My Projects In the Pipeline (mostly texture related)

[Malkior 476]

Basically, I've been gone a while from DS due to my computer (which houses all of my files and Photoshop) being well, disabled. Anyway, it's finally back up, so time to get back to modding!

 

Here are some of my current/unreleased projects- (note that some of these changes are difficult to see without a before and after slide, so some are included for that purpose)

Also I ... dont' know how to add images at full size, so unfortunately each image has to be clicked to see it at full size.

 

 

Artificial bumpmaps: I found out earlier this year that adding a high contrast line of light with a slightly offset line of dark creates a pretty convincing bumping of the affected texture. About half of the metal textures on the Telos Station later, and it makes the walls and floors look that much more realistic.

 

Before-  After-

 

Before-      After-

I have done all but a few of the walls and floors of Entertainment Module 082 and the Habitation module, but I plan to do most of these textures throughout the game.

 

Speaking of Telos Station, I sought to create something that more matched the cutscenes, so I made it overall darker with the tiny edgings of orange seen in them. I also made weird greenish windows in the background bluer and copied parts from the window texture to create detail in the far background.

(signs from Sith Holocron's mod)

 

 

Boma: I redid the Boma Beast to match the concept as closely as the 3d model would allow. I plan to include it in my next iteration of Aliens Redetailed unless I can get enough of the alien bestiary together to be worthy of a mod pack.

 

Fun with Specular Shaders and some skin effects: A bit earlier than this year, I found out that if you mix the specular shader with some light noise, you can create a light reflectivity to all of the characters' skin. In about July, I had fully implemented this technique on all of the character models throughout the game. The only problems I've run into as far as releasing a mod is that in some cases, you have to go into the Appearance.2da and manually add the specular shaders or they won't work.

 

For the Handmaiden, I've been experimenting with shaders and added noise to create what look like the dimples you see on real skin

 

This effect is especially cool with dynamic lights

 

I also used a similar process to create a realistic eye shine for every character and NPC that occurs only from certain angles rather than the painted-on ones

 

Box Art: A very old project I've been working on forever. I researched a bunch of in-universe Star Wars companies that not only match the Kotor timeline, but also the products encountered in the game.

 

 

I started with the disgustingly bland shelf placeable by adding decals to the boxes and things like tools and Pazzak cards to the upper portion (to look like there's something in them)

 

For what it's worth, I put my most fervent effort into making the blurry Czerka boxes have a decent decal

 

Nar Shadaa Lights: For this, I started by making the neon lights less dull by adding a few shaders and some tweaks in Photoshop. Recently I've been using them to light up the Nar Shadaa cityscape by making all of the lights brighter. 

The effect is actually quite cool.

 

Still Nar Shadaa looks pretty bland in comparison, so I'm thinking of adding lighter textures to some of the city walls to match the contrast given by the lights.

 

Robes with added contrast and cleaned up: The first thing I noticed when I started playing Kotor 2 was that the robes on the Onderon soldier and Republic officer had some rather tacky edges to them. I've been working for a bit to remedy this by removing the blackish lines on the neckline and making the lines of the robe match across the pattern.

 

 

The robes still look pretty flat to me, so I added contrast in Photoshop and added a light cm_baremetal shader to the file. If time allows, I plan to fix up all of the necklines throughout the game and hopefully make most of the robes look a bit more dimensional. 

 

[Fair Strides 510]

...

 

...

 

WOW!!!!!

 

This, fellow modders, is what happens when one finds themself suffering from modding withdrawal...

 

Still, Malkior, this looks amazing. I really like the detail you did to the characters. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Handmaiden's original looks didn't have much detail on the hair, with little contrast, right? Either way, I really liked how the Handmaiden looks. The Boma looks super scary and now looks like something I wouldn't want to  stare down the teeth; a vast improvement.

 

You're attention to detail is once again expressed with the detailed Czerka signs and boxes. A really great job, man.

[Malkior 476]

I appreciate it, man! 

 

I'm not necessarily suffering from withdraw...(okay, so a little), I've just had all of this stuff sitting on my HD that haven't been released because I like to release them as packs.

 

Most of them aren't as polished as I would like them as well.

 

The Handmaiden was edited in a few different ways, but I ... can't seem to find any changes done to her hair.. Strange how I thought the same, but after a few minutes of checking my PS files.. the hair was untouched.

 

Anyway, I hope no one notices, but there's a fairly obvious seam on the chest of the handmaiden model (there are actually 2, I found out. 1 to make up a basic shape, and another to hide the cleavage. Odd how a T-rated game can't have PG content. I also thought it was strange how the upper part stuck to the inside of her ribcage like that.) Regardless, I am about as good 3d editing Kotor as a gibbon with a blowtorch, so if there's an easy way to either move or remove the vertices of the seam, I'm all ears. Otherwise, that stupid upper piece will have to be used whenever I release her with the skin edits.

 

 

Also I still have all of the frames for the animated day/night skybox project in case someone can find a way to either implement it or teach me how to. (I say option 1 is easier  ) I haven't forgotten about it.

 

I'm also using my temporary new found freedom to spruce up the Vibrant Skies I did about a year ago. There were plenty of details left out and a lot of low rez graphic issues with the originals that have to be addressed.

 

Oh yeah. Lastly, I'm thinking that I will upload my custom lightning and drain effects.

These-

(I may have to ask some people to test the sound effects since I'm still fairly new to audio editing)

 

Speaking of audio, I altered nearly all of the grenade sounds to add a bass boost to (especially the thermal detonator) if you want to hear them... I also did this with the thunder sound effect... 

 

 

[Fair Strides 510]

I have news, friend. The Day/Night mod, while almost dead and certainly dormant, might just have a few sparks of life in it. Check your PMs.

[Zhaboka 91]

Glorious to see such an abundance of awesome screenshots. Nice work! I especially love the realistic eyes effect. Really stunning.

[Malkior 476]

I appreciate it, Zhaboka. I originally just made this stuff so that KOTOR 2 would look as good as it could possibly be, but I'm glad that you like it.

 

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Today's experiment yielded great results! I got the Peragus exterior lighting down to a more reasonable level to match the theme of the level (and the music for crying out loud) IE, it looks creepier. I just really hated how the exterior had an artificial glow on all of the objects and the Harbinger in places where it frankly couldn't have been realistically produced since there's no light source out there except for the distant dim glow of Peragus 1. 

 

I also darkened the space suit since you are also in deep space with only the two lights mounted on your helmet as a light source.

 

Now onto skyboxes!....

[MrPhil 58]

These changes are impressive. That's a whole new atmosphere right there!

[Malkior 476]

It's been another day, and another project has passed the planning stage.

It's a bit difficult to see with the screenshot, but I did a quick painting of what the mountain background will look on my revision of the More Vibrant Skies mod. I guess the skies are only part of the problem of why the scenes look a bit bland in the vanilla...

 

I did some quick research for reference shots and I found out that most of Dxun is based on one of the jungles in Thailand except for the mountains. (they look like they're from Hawaii or something). Anyway, I'm thinking that adding some foliage and color to the mountains in the background will make Dxun look more consistent given that everywhere else has trees except the mountains. If you guys want, I can try to make the barren background mountains a higher resolution and include them if the covered ones are too much of a change.

 

Again, I appreciate you guys's feedback. I want to ensure that my stuff is something you'll want.

 

 

 

... More updates will be upcoming as I have the opportunity to post the screenshots..

 

EDIT

 

What it looks like as the texture file

 

:| Apologies for how badly paint.exe renders Jpegs...

[milestails 264]

Nice Malkior

[MrPhil 58]

I'm gonna toss an idea out there for ya, to improve that skybox: what if you added a bit more deatils on the planet? Something to make-it look more crisp and less blurry?

[Malkior 476]

@MrPhil How about this. Or is that too dark?

 

Hmm.. maybe a bit between the two?..

[MrPhil 58]

Damn, that looks incredibly good to me!

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

Good job! 

 

Also, thank you for actually doing something other than contrast changes.

[Malkior 476]

Thanks.  After seeing the difference that painting a scene does, I can't rely on filters anymore. 

 

 

 

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And as it stands, I'm in a bit of a quandary. My next focus for determining visual direction is NarShadaa. I decided earlier that I would focus on getting it up to a (frankly less boring) level of color and detail. My problem is deciding which color palette to use.

 

For example, the Nar Shadaa from the Kotor 2 cutscene is mostly concentrated with bright desaturated colors and with an overall off-white scheme. 

Whereas pretty much all of the most recent material which references it uses a color scheme of deep oranges and browns.

 

So, basically, which one looks better for the planet's design

 

This 

 

or This? 

 

Again, thanks for the kind words and feedback. I'll keep trying to produce the best results I can.

[Sith Holocron 2,480]

The orange theme feels right for Nar Shaddaa. In addition, it also matches the tones as seen in SWTOR for that planet - which is a plus.  The blue tinted one seems closer to the entertainment areas of Coruscant as seen in AOTC, in my opinion.

[Malkior 476]

Okay. I guess I'll go with the more "Nal Huttese" colors. To keep it different, though, I'll try to work in some subtle hints of Nar Shadaa as it is seen in the Jedi Knight Series as well.

Coruscant, eh? After a few minutes of testing it out, the blue tint was reminding me too much of Manaan. 

[Sith Holocron 2,480]

Okay. I guess I'll go with the more "Nal Huttese" colors. To keep it different, though, I'll try to work in some subtle hints of Nar Shaddaa as it is seen in the Jedi Knight Series as well.

I wasn't able to post pictures before. I'll do so now. When I think of Nar Shaddaa, this is what I think of.

 

 

However, I think of Nal Hutta like this . . .

 

 

Coruscant, eh? After a few minutes of testing it out, the blue tint was reminding me too much of Manaan. 

And finally, I think of Coruscant - at least at night - like this . . .

 

[Malkior 476]

I see..

 

Well, how about some of these?..

 

 

I may have to redshift ™ the greyer parts if it looks more like patchwork and less like an orange all-over light, Heck, if it looks too much like a palette swap, I could also try to fake orange raking light or something to give it more variety,

 

but other than that, whaddaya think? 

 

 

 

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I'm also thinking about doing something exotic with the overhead lights to make them a little more eye catching and less dull.

[Sith Holocron 2,480]

I see that some of those examples are indoor shots. Wouldn't the orange light primarily be affecting things outside?

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

If you are intending to release this, did you get permission to use the Nar Shaddaa skybox texture, as it appears to be based on someone else's work?

[SaltySoul 1]

In comparing your landing pad outdoor section from the top of the page to the more recent one, I definitely would say the orange lighting gives it a more (for lack of better words) grimy and hutt-like environment.

 

In terms of the Dxun skybox, I very much like the idea of a more prominent Onderon but in that screenshot it looked a little TOO sharp. You know what I mean? Otherwise all this stuff looks super awesome!! I very much like the subtlety of the changes.

[milestails 264]

Great work on NS Malkior

 

I'm also a fan of how TOR portrays Nar Shadaa.

[Malkior 476]

If you are intending to release this, did you get permission to use the Nar Shaddaa skybox texture, as it appears to be based on someone else's work?

When I release the module skins, I don't plan to include the Nar Shadaa skybox (By Sharen Thrawn, I believe). That's one of the things I excluded from my earlier mod for the reason you just described.

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However, does anyone know an easy way to get a hold of her/them to ask for permission?

[milestails 264]

Sharen Thrawn's mod is a must-have indeed.

[Malkior 476]

Update from pretty much this past week:

 

Work has been continuing on Nar Shadaa.

 

I've gotten the orange coloration on all of the texture surfaces now

 

Before: Now:

 

 

Also tested the new color scheme in the cantinas.

 

I've tested a new texture I've been aching to try for the overhead lights.  

It's still a work in progress since the glowing tables also happen to use the same texture.. :| 

(I'll try to have another screen to show just how bad this effect can be on the green glowing tables and not just the bar counter)

 

 

Another Project I've been working on is to finally eliminate the banding that is present in all of the skyboxes throughout Kotor 2. So far I've gotten Telos at least started.

The hard part's going to be cleaning up all of the seams.. it always is..

 

 

I've another leg of labeling all of the miscellaneous boxes by making the logos and contents a higher resolution

Unfortunately I'm not done, because the low quality of the original box texture will just bring down the overall look and must be redone.

 

 

Lastly, an Onderon skybox I'm working on doing to make it more "deserty"