[WIP] SWTOR-Style Alien Player Heads (Nautolan, Kel Dor, etc.)

[DarthParametric 3,782]

The nightmare fuel part is the weighting/skinning of the Nautolan head tails. It's enough to make you rip your hair out. Or would be if I had any left.

[Kainzorus Prime 205]

...

 

Proceed.

[Nomnisang 23]

@Parametric:

 

These are pretty darn cool models.  Have you thought about using these to replace some of the Alien Heads, or are you solely focusing on them as Player heads?

[Fair Strides 509]

@Parametric:

 

These are pretty darn cool models.  Have you thought about using these to replace some of the Alien Heads, or are you solely focusing on them as Player heads?

Not to put words in his mouth, but if he can do the models, him, me, or someone else could add them as new heads in the game, without having to replace any.

[1Leonard 134]

Not to put words in his mouth, but if he can do the models, him, me, or someone else could add them as new heads in the game, without having to replace any.

The problem is probably weighting them so they can use mouth movements and expressions.

[DarthParametric 3,782]

Have you thought about using these to replace some of the Alien Heads

As I said on the previous page, yes, NPC replacements are on the cards. I was actually talking to a friend that does professional voice over work last night about possibilities for adding a Kel Dor-esque filter to existing VO files.

[DarthParametric 3,782]

I got a bit side-tracked by poking my nose into The Witcher 3's innards after CDPR released an unpacker/mesh converter yesterday, but I have managed to make a few tweaks to the Kel Dor, adding in some brow wrinkles/folds and UV mapped him. I also edited the underwear model to change the hands to something species-appropriate, as I figured I'd have to reskin that anyway with all the bare flesh.

Not sure if I'll add the hands to all the other body models. Will see how it goes I guess.

[redrob41 86]

Nice work so far DP. Are you able to get the eyelids and eyes to move correctly, or would the human animations cause some odd movements? Whenever I tweak a head model, I try to leave the eyes in the exact, original location.

 

I take it that, since you're using the head fixer tool, there are going to be hard edges at the model's seams?

 

I've had to do some weighting on some of my models, and it can be quite frustrating at times. I wish you luck for now. I'll add more about it in a bit.

[DarthParametric 3,782]

I don't have any eyelids on the Nautolans. They weren't originally supposed to have any canonically, but I think there was some Clone Wars episode where they added them. I noticed when talking to an NPC in SWTOR that their models do have them. My eyeballs are static, as are the SWTOR ones. In both cases, I think the bone offsets would be problematic, given the fairly substantial differences in facial structure. The same probably goes for eyebrow movements. Mouth/lip movement should be ok though, as I purposely left that area the same as the original base head.

Edit: Here's a comparison. The male's brows aren't too bad, but the female's are way up in the hairline.

For the Kel Dor, eyes/lids obviously aren't required. I think the brows might be OK, as they aren't significantly higher than the base human. Not really sure what the best approach for the mouth area might be. A little bit of breath mask movement while talking might be desirable for NPCs, but I'd prefer the shape of the mask itself to remain fairly rigid. Maybe add a bit of jawbone influence perhaps?

As to UV seams, yeah, there are hard edges there by necessity to prevent MDLOps trying to stitch together shared edges. I've tried to mask it as best as I can though, running seams in areas mostly out of sight. The ones I was most worried about were where the Nautolan head tails join the face, but in-game that actually doesn't seem particularly egregious, somewhat to my own surprise.

Edit 2: Redid the female Nautolan's weights again. I'd previously tried a bit of dangly mesh/AuroraFlex action, but that didn't turn out too hot. I think the head tails may need a few more loops, there is a bit of nasty distortion in places with certain extreme head movements. Face seems like it is pretty reasonable though, at least for the PC. Might need to try it with an NPC and see how that looks when talking.

[Juliandroid 4]

Extremely alien heads, always so exciting! A younger me would still be screaming about the chance to play as a Kel Dor. That animation test looks good, though (please forgive me if this is an 'unfixable' or extremely difficult something, I don't know the difficulties of animating a head in KoTOR) it feels odd to me that the eyelid itself acts like the eyebrow, squishing down on the eye, around :25.

 

(On another note, those Kel Dor hands look awesome. Excellent work so far, very excited to see what comes next!)

[Kainzorus Prime 205]

Are you also planning to include some form of a Sith Pureblood head?

[Malkior 476]

I agree with Juliandroid. The ability to play as a Kel Dor is absolutely something we've been waiting years for.

 

Which makes me want to add "injury" noises for the PC whenever they get hit in combat all the more. (Have you considered making VO effects for the respective races?)

[Mephiles550 227]

I agree with Juliandroid. The ability to play as a Kel Dor is absolutely something we've been waiting years for.

 

Which makes me want to add "injury" noises for the PC whenever they get hit in combat all the more. (Have you considered making VO effects for the respective races?)

Not even necessarily playing as one, but also being able to see one as an NPC or boss character would be fantastic. Imagine the possibilities for future modders if they could incorporate these models into their mods.

[DarthParametric 3,782]

As I said in a previous post, I did look into various audio filters to get that sort of muffled, mechanical sound Kel Dor seem to have. I think it should be feasible. I was practising with some of Grenn's TSL dialogue as it always annoyed me that not only does he use the same voice actor as Davik from K1, but seemingly uses the same head model as well. Not sure if that was just laziness or meant as an in-joke. Regardless, he seems like a prime candidate for a head transplant.

As to Sith Purebloods, I have enough on my plate currently with two Nautolans, a Kel Dor, and a cyborg head to finish. Once that lot is out of the way, maybe I'll consider it. I would be interested to see how the tendrils would look as dangly meshes/AuroraFlex, like they use for some bits of hair.

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

As I said in a previous post, I did look into various audio filters to get that sort of muffled, mechanical sound Kel Dor seem to have. I think it should be feasible. I was practising with some of Grenn's TSL dialogue as it always annoyed me that not only does he use the same voice actor as Davik from K1, but seemingly uses the same head model as well. Not sure if that was just laziness or meant as an in-joke. Regardless, he seems like a prime candidate for a head transplant.

 

As to Sith Purebloods, I have enough on my plate currently with two Nautolans, a Kel Dor, and a cyborg head to finish. Once that lot is out of the way, maybe I'll consider it. I would be interested to see how the tendrils would look as dangly meshes/AuroraFlex, like they use for some bits of hair.

 

Ha! Totally didn't occur to me that it was the same voice actor. They seemed different enough for me not to notice.

[Kainzorus Prime 205]

Different head model, same texture. With few minor alterations.

 

Also occured to me we could usea Cathar. They seriously went AWOL until TOR. We had Juhani and then not a blip.

[TheDarkChocolateJedi 17]

Someone asked for a Nautolan head in the Request thread. I was thinking of making a Togruta and wondering how I would deal with the montrals and head-tails, so decied I'd take a crack at this as a (far more difficult) trial run. Rather than clogging the request thread up, I figured I'd post progress here. I used the SWTOR Nautolans as a guide/target: Even though the request was for a male, I started with a female first as a proof-of-concept (and because I plan to do a female LS run through the new Steam version of TSL at some point). I wanted to use one of the existing heads as a base, to keep the mouth intact for potential NPC use. Also because I suck at organic modelling, so creating something completely from scratch wasn't an option. I wanted a head that was in both games, so I went with the Luxa head, which is PFHA01 in K1. I got rid of her hair and lopped off most of the back of her head, then grafted on a whole bunch of amputated Twi'lek lekku that I massaged into shape. Plus I gave her some major facial surgery to implant the creepy giant bug eyes.I whipped up an export with some quick and dirty skin wrapping from the original head to do an in-game test. Aside from a few bits of nasty deformation from sub-optimal weighting, it seemed to work ok: Once I knew it would work, I went ahead and UV mapped her. That went surprisingly quickly, although I am forseeing some nasty broken shading/seam issues and possible remapping in my future. Currently I'm baking out normal/ambient occlusion/cavity/curvature/etc. maps from a high poly mesh for texturing. Doing them at 4K, so that takes a few hours.If anyone here is a skilled skinner/rigger and would like to volunteer their services, I'd greatly appreciate a hand. Character rigging was never my bag, and that mass of tentacles/head-tails at the back will need some finessing that's beyond my ability to minimise mesh distortion during certain animations.

Nice work, however i will never understand why people must relate swtor to kotor, or make swtor mods for kotor, swtor is good, but not part of kotor canon in my opinion! Nice work, keep it up, can't wait to play as an alien.

[Jorak Uln 458]

Nice work, however i will never understand why people must relate swtor to kotor, or make swtor mods for kotor, swtor is good, but not part of kotor canon in my opinion! Nice work, keep it up, can't wait to play as an alien.

 

When Bioware invented SWTOR in 2011 they tried (and still try) to find a way to bring the character/world design from the Kotor games to present state. Actually it doesnt matter if SWTOR is good or not, but the quality of the texture design and the level of details is truly artistic and remarkable. 

Unlike the Kotor games you dont find random designs at all.

 

I always felt that pairing up these textures with the innovative animations from Mass Effect (but faithful to the Star Wars Universe) would make the most out of both games and i have to say im glad that great modelers like DP here working in this direction.

 

 

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@ DP: some facelift for the aliens like Duros/Twilek would be cool! As a side effect that way the new models could be given a hi-res skin as well. 

[milestails 264]

Well said Jorak Uln. I am a fan of this mod and others that replicate the TOR universe even though I haven't played TOR in any significant capacity.

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

When Bioware invented SWTOR in 2011 they tried (and still try) to find a way to bring the character/world design from the Kotor games to present state. Actually it doesnt matter if SWTOR is good or not, but the quality of the texture design and the level of details is truly artistic and remarkable. 

Unlike the Kotor games you dont find random designs at all.

 

I always felt that pairing up these textures with the innovative animations from Mass Effect (but faithful to the Star Wars Universe) would make the most out of both games and i have to say im glad that great modelers like DP here working in this direction.

 

 

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@ DP: some facelift for the aliens like Duros/Twilek would be cool! As a side effect that way the new models could be given a hi-res skin as well. 

 

Yeah, I don't mind people updating KoTOR for the aesthetics of the today, but, I do mind when people try to pass off ME off for KoTOR. It doesn't fit the universe at all. Part of the universe is the original movies along with newer content like films and animated series -- such as Rebels.

 

Mass Effect belongs in, Mass Effect . It isn't part of the universe of Star Wars, even with the newer stuff.

 

That said, if people want to make Mass Effect based mods for KoTOR... That's their business; just don't claim it to be otherwise.

[Fair Strides 509]

Yeah, I don't mind people updating KoTOR for the aesthetics of the today, but, I do mind when people try to pass off ME off for KoTOR. It doesn't fit the universe at all. Part of the universe is the original movies along with newer content like films and animated series -- such as Rebels.

 

Mass Effect belongs in, Mass Effect . It isn't part of the universe of Star Wars, even with the newer stuff.

 

That said, if people want to make Mass Effect based mods for KoTOR... That's their business; just don't claim it to be otherwise.

Somehow, I think that'd be appreciated more when it's posted in Jorak's own thread where all this ME->KotOR stuff is occurring...

 

And they're both high-tech with the flashy lights, so it's not much of stretch...

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Somehow, I think that'd be appreciated more when it's posted in Jorak's own thread where all this ME->KotOR stuff is occurring...

 

And they're both high-tech with the flashy lights, so it's not much of stretch...

 

No, I'm posting on this thread as the comment is for this thread and this is the thread I'm currently interested in.

 

You're free to make your own call as to what is like what, but to me, there is a big aesthetic difference between Mass Effect and Star Wars. Just take the visual design of the robots, as an example. Star Wars was and still is rooted in the notions of what robots would look like, inside and out, from a 1970s point of view of advanced technology. Even newer imaginings still have to try to fit this design aesthetic from the original films. When they don't, like in the case of some elements of the newer films, they can be jarring. Mass Effect is more rooted in a 90s-00s point of view informed by many influences, like Manga.

 

Anyway, to stay on track: like the quality modelling work, and am interesting to see the final textured result.

[Jorak Uln 458]

Yeah, I don't mind people updating KoTOR for the aesthetics of the today, but, I do mind when people try to pass off ME off for KoTOR. It doesn't fit the universe at all. Part of the universe is the original movies along with newer content like films and animated series -- such as Rebels.

 

Mass Effect belongs in, Mass Effect . It isn't part of the universe of Star Wars, even with the newer stuff.

 

That said, if people want to make Mass Effect based mods for KoTOR... That's their business; just don't claim it to be otherwise.

What i meant was not to redo the animated textures from Mass Effect and import them into Kotor - thats something i tried in a earlier stage a while ago - but when you take a look at SWTOR, the only thing that i dont like visually is the blurriness in some animated tex. On the other hand Mass Effect 3+4 are very crisp. 

 

So the idea i had since my new Overhaul series was to use the designs of TOR but with the crispness of the newer Mass Effect games; so since its  a lot of work i just hope it fits your aesthetics - and since SWTOR is Kotor how it should be - from a visual point - DPs mods fit right in.

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

 

This topic is about DP's new heads and not your textures. Jorak Uln, shift the conversation to your thread or drop it.

[sEcOnDbOuToFiNsAnItY 60]

With regards to possible NPC head replacement, maybe the decidedly single-race Jedi council should be added to the list... just an idea.