Replacing the Player Character with an alien species in Kotor 1

[xaayer]

Hello, I have had an idea for quite awhile of replacing the main player character of Kotor1 with an Ithorian.

My fist attempt was just swapping the character model in KSE, but that crashed when I tried to do anything other than walk around. I figured that because the alien has such odd proportions that the model has custom animations rather than inheriting animations like most other standard humanoid character models.

So I've dived into Holonet Toolset, Blender/KBlender, etc. I've been able to modify a party members model successfully using HT to export mdl/mdx, importing to blender via KBlender, making changes, then exporting and throwing those new files in my Override folder. However, when I exported the Ithorian model, I found that my suspicions were correct and the Ithorian only had a walk cycle. 

I assume I'll have to find a player model to mooch animation key frames off of, but I've also read that there are things called Stunt animations and also that cutscenes are a bit weird to modify. 

So, my question is: Is my goal of making a fully playable Ithorian feasible? I know that equipping armors won't work and I'm fine with that, but are the lack of animations just a deadend on this project?

[DarthParametric]

A proper playable character needs to use the standard human rig unless you want problems. A KOTOR Ithorian is never going to work because their anatomy with giant gorilla arms is too divergent from the standard biped rig. That's why the their model is classified as a creature rather than an NPC.

However, the body shape of the TOR Ithorian model is a much more of a standard biped, aside from the head, so that would be a more useful starting point:

[xaayer]

What if I were to adjust the game's ithorian model to more closely align with the PC?

 

Edit: Also which model would be best for looking at player animations?

Edited March 29 by xaayer

[DarthParametric]

11 minutes ago, xaayer said:

What if I were to adjust the game's ithorian model to more closely align with the PC?

You can try. Sounds like more trouble than it's worth. Especially since the vanilla Ithorians look like ass anyway.

12 minutes ago, xaayer said:

Also which model would be best for looking at player animations?

Player animations are stored in the supermodels. S_Female01 / S_Female02 / S_Female03 / S_Male01 / S_Male02. These are linked in a dependency chain, as follows:

S_Female03 -> S_Female02 -> S_Female01 -> S_Male02 -> S_Male01

Female characters set S_Female03 as their supermodel, as this holds all the female-only animations. Things like walking, running, etc. Male characters set S_Female02 as their supermodel. Everything up the chain from that point is shared, with the male versions of the unique anims held in S_Male01/02. Females don't use those because they pull the S_Female03 versions first.

[xaayer]

How do you change a character's supermodel? Is that in HT?

[DarthParametric]

It's referenced in the model header. You can see it if you look at the model base in KBlender.

[DeathScepter]

was there a Species feat mod over at Nexus that modify the Player Character to an alien

[xaayer]

I don't know about that.

Are there any resources for animating Kotor 1 models in Blender? Or is it still recommended to do animation work in 3dsMax? I don't have 3dsMax and using the 30 day free trial just to work on something like this feels kinda silly since once it's over, I can't continue.

Also, for the Ithorian at least, I've found that some animations have the arms flail wildly between animation keyframes as if the "bones" aren't properly aligned

@seedhartha I saw in one forum post that you're more the person to ask about Blender and Kotor? I have read the "Editing Animations" section of the readme, so I've extracted the "bones" as points (Sad I can't make them look like standard bones and sad there are no IKs...) for the purpose of animating. However, I don't know why they're doing this flailing motion in the in-betweens. 

Also, is it possible to add IKs to the bones when they have been extracted for ease of animation or would doing so mess up exporting animations?

[DarthParametric]

9 hours ago, xaayer said:

Are there any resources for animating

There aren't really any animation resources period.

9 hours ago, xaayer said:

I've found that some animations have the arms flail wildly between animation keyframes

Random rotations outside individual animation ranges are fine, since you won't see that in-game. At least assuming that this is the kind of thing you're talking about - https://deadlystream.com/topic/5734-kotormax-bug-reporting-thread/#findComment-59689

9 hours ago, xaayer said:

@seedhartha I saw in one forum post that you're more the person to ask about Blender and Kotor?

Seedhartha isn't around these days.

9 hours ago, xaayer said:

would doing so mess up exporting animations?

As long as you can export pos/rot keyframes in the final model,, you should be fine. That may require baking the animation.

[xaayer]

15 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

Random rotations outside individual animation ranges are fine, since you won't see that in-game. At least assuming that this is the kind of thing you're talking about - https://deadlystream.com/topic/5734-kotormax-bug-reporting-thread/#findComment-59689

Kinda of, though it isn't between animations but between keyframes within an animation.

 

15 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

As long as you can export pos/rot keyframes in the final model,, you should be fine. That may require baking the animation.

Hmm alright, maybe I'll give it a shot to create IK bones

[DarthParametric]

5 hours ago, xaayer said:

between keyframes within an animation

Within the bounds of an actual game animation? Can you post an example?

[xaayer]

Let me know if this works for you

 

[DarthParametric]

Very odd. Have you exported it and tested it in-game to see if it shows up there?