TSL Textures Remastered

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Have you considered adding "make-up" to accentuate certain features of face textures? Obviously not traditional make-up, I mean sort of in the same sense they use make up in movies so an actors face looks more vibrant.

 

A good example is Atton's face. It looks like he's wearing eyeliner and lipstick is you look hard but it doesn't look that weird in game.

 

Jana is wearing makeup, not just what I added to around the eyes but I also tried darkening areas of the skin so that at least some definition appears in-game. The way the game renders it and probably the use of specular, made it the way it is -- it's not quite that sickly color outside of the game.

 

Anyway, I decided to move on to the aliens for a reason, as what I learn with them I can then inform my technique with the human faces.

 

Those Coruscant shots are excellent!

 

I lucked out with good source material that I could use; hate to think of how hard they would have been if I had to do them from scratch -- like I probably would have to do with Nar Shaddaa . Still, learned a lot about how to make better skyboxes...

[MrPhil 58]

 

Anyway, I decided to move on to the aliens for a reason, as what I learn with them I can then inform my technique with the human faces.

 

I'd be quite interested to see what you can do to improve the Twin Suns (2 female twi'lek assassins). Never quite like how they were portrayed, I always thought they looked fake. I'm pretty sure you could make them appear less artificial and more vibrant.

 

Something that changes about as much as what you did for Luxa.

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

I'd be quite interested to see what you can do to improve the Twin Suns (2 female twi'lek assassins). Never quite like how they were portrayed, I always thought they looked fake. I'm pretty sure you could make them appear less artificial and more vibrant.

 

Something that changes about as much as what you did for Luxa.

 

Yeah, I'll do them eventually, but probably after the other Twi'lek female heads. Though, I won't do them exactly like Luxa . Luxa is willing to do whatever it takes to succeed in her life / career -- she is a sociopath. The Twin Suns aren't really motivated by money, all they are interested in is killing -- they are psychopaths.

 

Decided to get around to doing the remaining textures (flickering screens) for the damaged version of the Ebon Hawk:

 

 

 

These screens have been brightened slightly so as to make things clearer...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

The damage Ebon Hawk textures continued..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FYI: I might rework the damaged hull texture in order to add finer detail for when T3 is moving about outside; but at the moment I'm going to leave it as is.

 

 

 

 

[MrPhil 58]

Nice ebon-improvements.

 

By the way, I did not ask for some "exact" replica of what you gotta be thinking. I was more thinking about the general improvement and more realistic looking textures. For example, instead of being pink just like a cartoon, the Zeltron gets a blushed upper-cleavage (which reminds me of a natural reaction of the body upon releasing pheromones, for example). That kind of small details are what matters to me. Simple recolours bore me, which is why I appreciate that kind of change all the more.

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Darth Sion (along with showing Harbinger textures). This is a WIP in that I am just focusing on the skin at the moment; but as I was also working on the Harbinger textures, I thought I'd take some screens and put them up anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

The Sion series continued with a focus on his head... Again, this is a WIP as I am just focused on the skin in that I'm trying to make it more finely textured and less glossy via specular.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MrPhil 58]

Hey SIC, are you familiar with the Darker Peragus mod? If you could do something like that, at least for the Harbringer, that would be lovely. I feel like sh*t for not asking earlier, seeing as Peragus is way finish, but I always loved the atmosphere of that mod (plus it makes sense to me that the Harbringer would lack power to have proper lightning, after Sion's attack). Problem is I do not think the mod would be compatible with yours... Tell me what you think

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Hey SIC, are you familiar with the Darker Peragus mod? If you could do something like that, at least for the Harbringer, that would be lovely. I feel like sh*t for not asking earlier, seeing as Peragus is way finish, but I always loved the atmosphere of that mod (plus it makes sense to me that the Harbringer would lack power to have proper lightning, after Sion's attack). Problem is I do not think the mod would be compatible with yours... Tell me what you think

 

The textures that that mod contains appear to be all lightmap texture. Currently, I haven't touched any of these, so, you should just be able to use them with mine. Not sure how it will all look though.

 

I might do my own as well, as I want it to be darker in their without having to make the textures themselves dark. But, I'm not sure, as I'm trying to get various things done so that I can then do an update for people to use. I'm kind of running out of time and want (need) to move on to other things. The rub is is that I know that if I move onto something else, I may not come back to working on the mod for a long while .

[MrPhil 58]

Lemme kneel and beg you to keep going forth with this gem

[Zhaboka 91]

That damaged Ebon Hawk is legit. I thought the stars were a little too dark before, but now put in context with the exterior of the damaged EH they work perfectly. You've really made the half-exploded planet look way more realistic. And oh gosh, the Harbinger looks loads better.

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Beyond some future tweaks, I've come to a point where I'm happy with the Harbinger textures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Endar Spire in KOTOR, used red with its hammerhead textures. I guess Obsidian wanted to be different, or perhaps, wanted to make things seem a bit more darker, why they went with that ugly blue. I decided to remove it, as it was used way too much. All that really remains, is the doors which are more red-orange to better match the Republic uniforms and the outside redish-brown colouring of the ship -- as I'm assuming that this is the norm for Republic navy forces. Also, I think that the warm orange and red lighting carries the Republic color-theme throughout the ship, anyway.

 

 

 

I in particular really hated the Harbinger floor textures. So in all cases, they were replaces with others. Though, it's a bit unfortunate that areas of the floor have different textures to the rest. like the blue panels above. This texture is used all over, so it is hard to replace with something that looks more like a floor should.

 

 

 

The Republic soldiers have also had a quick pass done to them to add detail and specular - in particular with the metal helmets. Look good lying on the floor, not sure if they will within other circumstances -- can't recall if they are used later on or not.

 

 

 

Hard to tell with the screenshot below of the screen, on account of the game's renderer, but all the screens have an interlaced look to them -- easier to tell when your up close, but, a bit hard to get a good shot of them due to the camera and character controls.

 

 

 

Looks like Obsidian screwed up and used the wrong window texture -- there is another one for these windows in particular; there shouldn't be a wide pale bar in the middle of them at all. Bit hard to tell in the screenshot below, but the window glass has a kind of sheen to it.

 

 

 

 

[Fallen Guardian 27]

Looking good. I particularly like the removal of the blue, if only for atmospheric purposes (I never hated it myself but the ship definitely does look creepier without it around).

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Harbinger continued...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Harbinger last of; these are of the fuel line leading from the Harbinger to the facility...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Darth Sion final -- for now...

 

 

 

 

Afters:

 

 

 

 

 

Befores:

 

 

 

After again:

 

 

 

 

With Sion, I made his "good" eye have a cataract. As Kreia says:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I always found it a bit odd that Sion could not see Kreia, as it clearly seems like he has one good eye left. I have a theory that all of the triumvirate "Darths" -- perhaps even Nihilus; who at that point was just a spirit residing within his former armor and mask -- are physically blind. They all see via the force -- Sion, Kreia not to mention, Visas (Nihilus' Shadow Hand) -- which enables them to find force sensitives; something I take it Nihilus is big on.

 

The Sith Assassins you encounter on the Harbinger, have been trained by them, in particular, Sion. What they are taught are techniques based upon what Sion has learned in order to make up for being blinded by his power; his power can hold his body together as a vessel for his force-strong spirit to reside in and tether him to the world of the living, however, it is not strong enough to regenerate his flesh back into being living.

 

He is essentially a reanimated corpse, which is reinforced when you undermine his beliefs in the end so that his "faith" wavers and so does the will / force holding him together. His physical vessel, his body, crumples to the ground as his spirit finally departs the world of the living.

[Fallen Guardian 27]

The fuel line looks so much better now.

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Working on various textures I started and didn't complete or just didn't start because they need so much work to make look good. The ones I've completed at the moment are all to do with the signage used on Telos station along with Nar Shaddaa...

 

 

 

 

Sign on right below says "Bumani Exchange" -- front for the Exchange -- and sign on right says "Swoop Racing" with the scrolling text with the alien face saying: Betting

 

Sign on left below says: Bank Clan Certified... One on right says: Dancing drinking pazaak cuisine...

 

 

Below one on left shows another frame from new dancing Twi'lek sign; sign on right says "Czerka Corp Development" with the scrolling banner reading: Bumani partner

 

 

This series show the main frames from a new animated sign I created to replace the crummy old Czerka sign...

 

 

The following part says: Prosperity through opportunity

 

 

Sign says: Czerka Corp

 

 

I've replaced the "generic" signs about the station as well, in some cases, changes what the words say to something else. Below, it used to say "police" but now it says "security" as Telos station doesn't have any police...

 

 

More new "generic" signage, this time of the "Cantina" and "Shuttle" signs...

 

 

Following shows another frame from the dancing Twi'lek girl...

 

 

As seen used in inaccessible areas - you can also see at least one of KOTOR original textures I tweaked and that are also used on Telos station...

 

 

It's funny, not only was the original texture (below) really bad in way of quality, but, some words were misspelled...

 

 

 

 

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Sign variants of textures as seen on Nar Shaddaa...

 

 

 

 

Version of swoop racing texture that has a scrolling portion..

 

 

Variation of Czerka sign text used without a scrolling element; bit odd where it is but I tried to be vague with wording so that in theory, you can fill in the gaps as to why there is a "Czerka Corp Development" sign within the Cantina...

 

 

The scrolling element of the Czerka sign is used as a static sign outside; again the "Bumani Partner" wording kind of makes sense as the Exchange has their fingers in everything here...

 

 

Part of scrolling portion of swoop racing sign used below as a static, simply says "Betting." The original wording was partially cut off, so I made sure that it would fit this sign. The one on the right is the static element of the Cantina sign stating: Dancing Drinking Pazaak Cuisine -- last is probably a bit of a stretch but still fits better than the other sign that also said "Telos Cantina."

 

 

Version of the swoop race however everything is static here; also this sign originally said "Telos Station Racing," bit odd considering that this is Nar Shaddaa...

 

 

Another alternate use of the Cerka sign texture; again, not that out of place considering the context...

 

 

 

 

[milestails 264]

Definitely like the use of bright colors on bleak Nar Shadaa

[Rtas Vadum 17]

I had to fix some of those billboard textures for my mod too. For some of the text, it looks like they shrunk it to fit, since some of the characters are very close together. That is, if the texture wasn't made at a higher res, and then downsized. I'll have to do something similar with the rest, as I've only done the TEL_BBrds texture. Technically the rest fit the mod's theme, but don't look the best. The only thing I don't know is how I'm going to 'fix' the twi'lek dancer advert. I'm really wondering what screwed those textures up, so they cannot be easily edited. Even having them in the override, unedited(at least unchanged from how they are when extracted), makes the animation display incorrectly.

 

That aside, I really like what you've done with these textures.

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

I think they hand painted the letters rather than using a font -- there are at least 2 for aurebesh I know of along with a bunch of others for Star Wars. They probably didn't exist when the game was made. I have a feeling they were quickly made either as a temporary measure or last moment; as they are very low in quality compared to the original sign textures of KOTOR.

 

The textures though generally square are used on non-square surfaces; so they get stretched (or squished) making things look more pixelated than they should be.

 

The only tool I know of and use to extract textures as TGA is KOTOR Tool. Maybe it is the tool that is creating them this way, as it also has problems viewing normal (bump) maps even though it can export them out as TGA just fine. But my guess is that this is how they were created for the game by whatever tool Obsidian developed for creating their TPC image files. There may be some good reason for this, but, I really doubt it. It seems to me that they went out of their way to make modding these textures as difficult as possible, as the garbling seems to me to be completely unnecessary.

 

FYI: this can probably be tested by exporting the animated texture as a TPC, if it shows up normally in game, then I think that the game treats TGAs differently.

 

If the animated texture is based on another one, like a console. Then you better off simply using this as a base to create all the varied frames of your animation, then, you combine them into the one texture. In the case of the Twi'leks, there was no texture it was based on and it was so garbled that piecing together the original texture, or just one frame of it, would be pointless. Especially as I don't really like the texture to begin with -- it's kinda lame, like the dancing animation is kinda lame .

 

You're just better off creating the frames yourself, to suit your mod -- free vector / clipart can be a big help; and can be edited and exported as PNGs by Inkscape -- and then combining it into the one image. Each frame needs to have the same length of sides, and be square and cleanly divisible by 2 -- like 512X512 -- however, they actually don't need to be the same length so as to create a large square. Some texts will imply that they have to be, they are wrong .

 

So, you can have a texture that is 1536x512 in size that is made up of a row of 1 made up of 3 frames. Then you have to create your TXI file for it -- which you probably now is just a TXT file renamed to TXI. It should have the same filename as the texture and have something like this in it:

 

 

 

envmaptexture CM_Baremetal

proceduretype cycle

numx 3

numy 2

fps 0.5 

 

 

This simply says that the row length (x) is made up of 3 frames and that there are 2 rows (y). You don't need the "envmaptexture CM_Baremetal" line, but as the texture it's for uses specular, it does -- left it in to show that these two don't have to be mutually exclusive. There is also no need to set how large a frame is by setting an X and Y for it, as the game is smart enough to use the above to figure it out by itself -- which makes it easier if you decide that you want to shrink the size of the texture, as you don't have to keep on updating the TXI file.

 

The "fps" part is frames-per-second, and usually you want to put in a whole number, however, you can also put n a decimal if you want frames to stay for longer than what the game considers to be a second.

[Rtas Vadum 17]

 

You're just better off creating the frames yourself, to suit your mod -- free vector / clipart can be a big help; and can be edited and exported as PNGs by Inkscape -- and then combining it into the one image. Each frame needs to have the same length of sides, and be square and cleanly divisible by 2 -- like 512X512 -- however, they actually don't need to be the same length so as to create a large square. Some texts will imply that they have to be, they are wrong .

 

So, you can have a texture that is 1536x512 in size that is made up of a row of 1 made up of 3 frames. Then you have to create your TXI file for it -- which you probably now is just a TXT file renamed to TXI. It should have the same filename as the texture and have something like this in it:

 

 

 

This simply says that the row length (x) is made up of 3 frames and that there are 2 rows (y). You don't need the "envmaptexture CM_Baremetal" line, but as the texture it's for uses specular, it does -- left it in to show that these two don't have to be mutually exclusive. There is also no need to set how large a frame is by setting an X and Y for it, as the game is smart enough to use the above to figure it out by itself -- which makes it easier if you decide that you want to shrink the size of the texture, as you don't have to keep on updating the TXI file.

 

The "fps" part is frames-per-second, and usually you want to put in a whole number, however, you can also put n a decimal if you want frames to stay for longer than what the game considers to be a second.

 

Yeah, most of the setup for animated textures I already know. Although I didn't know the height and width values weren't needed.

 

The funny bit, is that you can actually find the TXI information for textures that should have it(though I didn't discover this myself, although at the moment I forget who did). Clicking on the "Hex Viewer" option while a texture is selected, brings up the Byte Viewer. Then click the ANSI option, and at the bottom of the window, is the txi information the texture uses by default.

 

I did try and fix that dancer advert texture already, although unfortunately, I only have eleven frames, provided by another user here. Just copying the last only makes the animation seem to skip, and getting each frame in the exact place where the transition between the frames is seemless, isn't exactly easy. But at this point, I'm a bit more keen on replacing the thing, than trying to deal with that.

 

Although I have done animated textures before, that lightsaber blade mod I made was far easier. With this texture mod though, I did animate one of the pannel textures on Peragus, mostly just using simple fades in each frame. I also animated the Kolto tank, mostly to make the large pipe look like it was constantly pumping or filtering the kolto, although that I think I have to fix, which shouldn't be too difficult.

[Fair Strides 509]

I had to fix some of those billboard textures for my mod too. For some of the text, it looks like they shrunk it to fit, since some of the characters are very close together. That is, if the texture wasn't made at a higher res, and then downsized. I'll have to do something similar with the rest, as I've only done the TEL_BBrds texture. Technically the rest fit the mod's theme, but don't look the best. The only thing I don't know is how I'm going to 'fix' the twi'lek dancer advert. I'm really wondering what screwed those textures up, so they cannot be easily edited. Even having them in the override, unedited(at least unchanged from how they are when extracted), makes the animation display incorrectly.

 

That aside, I really like what you've done with these textures.

Have you thrown the .txi in as well? You can get the info using this.

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Yeah, most of the setup for animated textures I already know. Although I didn't know the height and width values weren't needed.

 

The funny bit, is that you can actually find the TXI information for textures that should have it(though I didn't discover this myself, although at the moment I forget who did). Clicking on the "Hex Viewer" option while a texture is selected, brings up the Byte Viewer. Then click the ANSI option, and at the bottom of the window, is the txi information the texture uses by default.

 

I did try and fix that dancer advert texture already, although unfortunately, I only have eleven frames, provided by another user here. Just copying the last only makes the animation seem to skip, and getting each frame in the exact place where the transition between the frames is seemless, isn't exactly easy. But at this point, I'm a bit more keen on replacing the thing, than trying to deal with that.

 

Although I have done animated textures before, that lightsaber blade mod I made was far easier. With this texture mod though, I did animate one of the pannel textures on Peragus, mostly just using simple fades in each frame. I also animated the Kolto tank, mostly to make the large pipe look like it was constantly pumping or filtering the kolto, although that I think I have to fix, which shouldn't be too difficult.

 

Yeah I figured you probably had some idea of TXI files, but, I think not everyone has a clear idea of these -- it appears that some people don't even know hot to make a basic one so as to get specular working instead of having something appear transparent if the TXI is missing   .

 

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that you can just have the one strip of 11 frames if you wanted to do it that way. Personally, I would want to do the animations myself as that allows me to do what ever I want to do.

 

Also, you don't really need 11 frames to have an effective animation, or at least all of them in order to have a smooth animation. You could go with some key frames and then in between these have something different -- I've gone with suggestive faces. One thing you could do, is simply have 2 or 3 frames of dancer silhouettes, and then to vary these, you have additional frames with these as a base but what is different is the text you might display. You can use different styles for these, different sets of words, or simply, the same word just written in a different Star Wars font -- to indicate your trying to say the same thing to multiple segments of the public.

 

You can also play around with the background, by animating or changing that by using simple patterns that rotate or change color. Any of these technigues, even if you only end up with 6 frames, would be better than the 9 (or whatever) frames the current texture has .

 

Then you just play around with the fps rate, though, "fps 1" will probably be the most effective.