[WIP] HD Cockpit Skyboxes

[0oDarkLordRevano0 2]

*drool*

[tjsase 116]

Just added grass to Dxun. Re-rendered what I have so far according to my calculations (using a grid texture for Dxun's skybox). If anyone's interested, here are some specs to get correct and distortion free cockpit skyboxes:

 

-Render 5461x5522 with Mental Ray latlong lens (spherical lens, minimal distortion when cropped)

-Offset down 93px
-Crop to 4096x1024

For higher or lower resolutions, multiply or divide all of the above numbers by a binary number (2, 4, 8, 16, etc.)

 

The texture has a horizontal FOV of 240 degrees and a vertical FOV of 33.38 degrees

 

Due to lightmaps (I think), the textures are at 50% brightness. The following steps compensate for reduced brightness:

 

Simulate in-game glow:

-Duplicate layer, turn gamma down as far as it goes

-Use motion blur (horizontal blur length = vertical blur length x 2.022; bur two passes for each direction)

-Set blending to "Screen"

-Flatten
Brightness compensation:
-Gamma 1.5
-Saturation 25

 

To place the texture into KotOR II, put in into the GROUPED cockpit skybox textures (two of them, 4 skyboxes each). The textures are EBO_Sky01.tpc and EBO_Sky02.tpc.

 

Soon I will do the Telos Citidel Station skybox, and maybe Peragus. Is there a way to look out of the Ebon Hawk cockpit while docked at the Telos academy? Come to think of it, do you even see an inch of the Peragus hanger outside of the ship?

[Taki17 4]

Soon I will do the Telos Citidel Station skybox, and maybe Peragus. Is there a way to look out of the Ebon Hawk cockpit while docked at the Telos academy? Come to think of it, do you even see an inch of the Peragus hanger outside of the ship?

The Telos academy hangar is not visible from the ship, as far as I'm aware; but the Peragus hangar is, when you can't take out some of the sith soldiers with the turret and you have to fight them aboard the Hawk.

[Kainzorus Prime 205]

Is there a way to look out of the Ebon Hawk cockpit while docked at the Telos academy?

That is an interesting question. There -might- be a moment like that, when you return to the academy to confront Atris during the endgame. I have a save handy and will check if you can even board the ship at that point.

 

Edit: The answer is, no.

[tjsase 116]

Welcome to KotOR burger, would you like a Telos combo meal?

[milestails 264]

Like night and day once again.

[Kexikus 995]

There's nothing to be said except for: Wow, that's amazing

[tjsase 116]

Sorry I haven't been working much on this.  I just got a job and returned to school, so things are pretty hectic right now.

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

Good luck with work and school. The community understands that modders have to set real world priorities.

[tjsase 116]

Well I'm back (hopefully) at KotOR after a long break only to realize I forgot to put the M4-78 cockpit skybox texture in my mod. I also don't have the mod installed at the moment, so does anyone remember the name of that particular texture? Also, anyone have knowledge on modifying lightmaps? The textures I'm working on are dimmed and I can't figure out how to have them display at full brightness.

Anywho, I'm hopefully going to update my current mod file to include the M4-78 texture once I find the name, and perhaps after I'll release a 2.0 mod that includes Peragus.

[tjsase 116]

BREAKTHROUGH!!

I FINALLY figured out how to make the skyboxes display at their maximum brightness. It was as simple as editing the ASCII of the model and recompiling! I just had to set the self illumination and ambient stats to maximum, and it worked!!

 

 

Now I can re-render the shots (this time including Peragus) at their original brightness without any extra glow effect, as this will be added in-game. My only concern is editing the model, as it's possible that the M4-78EP does this as well to correct the UV mapping on the M4-78 skybox. Perhaps I can incorporate this into my mod, maybe even correct the UV mappings of the rest of the skyboxes.

[Kexikus 995]

That's great news! Can't wait to see the finished product.

 

Now I can re-render the shots (this time including Peragus) at their original brightness without any extra glow effect, as this will be added in-game. My only concern is editing the model, as it's possible that the M4-78EP does this as well to correct the UV mapping on the M4-78 skybox. Perhaps I can incorporate this into my mod, maybe even correct the UV mappings of the rest of the skyboxes.

 

M4-78 does edit the model, but you can safely use the M4-78 version of the model without M4-78 itself installed. You won't see the changes in that case. So you can just ask the developers of M4-78 for permission to use their model and go with that one instead of the vanilla one.

[tjsase 116]

Finally sat down and worked out how to edit the models. I redid the UV mapping on all the skyboxes in gmax, so they are all centered and look a tad better (especially Peragus, as there was a huge break on the right side). I was able to export the corrected models using NWMax. At first I tried using Taina's Replacer, but the module wouldn't load, so I ended up copying the corrected UV coordinates directly between the old and new ASCII files before recompiling to binary, and it worked!

 

 

Originally when you looked at the top of the Dxun skybox, the texture would mirror and show the ground above you

[Mutilator57 140]

Most impressive!

[tjsase 116]

Peragus is FINALLY close to done! This one took a lot of model extraction and light matching, but it was all worth it. Now I just gotta double-check the other skyboxes and it should be close to done!
 

[tjsase 116]

Version 2.0 has been released!

 

http://deadlystream.com/forum/files/file/931-hd-cockpit-skyboxes/

[Guest Qui-Gon Glenn]

Nice work, look forward to playing with it!

[Guest]

Apart from the Window, I gotta be honest and say I prefer V1.

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

Apart from the Window, I gotta be honest and say I prefer V1.

Could you be more specific about what doesn't work in the new version compared with the old one?

[Guest]

Could you be more specific about what doesn't work in the new version compared with the old one?

 

Well, from what I can tell in the files of this mod- I prefer the darker look of the V1's backgrounds and I also have already a hyperspace animated texture installed which I think looks fine.

 

Maybe a comparision video could be done?

[tjsase 116]

I might eventually do a V3 once I figure out how to get the window texture to render over the skyboxes properly. The main difference between V1 and V2 is the increased dynamic range. In V1, the brightest color any skybox could be was 50% gray due to the model's material being dim. Another change of V2 is increased accuracy compared to the game's modules. The only reason I animated hyperspace is because the vanilla animation was broken when I edited the ASCII model file for the skyboxes (restoring that will be V3, though I'll probably need a break to focus on college, hopefully not too long since this semester I hit the ground running)