TSL Textures Remastered

[VarsityPuppet 1,084]

*Muffet

[Sith Holocron 2,403]

OK, back on topic.

 

sic: What area are you working on next? Which of your textures that you've done are you most pleased with?

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 97]

I'm not really sure I have a favourite texture, tend to be happy enough with them to move onto something else. Sometimes I come back to them and give them an update if I think they can be improved.

 

Though I suppose if recently I was pleased with the following...

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was only meant to be a quick mock-up of the main title image, but it ended up taking a lot longer as the alpha in particular is not rendered as you would see it within your image editor or viewer. It can be improved, but still, it was pleasing to see it in-game along with my initial Sion texture.

 

If you're asking as to which world I was going to do next, then it would be Korriban. It appears to have a small set of textures, though, that's more than likely misleading as it probably uses a lot of textures from other places, along with, it has a number of creatures as well.

 

But, I haven't finished Nar Shaddaa yet. I'm also building my skills in max, so I will probably be doing more model editing as well, not just for module stuff like fixing some of the texture problems with the Ebon Hawk, but also characters:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some people will probably be familiar with it, it is an unused Mandalore No Helmet armor that you can find within the game files. I fixed 3 mesh holes along with vertex weight issues and I'm currently in the early stages of creating the female version of it. These will then be the basis for the new Heavy Powered armor appearance.

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 97]

You can add columns to existing .2da files using TSLPatcher. I haven't tried it, but would it not be possible to add the necessary extra columns to appearance.2da that way, as well as altering the necessary information in baseitems.2da, etc.?

 

I haven't used TSLPatcher yet, so I'm not sure how much it can do in way of installing files along with editing files and such on install. But you can add lines to appearance.2da via KOTOR Tool, and there probably isn't anything special about what TSLPatcher would do to the 2da file that you can't do with KOTOR Tool. From my experience and what I gather, it isn't an issue with the 2da files but rather the game code itself which has hardcoded various limits, like those for models.

[InSidious 234]

I haven't used TSLPatcher yet, so I'm not sure how much it can do in way of installing files along with editing files and such on install. But you can add lines to appearance.2da via KOTOR Tool, and there probably isn't anything special about what TSLPatcher would do to the 2da file that you can't do with KOTOR Tool. From my experience and what I gather, it isn't an issue with the 2da files but rather the game code itself which has hardcoded various limits, like those for models.

 

You can add lines in KT, yes, but as far as I know, you can't add columns, which is what TSLPatcher can do.

 

Modifying the necessary files to test this would mean a great deal of very boring work, which leads me to suspect no-one has tried and as such the received wisdom on this is probably not all that reliable. Until Sithspectre tried it a while back, we thought the types of model you could use for ammo were hard-coded, too.

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 97]

You can add lines in KT, yes, but as far as I know, you can't add columns, which is what TSLPatcher can do.

 

Modifying the necessary files to test this would mean a great deal of very boring work, which leads me to suspect no-one has tried and as such the received wisdom on this is probably not all that reliable. Until Sithspectre tried it a while back, we thought the types of model you could use for ammo were hard-coded, too.

 

Curious. KT may not be able to add lines but something else might. I recall there was an Excel plugin for reading and writing 2da files; not sure if it is still viable, especially with newer versions of Excel. KT I think also allows you to save 2da files as an XML files, for which there might be a program that can read them and not just as a raw file but as a table of columns and fields. Most extreme, you can then write up a C#.net program to read the XML, display it a a table, allow you to edit it even add columns, and then save the XML again. You should then be able to load it up via KT and save it as a proper 2da file.

 

My thinking is that that might take some of the tediousness out of trying to do it with TSLPatcher; the C#.net program seems like it would be fairly simple to create over a weekend for someone who's a bit on the rusty side. Conceivably a couple of hours for someone who is on the other side of that spectrum.

 

However, it seems like you would need to know what columns to add to your 2da files in the first place in order to enable more model options. Still, worth looking into more before I go and change all the armor model files and such, as I would prefer to add rather than limit what options are available to modders. Also, any changes will affect other mods used with this one that rely on those old models.

[Logan23 198]

Great work!!!

 

Look forward to seeing the project's release =)

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 97]

Well, I found some time to do some more work on this recently; mostly miscellaneous fixes for areas already textured...

 

 

 

 

I've updated the Czerka sign mesh as it was clipping into walls and stuff where it was used:

 

 

 

Works in all the areas it's used:

 

 

I also added in the back details:

 

 

 

 

 

Ebon Hawk fixes...

 

 

 

 

The model/scene mesh below uses a sphere for the skybox along with two cylinders with the same skybox texture set to scroll to give the impression of stars passing by. Nice effect however, it's really obvious with the new skybox texture how the scene is constructed as there is a thick band of stars to either side of the Ebon Hawk -- FYI the effect is stronger in-game:

 

 

After trying various ways, I finally settled on just HEX editing the model file to set the 2 cylinders to use new custom textures to better control how it appears. The effect of being in space with stars passing by is far more effective now along with there being no clear visible banding:

 

 

I also fixed as best I could the black bits of mesh you see clipping into the Ebon Hawk.

 

 

 

At first I was hoping I could just edit the model in question and then import it out with mdlops, but after trying various ways I decided that I couldn't do it. It's a shame as the black box that encloses the Ebon Hawk is not its own seperate model but part of another major section of the ship. It really should have been made separate, and it would have been much easier to get rid of it. As it were, the best I could to was edit the VIS file which controls which parts of the ship are rendered depending upon where you are within it. What this means is that the box is still there, unedited, however, when you are in these areas it will not be rendered. But, there are still there and can be seen when you initially see these areas and will then disappear once you enter them. But, it's the best I can do for now.

 

Another fix I did was the area of floor within one of the corridors where the textures are rendered darker. With the new textures they essentially appear black with only the specular showing up in-game:

 

 

Again, I was hoping to do a proper fix and edit the mesh in question as I'm pretty sure it is simply one flag that needs to be changed. I also thought as this model wasn't very complex and had no (procedurally) animated elements in way of meshes and textures, that I could at the very least use mdlops to update the mesh with its "replacer" feature, but, I was wrong. The best I could do was export it but for some reason it would not get rendered until you were right within it -- seemingly to ignore the VIS file settings -- along with appearing completely black. Perhaps this can all be fixed by redoing the lightmaps but put it off. When I started resorting to HEX editing models I went back to it and simply changed the mesh to use a new custom version of the texture file to solve the problem. It's not perfect as it relies on the TXI file to render it correctly and for the lighting to remain constant -- for example, if the whole ship were plunged into darkness, you would still see this texture rendered nice and bright.

 

Anyway, the fix:

 

 

 

 

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 97]

I've also done some additional Peragus / Harbinger fixes...

 

 

 

 

This probably looks familiar, however, there is a BIG difference. The first image shows the Harbinger using my first-pass of the Hammerhead ship texture which is more cleaner / newer in appearance; the second image show my Harbinger version of the texture. The big difference here is that I have modified the relevant model files so that the Harbinger how uses its own texture, meaning, that if any other Hammerhead class ship shows up it will use the cleaner / newer version of the texture instead of the Harbinger one. I'm sure that will make some people happy .

 

 

 

Something that also bugged me was that from inside the Peragus facility, you could clearly see a nebula outside, however, once you're outside you can't see anything at all. It is actually there as part of the relevant model file so I decided to tweak the texture and its TXI file so that it now appears as well:

 

 

 

I also didn't like how the Peragus asteroid texture appeared as seen from the Harbinger; there was a very clear repeating pattern. So, I HEX edited the relevant model so that it now uses another one:

 

 

 

 

 

[milestails 263]

Yet more high-quality work from sic!

 

Awesome!

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 97]

Some more of the miscellaneous things I've been working on...

 

 

 

 

After making the nebula outside the Peragus facility appear, I then turned my attention to making the nebula cloud around Peragus itself appear:

 

 

It's there as part of the model file but just doesn't appear, probably due to settings to do with the mesh it's applied to. So I hexed it so that it uses another texture so that I could come up with a custom solution to get it appear as best I can:

 

 

It's not perfect, as I had to kind of stipple it in order to get the alpha areas to "appear" as a regular blending mode results in it being rendered completely transparent as shown above in the previous screenshot.

 

Having tweaked this texture, and changed its orientation. I also went back and tweaked the original texture for the Peragus nebula as seen from the damaged Ebon Hawk:

 

 

 

Along with tweaking the alpha areas and changing its orientation to make it fit the Peragus appearance better, I also made it more vibrant. At that point my computer crashed and I lost the working version of the file for this and decided to leave it as is. Not 100% sure on the new looks of the nebula myself, kind of happy to leave it as is and just move on to something else, or revert it all back to what I had previously if enough people protest.

 

I also did some work on one of the low-poly alien appearances, in that I found the Quarren one in particular to be too crude. Plus, I think most people's computers can handle the extra polys. So, I modified the "high-poly" version of the Quarren to use a different set of textures, and then modified the appearance file to point to this new model:

 

 

 

New version:

 

 

 

The texture coloring is a quick-pass for now; will probably modify it later to make it more distinct that it is -- hard to see within the dark shot due to the lighting of the location. I also plan on modifying Loppak Slusk (exchange boss at Telos station) to use this new model / appearance to add some diversity between him and the other Exchange boss on Nar Shaddaa.

 

I also did some work on the new model for the male version of the armored robes:

 

 

 

It now uses the correct animation and also has a first-person hook so that switching to first-person view in game displays properly. For the time being I did updated versions of the K1 Sith apprentice and Darth Bannon robes in order to have layered working files of each to use for the other variants. The Sith Apprentice one took a bit of work in that the original texture was quite low-rez; getting the "metalness" of the armour specular took some work too.

 

Oh, I've also done updated versions of all the headgear textures -- 2 shown above. My plan is to make it that every headgear item in the game has its own unique look, if not via the mesh then at least via the texture itself. Kind of disliked all the repetition, plus, I think some items in particular deserve their own unique look to them.

 

 

 

[Sith Holocron 2,403]

 

 

 

1) I also fixed as best I could the black bits of mesh you see clipping into the Ebon Hawk. At first I was hoping I could just edit the model in question and then import it out with mdlops, but after trying various ways I decided that I couldn't do it. It's a shame as the black box that encloses the Ebon Hawk is not its own separate model but part of another major section of the ship. It really should have been made separate, and it would have been much easier to get rid of it. As it were, the best I could to was edit the VIS file which controls which parts of the ship are rendered depending upon where you are within it. What this means is that the box is still there, unedited, however, when you are in these areas it will not be rendered. But, there are still there and can be seen when you initially see these areas and will then disappear once you enter them. But, it's the best I can do for now.

 

2) Another fix I did was the area of floor within one of the corridors where the textures are rendered darker. With the new textures they essentially appear black with only the specular showing up in-game. Again, I was hoping to do a proper fix and edit the mesh in question as I'm pretty sure it is simply one flag that needs to be changed. I also thought as this model wasn't very complex and had no (procedurally) animated elements in way of meshes and textures, that I could at the very least use mdlops to update the mesh with its "replacer" feature, but, I was wrong. The best I could do was export it but for some reason it would not get rendered until you were right within it -- seemingly to ignore the VIS file settings -- along with appearing completely black. Perhaps this can all be fixed by redoing the lightmaps but put it off. When I started resorting to HEX editing models I went back to it and simply changed the mesh to use a new custom version of the texture file to solve the problem. It's not perfect as it relies on the TXI file to render it correctly and for the lighting to remain constant -- for example, if the whole ship were plunged into darkness, you would still see this texture rendered nice and bright.

 

 

 

Though I like all of your current updates - these two above are the ones are the ones that I'm most pleased about. The second especially - as I've made requests on it before elsewhere. Nicely done, sir!

[MrPhil 58]

The nebulas you added are simply amazing. It's like TSL meets Homeworld lol. And the Quarren finally looks like an alien, not some weird shiny silicone doll or something. Nice catch on the Czerka sign.

 

Hey SIC, would you consider posting your wip somewhere else too? Deadlystream is a growing (more slowly now, though) community, but if you want more advice on how to tweak the game and bend-it more to your will, lucasforums " http://lucasforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=521 " is where you want to go. There, there are much more modders hanging around and I'm pretty sure a few of them could give you advice on how to tweak the game. Just take all your relevant updates from here (those that aren't updated) and post them over there in one shot. These guys are interested in one thing: that people can do things on their own, after which they are happy to help you with most of your question and generally offer helpful advice. Just a thought, anyway

Edited October 30, 2013 by MrPhil

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 97]

Thanks for the positive feedback and comments folks.

 

@ Sith Holocron:

 

Not really sure what to say, or put another way, whether I should say it...

 

People tend to put all their effort within what they think will get the biggest bang for their buck or what interests them at all other costs. So adding new weapon models for example, no matter what game it is, will always be a popular thing to do -- popular for modders to do it, and popular in that these get downloaded a lot. Things like fixing some bad texturing, that though ugly doesn't impeded gameplay -- even if it reminds you straight away that you are playing a game by undermining the atmosphere created -- isn't very "sexy" at all, and may not get much acclaim for their hard work. Why they get ignored as it isn't seen as important to warrant the effort -- though are range of reasons will be given that don't say that at all but something else.

 

But, I know better in that you need to address those things that you may not want to do along with those that you do, if you want something that isn't just good but might also be considered great. Quality matters in the end, and these little things that aren't important, once all added up, can make for something with a big impact in way of user / player experience.

 

@ MrPhil:

 

Not sure if you've noticed, but I'm not really looking for advice on things; I like figuring out things on my own.

 

Plus, I have all the help that I need in how to figure out stuff, It's called Google -- more people should try it. Seriously, there aren't many problems I can't fix on my own without a couple of Google searches, at least that way I can cross reference things to make sure that what I am being told is correct rather than an assumption that's been around for so long it is considered undisputed unshakable law .

 

Anyway, I'll post up a mod thread on lucasforums when I update the mod with a new release. Until then I'm happy to post things up here as there is less noise and less opinionated egos -- excluding my own .

 

EDIT: oh, and that silicone doll effect is from the normal (bump) mapping. Evidently what the game uses is pretty basic, from when the technology first got introduced. So far I haven't bothered to use any of them as they are bad and seem impossible to create in a form for the game to load them up.

 

At least for now...

[SaltySoul 1]

Wowza! Looks pretty awesome sic! Can't wait to see what you'll do with the other planets.

[Fallen Guardian 26]

Nice work! I've been dying for someone to get rid of the clipping black mesh in the Ebon Hawk.

[MrPhil 58]

 

 

@ MrPhil:

 

Not sure if you've noticed, but I'm not really looking for advice on things; I like figuring out things on my own.

 

Well, yes, but I also noticed a lot of things seems to irritate you about modding TSL and there are some modders over there that might be well placed to help you with these, should google fail to provide answers. Anyway, have a nice day, sir

[Sith Holocron 2,403]

Well, yes, but I also noticed a lot of things seems to irritate you about modding TSL and there are some modders over there that might be well placed to help you with these, should google fail to provide answers. Anyway, have a nice day, sir

 

SIC would better utilized to teach them things if he were to go there.

[Zhaboka 91]

You're a genius.

[Malkior 469]

I have a small request, I'm working on my own texture for the harbinger to match with the mood that I want for my game, but I can't find the model file to make it a unique texture. (I've looked all over the model list multiple times ) Do you have a copy of the model name that you used to make your harbinger unique so that I can fix it?

 

 

 

In regards to the nebula,

 

Some more of the miscellaneous things I've been working on...

 

 

 

 

After making the nebula outside the Peragus facility appear, I then turned my attention to making the nebula cloud around Peragus itself appear:

 

 

It's there as part of the model file but just doesn't appear, probably due to settings to do with the mesh it's applied to. So I hexed it so that it uses another texture so that I could come up with a custom solution to get it appear as best I can:

 

 

It's not perfect, as I had to kind of stipple it in order to get the alpha areas to "appear" as a regular blending mode results in it being rendered completely transparent as shown above in the previous screenshot.

 

Having tweaked this texture, and changed its orientation. I also went back and tweaked the original texture for the Peragus nebula as seen from the damaged Ebon Hawk:

 

 

 

Along with tweaking the alpha areas and changing its orientation to make it fit the Peragus appearance better, I also made it more vibrant. At that point my computer crashed and I lost the working version of the file for this and decided to leave it as is. Not 100% sure on the new looks of the nebula myself, kind of happy to leave it as is and just move on to something else, or revert it all back to what I had previously if enough people protest.

 

 

 

Was the yellower color a result of the Alpha tweaking? For what it's worth, I think it looks fine as is; given how it still has that visual punch that's sorely lacking from a majority of the Peragus level.

 

 

 

EDIT

 

I want to make it clear that I am not trying to steal your work. I just can't find the model file, and I'm asking for help in finding it..

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 97]

OK, since your not trying to "steal" my work, just this once, I'll let a competitor know how I do things .

 

When I went to find the model file myself, I found that it wasn't a clearly marked separate model. So, I figured it needs to be part of those used for the Peragus levels. When I finally got around to looking at these via NWmax and looking at the texture lists generated by MDLops, I found it wasn't its own separate model but part of a scene model. Two actually.

 

One is used for when you are inside the facility looking out, the other is used when you are outside the facility looking in. One of these is 104perg (outside) and the other is 101perzc (inside).

 

As for the Nebula, I'm assuming you mean the yellow glow as seen in the first screenshot. As far as I recall the nebula - plasma gas field, thing - has nothing to do with it as I changed the texture to test whether it was being used at all. First I made it a solid pink, the next I deleted all the pixels to make transparent. In both cases it had no effect. What makes the glow as far as I know, is how the game decides to render things and what settings have been set for the mesh the texture is applied to. For example, if it is set to be a light, then it will glow based upon the "brightness" of the pixels of the textures.

 

So to cut a long story short, when I edited the texture file to enhance it, it changed from a strong orange red to a "brighter" orange yellow, along with making other contrasting parts of it darker. This then as far as I can tell, created the glow effect as seen in the screenshot -- though, it may also be affected by the surrounding mesh that is in place used for the nebula that isn't being rendered; as Peragus planet texture (mesh) sits within the middle of this.

[Malkior 469]

Man, I appreciate it. I view hours spent researching something and the results of said research to be the property of whomever does it, so, thank you for that tidbit.

 

I had no idea that the models and texture files were so complicated... (I figured that finding out where something was in the Kotor tool via deciphering its esoteric name was difficult enough... :| )

 

I never saw myself as a competitor. I just personally have a different taste on what textures should look like in the game. Things just got kinda funky when you ended up changing stuff that I had been working on but never posted. 

 

 I needed the model name or a hint toward its direction, because I didn't want to interfere with

the final battle between the Republic and Nihilis by having their hammerheads with the same messed-up texture of the Harbinger

(spoiler tag in case someone hasn't beaten the game)

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 97]

@ Malkior: No, it's not a competition -- as much as some might like to think it is.

 

It's surprising how much work you can do and have so little to show for it; for example, I've been working on a lot of things of late but in particular to do with Peragus and the mining gear items you get in game, like the "uniform":

 

 

 

 

I've wanted to replace the "Miner Uniform" with something a bit more visually interesting and to me at least a bit more realistic; something I could imagine perhaps a Peragus miner wearing instead of a jumpsuit. The armored flight suit is a model that only has three texture varients off, and a bit of a waste considering it is one of the better models and also because it takes up an appearance slot. So, I did the following texture for it:

 

 

Initially I thought it would be quick to get all the layers, but, it ended up taking several hours to get the final result. In particular the specular for metal is hard to achieve, why there are so few good examples of it, even within the original game files.

 

 

 

But that wasn't the real time sink, what was, was changing all the other miner appearances so that not everyone was wearing the new "Miner Safety Gear" suit:

 

 

I wanted some to wear the older style uniform with the updated textures, like the admin and in particular the maintenance officer:

 

 

And then others like Coorta's gang to wear the new safety gear:

 

 

 

 

It took a while to figure out the best way of doing it without having to update the module files, but rather, via scripts and the few cases where I could actually just replace the character's UTC file as it was actually named something unique for a change.

 

Anyway, this represents some of the last things to do with Peragus and that I've been working on for it. The other major thing to do is write the scripts and create the unique models in order to replace all those really bad looking dead corpse placeables with ones that look like the miners, as I have them now.

 

 

 

[milestails 263]

Yeah that default minor uniform is an eye-sore.

 

Love your new take on it

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 97]

Yeah that default minor uniform is an eye-sore.

 

Love your new take on it

 

Thanks, glad someone appreciates it. Wasn't sure anyone would care to be frank, as it is just the miner uniform -- and it is just simple "contrast" work apparently . But, I really do find it odd that this ugly jumpsuit is somehow classed as being armor...