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Beautiful textures, keep up the good work man. The way this looks it'll be one of those "forever" mods that you just can't play TSL without.

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Sweet baby Jesus these textures look awesome! I've never been interested in downloading texture mods before, always been a stickler for not getting them (I can't explain why). But after seeing this work I pretty sure I've changed my mind. I can't wait for the finished product.

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Along with tweaked textures, the below shot has a big change that I'm not gonna point out :P

 

 

 

k2_00124.jpg

 

Well, here's for comparison:

swkotor22014-01-2018-16-42-18.png

Here's what I got: Floor changed, overall texture change, ship changed (duh), ceiling's darker, screen's changed, Peragus Nebula added, space has changed, the windows looks changed too, without the ugly bars at the lowest part... Hitting any close to mark or what?

Edited by MrPhil

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Beautiful textures, keep up the good work man. The way this looks it'll be one of those "forever" mods that you just can't play TSL without.

 

Thanks. It would be nice if it were.

 

Sweet baby Jesus these textures look awesome! I've never been interested in downloading texture mods before, always been a stickler for not getting them (I can't explain why). But after seeing this work I pretty sure I've changed my mind. I can't wait for the finished product.

 

Thanks, nice to see that my work can change people's minds -- really need to see if I can change the title of this thread, though, as it won't just be texture work in the end.

 

 

Here's what I got: Floor changed, overall texture change, ship changed (duh), ceiling's darker, screen's changed, Peragus Nebula added, space has changed, the windows looks changed too, without the ugly bars at the lowest part... Hitting any close to mark or what?

 

 

Nicely spotted. Specifically it is Peragus that now has a nebula, asteroids floating in front of it, and, the correct Peragus artwork that matches all other instances of when it is seen -- I decided to use the one replaced as the basis for the corporate-art floor mosaic. It's not perfect as I'm limited to the mesh that's in place, but still, it is the small details that can end up making a big difference.

 

Probably shouldn't of made a point of it on hindsight, as it is a distinct fix, perhaps not as stand-out as others, but one that makes my mod unique. Doubt it will remain "exclusive" to my mod for very long, though ;).

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Hey sic, are you still working on this project? It's been a while since the last update and your textures are far too amazing to be just abandoned.

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No, it's not quite abandoned yet.

 

Had an injury a while back which left me unable / unwilling to use a computer for a long while until it got better. Since then I've been playing catch up with work along with placing my focus on other projects I've wanted to get done for a long while now.

 

 

 

 

One is a new normal map plugin for the image editing program I prefer to use for textures -- you all might now them as "bump maps" though these days they're called normal maps.

 

f3redux_nmap_compared.jpg

 

  • None: means there is no normal map so the diffuse is lit up in game bright.
  • Neutral: means that there is one but it is an even flat texture -- no details so it gets lit and appears flat in detail.
  • Classic: is the old RGB method of normal maps that it can do as well.
  • Height: is my new method of doing the RGB component of normal maps to overcome some old issues.

 

I still have to do the A component so that it becomes also an diffuse to RGBA normal map tool; the A is the alpha channel which modern game engines use as well to hold things like a specular map or ambient occlusion map.

 

 

 

 

Though I did do some work on textures before the injury, it was just some placeable work for models that really need NEW models to make any improvement at all. Realistically I've hit a bottleneck on how quickly I can make progress now and I have to decide what I'm prepared to do if I want to move ahead with this mod at all. Especially as initially there will be a lot of work with little to show and I have to weigh up what benefit there is to me in doing so, when I could be doing other things that I may not prefer to be doing, but, do pay the bills -- or are more likely to help on that front in the short-term to mid-term.

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Pieces of crap like this one that refuse to look better no matter what texturing tricks I use:

 

 

 

 

k2_00162.jpg

 

 

 

Don't have a compiled list or anything, but generally they are K1 ones that weren't used all that much in K1 and aren't used at all in K2; like the generic kiosk types that look like they were done by an intern. You can see from that example that not only is it low poly, but also the texture is poorly mapped.

 

I'd change it but it seems like there are issues with replacing placeable meshes, in that if the camera moves over them, you will see them pop out of game existence. Not sure is there is a setting or something I've missed for Max or MDLOPS, but from what I tried I hadn't been able to make them stay put. Though, I'm pretty sure I can get them to stay in place based on the work I did with updating the Czerka sign placeable mesh. However, I think that solution in certain situations, may cause problems :/.

 

Still, I think it's worth updating these regardless, as like other K1 placeables that aren't used in K2 that I've already updated:

 

 

 

 

k2_00163.jpg

 

 

 

 

If they aren't already used anywhere, then they won't affect anything. So when they are placed, you can make sure to place them where they won't cause a problem -- I think. That way I can make use of them, or, they can be made use of by others as a modder's resource if this mod is installed.

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The problem with the camera is caused by what I believe to be an incorrect walkmesh. If you put  in a custom walkmesh then you will have problems. if you use the old walkmesh you won't. At least that is what i figure because I think I  had the same problem and it went away when I used one of obsidians walkmeshes.

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I don't recollect doing anything to the walkmesh at all, it may have been "lost" due to the export / import process. I'd have to have a look at it all again to see if that may have been the issue or not. Do recall trying to simply replace / update the static mesh of the mdl file rather than using than generating a new one from the Max export, not sure if I accidentally also tried to update the walkmesh as well.

 

As I said, have to look at it all again as it has been a while -- means figuring out some processes again -- but it would be nice if it ends up being that simple ;).

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I don't recollect doing anything to the walkmesh at all, it may have been "lost" due to the export / import process. I'd have to have a look at it all again to see if that may have been the issue or not.

 

Having played with this very issue several times, I'm convinced that's what it is. We've tried moving one the dummies on the model (don't remember which one) and that seems to have a minor effect, but still it's not a real solution.

 

One thing I'd suggest trying. Instead of recompiling the whole model, use the replacer function in mdlops. That basically allows you replace one trimesh in the binary model based off an ascii export. That might be your best bet trying to preserve that collision data for the camera.

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I'm unclear on one point- did you import the old walkmesh? Kotor models don't import with their walkmeshes. You have to import them after you import the model. Apologies if you already did so.

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I'm unclear on one point- did you import the old walkmesh? Kotor models don't import with their walkmeshes. You have to import them after you import the model. Apologies if you already did so.

 

I was going to test this all out to be certain but I just don't have the time at the moment to get into it -- as I have to familiarize myself where I saved the different versions of the mdl files to test it all out with to begin with. All I can say is that I also tried what VP said, in that I tried to update an existing mdl file's mesh(es) with MDLOPS, but, can't recollect if I did this for the walkmesh as well by mistake; don't recall all the meshes being named meaningful names, so it could of been easy to do ;).

 

When I'm ready to revisit the problem, I'll give it another shot before looking at an alternative solution; but at the moment any spare time I have I'm using for something else I'm working on and want to get out of the way before moving on to something else. It's a bit difficult juggling tasks when those tasks aren't at all alike :).

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I was going to test this all out to be certain but I just don't have the time at the moment to get into it -- as I have to familiarize myself where I saved the different versions of the mdl files to test it all out with to begin with. All I can say is that I also tried what VP said, in that I tried to update an existing mdl file's mesh(es) with MDLOPS, but, can't recollect if I did this for the walkmesh as well by mistake; don't recall all the meshes being named meaningful names, so it could of been easy to do ;).

 

When I'm ready to revisit the problem, I'll give it another shot before looking at an alternative solution; but at the moment any spare time I have I'm using for something else I'm working on and want to get out of the way before moving on to something else. It's a bit difficult juggling tasks when those tasks aren't at all alike :D.

 

I'll test my theory and let you know what happens. I've done it with a door before and it worked, but I'll doublecheck.

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How's progress on this project? It's been a long time since we've heard something new, this mod looks too promising to be abandoned for good...

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Not much that I can show you to be frank; most of it has been research in how I'm going to solve various bottlenecks along with research for quests I want to add eventually.

 

k2_00056.jpg

 

Every now and then I look at this screenshot in particular, and against my better judgement, I start to think about what I want to do next. As disappointing as it is to some, it is still focused around Peragus, as it and the Harbinger represents a part of the game that once the player is finished with it, they never return to again -- so it's kind of self contained that way, along with being very linear. It's kind of a nice big test-case for me to see what I can and can't do; currently most of the "can't" has to do with models as what I can do in that respect is very slow work -- it's very poor as far as "pipeline" is concerned, with much not being possible.

 

Apart from that it is things like getting "generic" things like effects, armor, weapon and placeable models done as this affects the entire game, and not any one planet. None of which I've touched in a long while as I tend to find something pops up that is more pressing for me to focus on -- that or something like an injury occurs or a computer hardware problem occurs that eats into my productive time.

 

But, I figure I should at least complete the things I've started before I decide to abandon it ;).

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Recently I adopted a 1920x1080 resolution monitor and wanted to setup TSL in order to take some screenshots in order to set one as my desktop when I noticed the following:

 

 

 

k2_00177.jpg

 

 

 

Which is not the only difference I noticed in that with others visual errors were pretty much fixed due to the new resolution -- not sure went wrong there, would need to check it to see who I implemented the change. Anyway, I was wondering what resolution people were playing the game in, old box monitor or something more widescreen / HD..?

 

Anyway, some more screenshots taken at the higher resolution if people want to see the difference:

 

 

 

k2_00165.jpg

 

k2_00179.jpg

 

k2_00184.jpg

 

k2_00183.jpg

 

The following one with the old resolution would of had an issue with the nebula around Peragus at this angle, with there being a very serated / pixelated border; at this resolution it is barely perceptible:

 

k2_00186.jpg

 

Not sure if the following are too dark from some, all I know is that in game it was too bright -- I'll have to check the current brightness settings of the game and monitor I think:

 

k2_00180.jpg

 

k2_00181.jpg

 

k2_00191.jpg

 

k2_00190.jpg

 

k2_00189.jpg

 

k2_00188.jpg

 

 

 

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Some more higher rez screens:

 

 

 

k2_00198.jpg

 

k2_00199.jpg

 

k2_00200.jpg

 

k2_00196.jpg

 

k2_00197.jpg

 

k2_00195.jpg

 

k2_00192.jpg

 

k2_00193.jpg

 

k2_00194.jpg

 

k2_00204.jpg

 

FYI: All the Telos textures that I did for the initial release are going to be tweaked to update them with the remaining ones missing done -- along with eventually certain ones hex edited to others.

 

k2_00206.jpg

 

 

 

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Another set, probably the last set of high rez shots of things I've already shown...

 

 

 

 

Wow, I thought that these initial textures I did were pretty good, now I think they're butt-ugly! Especially those skybox textures I have yet to replace :-/

 

k2_00205.jpg

 

The only shot of the outdoors that I like -- I really want to hex edit the hell out of the outdoors, maybe some more placeables like better trees.

 

k2_00203.jpg

 

k2_00212.jpg

 

k2_00207.jpg

 

k2_00209.jpg

 

k2_00210.jpg

 

k2_00211.jpg

 

Lastly some Nar Shaddaa aliens:

 

k2_00201.jpg

 

k2_00202.jpg

 

 

 

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Wait, found a few more I forgot about...

 

 

 

 

k2_00175.jpg

 

Wasn't quite as sure before but know I'm certain that those weird splotches are supposed to be LucasArts TM PG blood...

 

k2_00166.jpg

 

k2_00167.jpg

 

k2_00168.jpg

 

k2_00169.jpg

 

k2_00170.jpg

 

k2_00171.jpg

 

k2_00172.jpg

 

k2_00173.jpg

 

 

 

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Thanks as always Milestails! ;)

 

Some stuff I started working on after doing those screens...

 

 

 

 

My desktop rig uses an ATI based card, so, I tend to have issues with foliage but luckily so far I've been able to see things like grass. However, I noticed when I was working on the placeable textures that there was a weird shader problem to do with leaves:

 

k2_00214.jpg

 

k2_00221.jpg

 

If you look around the leave edges when the bark is directly behind them, you'll notice that the bark texture is erased exposing the wall behind them -- though the edges of the leaves are much smoother / anti-aliased. My fix below is a workaround for ATI cards that I came up with last time:

 

k2_00218.jpg

 

k2_00219.jpg

 

Though the problem is "solved" it does result in the edges of the leaves themselves to be more jagged / pixelated due to what appears to be a lack of anti-aliasing. Though it's not as bad as before due to the higher rez, it is still apparent, in particular, as seen from a distance -- making them feel more like paper cutouts.

 

The newer tweaked version is much like the my previous version, but, seems better as seen from a distance:

 

k2_00213.jpg

 

k2_00220.jpg

 

The difference is that the leaves are all lit the same brightness whereas the screens above show some to be darkened due to lighting and position. It's not a big issue I think as most probably wouldn't of noticed it if I hadn't pointed it out, however, I do think that they tend to look less artificial (cutout) as seen from a distance.

 

Still not sure which option to provide people with.

 

 

 

 

I've also started to improve the structural texture as seen from Telos station looking out:

 

k2_00216.jpg

 

Previous version:

 

k2_00193.jpg

 

I want to see whether I can hex edit it so that the upper mesh and lower mesh can use different textures; but, I'm guessing that they have been linked together as they use the same texture, and I'll need to get it to work by using the one texture only.

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Telos outer structure and planet texture set -- unlikely to change much...

 

 

 

 

k2_00222.jpg

 

The struts is a large 2048x2048 texture with a decent amount of variation.

 

k2_00223.jpg

 

k2_00224.jpg

 

k2_00225.jpg

 

k2_00226.jpg

 

k2_00227.jpg

 

k2_00228.jpg

 

There is an issue though, in that other game areas use a different model with differing mesh settings:

 

k2_00229.jpg

 

That will take some time to resolve, especially as I a custom tex and txi file will look on the crap side.

 

 

 

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