

@SH: It looked all good in PS, but on the model the layers of armour, didn't work out that well, imo.

So I started to do minor tweaks and adding a few things. It's nothing major, but here's how it looks so far.

I found some time to start reskinning Darh Bandons armour to match with my latest helmet.

I like what I got so far, a bit to busy perhaps. Less is more. But I got the basic idea of what I want.
Here's how far I got already:

Wow, really digging the red sunset on Korriban there! Top notch work on the other textures to!
And love the eyes on the ithorians!

Keep it coming, both, Malkior and Kexikus!

In addition, the buildings in the skybox are some distance away so the light wouldn't be as intense. 

 

Quanon, will any of those advertising signs be making an appearances? IIRC, you had a few signs with Twi'leks in swimsuits posing on billboards.

I think I'll add in some distant  buildings to make it more 'smooth' transition between area model and skybox. It'll add some extra depth.

And, yes, I'll be using those signs again. I'll have a peek at their UVs, IIRC I did those rather quickly and dirty. Might need some more fine tuning

That skybox is great (bless Sharen Thrawn), but your buildings seem a little too... vibrant in comparison. Like, too saturated. But I don't want to tell you to desaturate your beautiful lightmaps... maybe kick up the skybox saturation a little bit?

Haha, I know. They are more colorful and the neon look makes it even more so. But I've got my reasons why it is so.

See, in the TSL you see/ explore the Refugee sector; so not much money and care is spent on it. The refugees are basically cattle/slaves. 

My Nar Shaddaa streets are in the Entertainment/Fun sector. It needs to look a little nicer, so captains and cargo crew go spend money on drinks, women, gambling... etc.

@Kexikus: Wow, indeed, they fit nicely already with the game. Nice work. very impressive. Guess I got the colors mixed up with Korriban.

The skybox certainly works well with those textures. Very nice stuff. Does this version of the Nar Shaddaa streets have the bar as well?

Yes, those are still included. The entrances are spread out across the streets. 

There's also a 'connection' to another smaller street area. If I feel like it.

I'd need to check my script again, to see what's needed still

But I still need to dress up this area; it's a bit empty for Nar Shaddaa.

Allright did some more tweaking on the lightmap business. Again SS came to the rescue to get some nicer looking shadows while rendering.

I'll have to send a nice box of belgian choclates to the US for my fellow modder, many thanks !!! ^^

One of the things I altered was the alpha channel of my lightmap. 3Ds Max always includes a channel.
I've played around making it grey and black all over. But this doesn't seem to have any effect what so ever in the game.

I'll now play around with Photoshop, altering the contrast. I did a quick dirty run and that seemed to have a effect.

It's still odd, I expected the shadows to have stronger effect in the game. Oh, well. I'm more or less pleased on how it all looks right now.

So here's another few shots. I've added a skybox

Time for an update. Thanks to SithSpecter I got back in the game to do some hard work on the lightmaps.

Oddly enough, SithSpecters advice to do smaller lightmaps didn't work out. Did a couple of retries, just to make sure I wasn't overlooking anything.

A small set back, I did another trial, using large lightmaps. And to my suprise this worked OK. Did a couple of test, to see if I got UV stretching; but no.
Large lightmaps seem to work for Q but not for SS... Kotor modding at it's best, complete mistery o_O


Anyhow, I'm still not 100% happy. Shadows are somehow to faint for my taste. Plus all the details get lost/ smudged out on these larger lightmaps.
I'll have to go for 4096pix sizes... Hopefully the game won't crash on that. We'll see; how far I can take it.

Here's how it looks so far:

Stated from personal experience and torturing Quanon with the dilemma...

Yes, indeed.

I did mess around some more in PS with my Malachor skybox. Slicing off 1 or 2 pixel lines from left and/ or right. But never got it properly fixed. And got mighty frustrated with it all, to be honest  x-S

Oh, and sorry Kexikus for not getting back to you about Terragen. Manaan is looking mighty good though!

Nothing major to show yet. But I've spend some time to search for some new tools to help out with UV madness that's involved with making a new area. An annoying fact is that when making lightmaps is you are UV mapping twice.

And I can tell you UV mapping is a more boring part of 3D, IMO, just my 2 cents

The thing is once you mapped it and applied all your textures; you need a second UV map for the lightmap.

Why not re-use the first UV maps? Well . . . 3Ds Max is a bit cumbersome when it comes to UV map several separate objects into 1 big UV map. Luckily helpful 3D gurus out there have scripted a few handy tools to make life easier aka being lazy and getting away with it.  

Anyway for all interested here a few handy links!

First tool multiobjectunwrap:

This little tool lets you quickly UV map lots of objects.  I use it to collect all my maps of various parts of my area model.

But it's a big mess! 3Ds Max has a packing tool, but this doesn't do a very good job of it, it rips apart good UV layouts and causes mistakes in the game.

http://users.skynet.be/arketip/arketip_multiObjectUnwrapENG.htm

Tool 2 and 3: These 2 tools help out with the packing business! No more awful seams and it takes little time! 

http://www.renderhjs.net/textools/

Fair warning: You still need to do some serious test runs in the game. But I feel positive that I'll get some good results.

The best part is these tools are free to use. You can donate though if you want.

Cheers and happy modding!

Here's how it looks when doing stuff in 3Ds Max

Thanks to SithSpecter for helping out with the lightmap business. It's all about the tiny little details. 
So I got a part of my area in the game, using a lightmap. It looks good, but there are mistakes in the UV business.

But with the tips from SS I should get better results in the future. All I did now was quick test, just to see if there was
more to the crashes.

Here's a peek how it looks so far:

Wow, really looking forward to this.   

 

I recently took interest in making a module of my own, however whenever I try apply the Aurora Walkmesh modifier to a large mesh, my RAM usage shoots up to 13 gigs and my computer freezes. I figured out I don't need to use the walkmesh modifier to work, I just need to rename the node inside the .mdl to "aabb" and it imports/exports just fine in KAurora. I'm just wondering if you encountered the problem yourself?

It helps to slice your area and walkmesh into smaller models. Using the .lyt and .vis files to tell the game how to build the area out of all the little models. It does require some more tinkering with the walkmesh parts in Kaurora, so you can 'jump' from one part to another. This might help to avoid the 13Gig ram thing

Q, are any of those colored lights animated?

No, they are windows actually. But the texture needs more work, now it's more like a place holder

Had some time left this afternoon. I plunked in the the other parts that make up my Nar Shaddaa streets.
Feeling pretty happy, as just with the first part, very little faults to be found.

A few minor UV mistakes and a few bits that have no texture it seems.

Ofcourse it looks all to bright and a bit to clean for Nar Shaddaa.

I'll be adding extra models, consisting of crates and other techy looking junk in all variant sizes
and shapes. Luckely I've got already sort of back catalogue from previous attempts.

But enough chatter; time for some screenshot galore!

Yahoooo! It looks like I still got the power   
Did another test run with my NarShaddaa street area, the first part of the area works like a charm. Only one faulty mesh.
It all looks good so far. Hopefully the other parts go as smoothly as this one. Then I only need to fix up the lighting.
Now it's set to be very bright, so I can spot mistakes easely.

Here's a look on how things are in the game:

The smaller 'indoor' part; it's a bit like at the docks of the Refugee sector. Some rooms or storage/ garages and the entrance to

one of the clubs to be found in my new part of Nar Shaddaa.