Quanon

How do you export a whole area of a map ex Endar Spire? Really wanting to redo the UV's there

I'll try to explain this in a nutshell. Areas are build up out of several models. A bit like a puzzle.

I always have to devide/ slice my own made areas into smaller bits.

The game uses a few files, so it knows which parts it needs to build up any given area.

So to redo the UVs of the Endar Spire, you'll first need to collect all the model bits.

You can find those with KotorTool. Then you'll have to import those into 3D editing program; like 3Ds Max.

Means you'll have to edit a lot of smaller models, then export them out.

Exporting an area model is just the same as for a lightsaber hilt or gun.

Hope's this helps a bit.

So here's what I've finished today. I've changed the red to be a bit darker. Solved the lighting problem.

Though still need to improve the look of the shiny effect. To flat at the moment.

I think I still have a installation for a  full working version of terragen on my PC.... somewhere
 

Here it is: Fixing Lighting on Custom Models

Thanks man! That's the thread I was talking about! I've edited my model, but something went wrong. Game crashes now, lol.

I'll have to redo the export bit again.

Looks good, Q. As always, I'm looking forward to having this in my Override.

 

Glad to see you're still working on stuff.

Speaking of stuff, I've dusted of that Nar Shaddaa street area. I only had last quarter to do of the whole thing.

And last 2 days I've been hard at work to UVWmap that last part. I'm getting really close to start test runs in the game, Yeah baby!

Some shots, can't leave a reply without some visuel goodies now.

Time to pick up where I left. Few shots from  a test run I did on that last helmet. Need to fix that 'darkening' effect... Someone posted a solution to it, but I can't remember right now what that was. I'll get to it eventually

Hey, I see that Malachor gets mentioned and my textures.

Note that I tried to adjust my textures to 'fit' better with cube that makes up the skies of malachor.

I've also tried to replace the skybox with a new one. So that includes messing about the .Lyt and .vis files of Malachor.

Sadly the game then refuses to load Malachor and crashes or just doesn't show the my new model.

Since I knew that altering original models is rather difficult for areas.(lightmap issues and such) I tried to make a large placeable to function as a skybox model. Alas in the game the placeable isn't visible or doesn't get loaded for some reason.

I've got the full scene in 3Ds Max where the Ebon Hawk crashlands on Malachor. I did a lot of tests but nothing really worked.

Thx SS for the extra 2 weeks. I'm really lagging behind on this stuff >_>

Could someone kick me in the behind

Downloading!

Great to see a new tool added for modding.

Some more work has been done on the lightsaber hilt. Just a few minor tweaks here and there before testing ingame!

The hilt still needs a name though... Not sure what to call it.

Here's how things look:

Copying and renaming the TGA files should do the trick too. Though, releasing the PSD files as a resource is a nice idea. Like that, with your permission ofcourse, folks could create other colors or variations for themselves

Forgot to update this thread aswell. Here's 2 items I'm working on.

Didn't feel happy about the hilt shown above. Did a few more sketches first on paper. I've got this idea for this sleek silver hilt. But I haven't quiet got it right.

Here's how it looks so far.

NIce! A lot improvements on a lot of areas since the last updates I checked. Keep it up, this will be a must have for the annual TSL playthrough

IIRC; in todays games, they make highpoly models and from those create all kinds of maps. And then apply those maps to a lower poly version of the same model.

But I guess you're not about to remodel everything from the Kotor games to get normal maps

Love the video! Really shows the work you put into this!

Sign me up! I feel like doing some guns or what not.

I actually think I like the colors shown in post 123 better than the one two posts up. Why should the bad guys be restricted to only black, greys, or red?

 

I think that the helmet seems a little closer to Galactus' helmet from the Marvel comics without the "horn" appendages . . .

 

. . . but that's just my opinion.

Is there some rule written somewhere that you can't have both..?

 

I personally prefer the red, black and chrome, as the other seemed to bland in a sense -- but that really depends upon context and how you modify that texture further, especially with specular.

No, no rule against doing 2 skin sets for an item. I'm liking the red one more for now. So that will get finished first.

But I like the yellow copper tone to, but I'll get to that one later. I've got a good photoshop file, so altering the tints and some of the shapes shouldn't ask to much time.

This is how things have progressed so far:

The one thing I think held back the Kotor games in the graphic department was that it had to run on the old Xbox. I think the textures got really down sized hard to make it run on the console and to let it fit on the 'dvd' disc, or whatever it was the xbox used. Not sure if by Hex editing you can track down the meshes that make up the sith fighters in the skybox model. So you can give them a unique texture all of their own.

Bucket update time. Have a peak on how things are progressing:

Yeah, noticed the 'darkening' in screenshots to. Certainly when I was re-texturing Malachor. Most of my shots looked like pure black/ grey mess.

Thanks for that info on the specular thing. I love the artsy part of games, but never got to far in the more techy side of things.

I did notice that Kotor does have a few normalmaps. Water on Manaan and some of the floor textures. Dantooine estates comes to mind.

Was looking for a plugin for Photoshop to do normalmaps; but didn't find one that was willing to work. Of course 3Ds Max should be able to handle it.

Eh, something I might have to dig into.

You prefer the low-resolution and washed-out textures that were created without the tools and techniques of today and an understanding of how to get the most out of your game engine... Well, I guess that would appeal to some .

 

Mmm... No, think you misunderstand.

I like higher resolution and a more details. Just found the contrast looked bit strong.

Don't think softer tones demand less resolution and being washed out. It's not the same IMO.

But, great work none the less. And carry on

Well no time to dwell to long on video woes. Did my UVWmapping of the helmet and started on the texture.

Just playing around with it. Mainly looking to get  a few good dark tints and a spot color.

Hahaha, lovely stuff in here. The glowing trees are a neat idea. Though I do feel  like that the contrast in most of your textures is a bit high.

It all looks far sharper and crisp, better and higher details; but I liked the 'softer' tones of the orginal game. Just my 2 cents and taste

Oh, any usefull TXI settings your using?

I've heard that Blender is pretty good at that -- it comes with an in-built video editor.

 

The only video "editing" I usually do is re-encoding movies into a format that my TV's set-top box will like, and for that I use Handbrake. Though if I had to do any serious (actual) video editing where quality was an issue, I'd probably give Blender a try first .

Nuts, I recently removed Blender to get some HD space back... x-S

I'll check out Handbrake, thanks for the tip. 

Look's like a type of mixture between the TSL/JK2 versions of  Nar Shaddaa and Coruscant in Jedi Academy. Progress looks great so far, and I can already think of the possibilities of using this map in game, story and gameplay wise. Two questions, though:

1. Will this level be intergrated in Kotor 1 or TSL?

2. This is just out of curiosity, but I've noticed a lot of Kotor maps in development will have those rectangular prisms in one or two locations in the map. I've seen them in Sleheyron, here, and in other maps. I know hardly anything about making a custom module for Kotor, so can you tell me what they're for?

Answers:

1. This mod will be for TSL. Though it's not that hard to just release the models for K1 as a resource. 

2. You mean those grey boxes? Hahaha, they are just for scale. The box (aka "MANBOX") represents a NPC or character. They won't be seen in the game.

    It's too get a good idea on how big certain aspects of my map will look. It's safer to get the scale right from the start then messing about with it later on.

Full first clip of my Street Area. Not all to pleased about the quality. Think I f**cked it up in my render settings when selecting the video codec thing.

Hahaha, depends how big the request is

And you might have to wait a bit to see it fullfillled.

Still have a few things on my list I should get done for some other folks here on the board. Walkmesh issues... x-S

Just couldn't resist and do an upload, a minor test to see how it can look.

I got enough parts rendered for a first clip of my Nar Shaddaa model. But is there an easy to use program to stitch all the parts together.

The windows live movie maker  somehow screws up the contrast in my clips; shadows just get flat black. Very ugly quality :-/