Modding Cutscenes: Where to Start?

[PoopaPapaPalpatine]

I've never been happy with the upscaled cutscenes and have been seriously entertaining the thought of remaking all of them, particularly the 'vision' cutscenes that use in-game models. I'd like to tackle them first before trying the Ebon Hawk fly-by's. I've only ever tinkered with textures, but I have Blender and DaVinci to edit video, and feel I've learned enough to properly make use of them to make this happen. Problem is, how the hell do I actually do this? Any advice and tips from modders here would greatly be appreciated.

[DarthParametric]

I've played around with this a bit in the past. Stuff like the Hawk landing/take-off videos:

or bits of the revelation scene:

The two biggest issues I identified as roadblocks for me personally were the VFX for the Hawk sequences and the custom animations for the character sequences like Revan confrontation on the bridge. Some basic animations you could pull from the game files, but a lot would need to be modified or made from scratch. Ideally this sort of project would be done by a team of people. It's a big ask for one person.

[The_Chaser_One]

10 hours ago, PoopaPapaPalpatine said:

I've never been happy with the upscaled cutscenes and have been seriously entertaining the thought of remaking all of them, particularly the 'vision' cutscenes that use in-game models. I'd like to tackle them first before trying the Ebon Hawk fly-by's. I've only ever tinkered with textures, but I have Blender and DaVinci to edit video, and feel I've learned enough to properly make use of them to make this happen. Problem is, how the hell do I actually do this? Any advice and tips from modders here would greatly be appreciated.

Did you ever look at these ? As you mentioned the Hawk scenes as well... https://www.nexusmods.com/kotor/mods/1605

[PoopaPapaPalpatine]

18 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

...A lot would need to be modified or made from scratch. Ideally this sort of project would be done by a team of people. It's a big ask for one person.

I was thinking of something like pulling modules and textured game models into Blender and then rig and animate them from scratch. Hell, making these things from scratch may be the only option. After all these years, AI upscaled scenes can't be the only option. If there's some folks out there that want to work on this too, please contact me. Otherwise, I'm fully prepared to tackle this myself.

9 hours ago, The_Chaser_One said:

Did you ever look at these ? As you mentioned the Hawk scenes as well... https://www.nexusmods.com/kotor/mods/1605

I have. I just don't care for them. I don't think they fit the mise en scene of the original Star Wars films, which KOTOR draws heavy inspiration from, and that of the first game itself. It's too polished, too flashy. I don't believe they integrate with the base game very well. I want something that stays truer to the intent of the original game.

[DarthParametric]

I always thought some sort of mocap would be very helpful for some of this type of thing. For anyone that has an iPhone, I think there's some plugin for Unreal that lets you capture performances without any special gear. That might be an option perhaps. These days there are also a few different programs that will generate mocap from video, so it might be possible to try and create the anims direct from the original pre-rendered BIKs.

[PoopaPapaPalpatine]

I suppose that's an option if I wanted to do it fast. I'm a bit more finicky than that, I'm afraid. I'm currently looking at things like KotOR Blender and things like that at the moment. See what all needs doing.