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vurt

MOD:Weequay Player Race with Soundset

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Weequay Player Race with Soundset


Now you can play the game as a Weequay. 

Before placing the two folders from the archive into the root of /swkotor - please backup your streamsounds folder by e.g packaging it into a rar or zip (whatever you prefer) because the mod will overwrite your original player sounds.

The new face and head mesh is a replacement for PMHA03 (in the unedited game it is the asian looking bald guy). If you want to go back to having the default textures then place the files from /override from this mod archive into your /override again, then directly press Delete to delete all files from the mod. 

The mod uses a new soundset for the player sounds since the default ones does not fit the race/look at all. A sound and graphics video can be found here: KoTOR Weequay Race - voice and graphics showcase

The mod comes with new underwear/body texture for the new head and all portraits and Dark Side transition changes. 


  • Submitter
  • Submitted
    09/27/2025
  • Category
  • K1R Compatible
    Yes

 

  • Like 1

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vurt,

I tried to load the model into MDLEdit (tried both version 1.03 and 1.04) to decompile it and when I do that, I get this error message:

"The vector recalculations were off by too much to be able to determine the smoothing groups. Try decompiling with different vertex normal calculation settings."

Do you perhaps know what that means?

Cheers!

PS - If I uncheck the default checked option "Calculate Smoothing Groups (binary)" in MDLEdit 1.03 or the, I guess corresponding, "Recalculate vectors (Reading binary)" in MDLEdit 1.04 then the loading doesn't produce the error message. But I'm quite sure it would not be a smart thing to do...

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No idea what that means unfortunately. Chat GPT says:

 

That message from MDLedit is basically saying:

👉 “When I decompiled this model, the vertex normals I calculated don’t match what’s actually in the file, so I can’t figure out the smoothing groups.”

A bit of background:

  • KOTOR models (.mdl/.mdx) don’t directly store “smoothing groups” like modern formats. Instead, they store vertex normals (direction vectors telling the engine how to shade the surface).

  • When MDLedit decompiles, it tries to reverse-engineer the smoothing groups by comparing the geometry and the normals in the file.

  • If the normals are “too far off” from what MDLedit expects, it throws that warning because it can’t confidently assign faces into smoothing groups.

Why your mesh specifically causes it:

  • When you edited the head in Blender 4.0 and re-exported, the vertex normals likely changed.

  • Blender may have recalculated them differently from Bioware’s original toolchain. (Even tiny differences in precision, tangent-space, or smoothing at seams will throw MDLedit off.)

  • Other meshes (vanilla ones, or ones exported with older mod tools) tend to have normals closer to what MDLedit expects, so they decompile without complaints.

So in short:

  • Your mesh is valid — it loads fine in-game because KOTOR only cares about the vertex normals themselves.

  • The issue is only with decompilation: MDLedit is expecting vanilla-style normal data, but Blender’s recalculated normals don’t line up.

You’ll see this a lot with custom meshes — especially heads, since shading around the face requires very clean smoothing.


To “fix” it (if you want MDLedit to handle your model cleanly):

  1. In Blender, set your shading to Auto Smooth (with an angle close to the original head, ~45°).

  2. Before export, try custom split normalsMesh → Normals → Set From Faces (or transfer normals from the original head).

  3. Re-export the model.

That way, the exported normals will be closer to what MDLedit expects when it tries to reverse smoothing groups.


So yes it is possible to fix. Not very high on the priority list for me right now though, the texture mod is more important now :) I can look at this later perhaps. 

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Thanks for the reply, vurt!

I thought it may be inconsequential, but I wanted to ask you just in case because the size of the model here differs considerably from the original Bioware PMHA03 (both the .mdl and the .mdx parts) so I was trying to understand where the included pmha03.mdl/mdx were coming from.

Cheers!

EDIT: Talking to DP on Discord, it seems that the decompilation would produce a broken ASCII, if it even was successful at all. So, yeah, I wanted to use your nice texture for an NPC in my game rather than to replace a player's head and I cannot do it without converting the PMHA03 model...

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I see.

It should be much larger because there are extra details such as hair and also the horn type of things on the face, and those are quite a few added meshes. 

I havent compared the size but it wouldnt surprise me if its 2 or 3x. 

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It is indeed twice the size.

I am testing conversion using MDLOps rather than MDLEdit and I will see if it can be used in-game for a custom NPC head. All this, of course, does not affect the goal of your modification which I'm sure will work perfectly for those that use it as intended. It is just a personal matter for myself, so you don't really have any kind of obligations to "fix" anything. 

Thanks for your interest, though.

Cheers!

EDIT: My attempt at conversion was only partly successful. 

The hair on the back are stuck in a rigid position.

819083864_swkotor2025-09-2910-30-03-345.png.fef5dc8862564f0b64a49e4cfa452ce2.png

Edited by Salk

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