Retexturing masks

[xander2077 80]

Xanders Mask Overhauls: A WIP.

 

NOTICE: just to make things clear. the masks overhaul part 1 is for vanilla masks only or derivative masks of models that are already in K1. any other mask overhauls will correspond to their respective mods, and more than likely be handed over to the mod maintainer for an upgrade to that mod. so if it was not in K1 shipped with the original game, it wont be in the mask overhaul. and this will aslo be a basic override mod.

 

part 2 masks overhaul will be various player made masks that i will or have overhauled the model and texture for. they will be all the masks for their respective mods together in one package, but will be dependent on the original mods the masks came from. this is for those that don't care to download each whole mod over again and i can only see it being a problem if somehow the name of the model changed, then i would just recommend downloading the patch from the mod maintainer. all player made masks are either in the process of securing permission to overhaul, or i already have secured permission.

 

part 3 will be a masks/ armor/ clothing expansion. this will include entirely new models based on ralph mcquarries and other source material, like the tales of the jedi and art depicting people from the same end of the timeline. i already have several models done and waiting for the textures (workflow) but the expansion mod is hugely pending right now. it will depend more on scripts. some of it will build on the vanilla mask overhaul as well and replace certain headgear with more appropriate ones.

 

Permissions procured from Quanon, Sekan, and Silveredge9 for any masks they introduced to the game. Those by T7 still pending. Still researching any others there may be.

 

 

Yeah i know, masks are stupid looking in KOTOR, but i am giving them a "facelift". (pun intended). Anyway, so far i have tackled about half or so of the textures and my most recent one is Teta's headband which was restored to the game by Insidious. let me tell you, the skin looks great, and not bashing the hard work Insidious did, but the model placement on the head sets it too far from the eyes so it looks ridiculous, but the skin looks great.
 
here is a short rundown on the WIP so far and what has been reskinned in the textures
 
1: aural amplifiers
2: advanced aural amplifiers
3: verpine headband
4: sith mask 1
5: sith mask 2 (stabilizer mask)
6: vacuum mask (neural band 2)
7: breath mask
8: advanced stabilizer mask
9: Teta's royal headband (teextured to look more SW lore friendly, like an antique with gold and silver ornamentation, and be fit for a queen a system is named after)
 
all textures are 512x512 and fit the models just fine. i am doing a lot of recoloring and so some of the textures will look way better and more like SW tech should look in KOTOR. if i can figure it out i would like to do some bump mapping for them to give them more detail, and some of the models could use an overhaul, but im not holding my breath since im attempting this all in linux with a limited collection of tools. some of the models are just fine, like the smaller headgear, they just need retexturing to look better and a bump map. but some need to be shaped better and look less blocky without increasing the poly count too much. trying to get all the vertices welded together in max is a pain, and im having a hard time remebering how to do that so i can work with the models. wine in linux problems. just texturing is a lot harder to do in linux and gimp, and importing models to 3ds max in wine is ok, but harder to work with since the controls dont work like i remember them, so it is a steep learning curve for me. to view the models i have to fire up the game to see the new textures, and then decide what doesnt fit right, or what i have to redo because some of the glow maps were rushed and they missed areas that probably were intended to have glow maps but just didnt. so those areas get retextured to reflect the lack of a glow map where there are supposed to be glowy things.
 
one of the biggest eyesores to me is any of the goggles, like daviks goggles. they just did not do the mapping very well on those and it looks rather anticlimactic and blah. so that is why 512x512 textures are being done, then things wont look as grainy when put next to the other hi res texture packs. the other eyesores are goggles that have the long cylinders in front of the eyes, which look more like extruded pentagons than cylinders, much needed overhaul on those. but that is only a small part of the otherwise ok model.
 
this pack will be released once it is done in one zip file, and is for all the people who dont want to use the invisible headgear mod, but cringe when they see headger on their characters. if i can get around to repositioning the placement of tetas royal band, then that will help the old antique look better.
 
i really wish there was a bump map for a couple of them, namely the verpine headband, and the sith mask, because both of them look rather flat and pasted on with just a reskin. even in hi resolution. a bump map would make them come alive with detail. and perhaps a reflection map on the sith mask would make it look more like something from the time of exar kun like it is supposed to be. but i may rework both of those anyway even after all the time i spent on them since i figured out some new plugins for gimp. and i can also generate normal and bump mapping in gimp now from the textures so that is pretty cool.
 
anyway, i dont have a good way to put up progress screens of the models unless i can figure out how to zoom in on character heads by any other means than a screen during a conversation, so for now i jaut have to hold off on pics of what i did. stay tuned for updates!
 
if anyone wants to help out that has windows and tools that work better natively in their OS, then im open to it. as long as it doesnt delay the release too much.
 
if you are wondering why the grammar may not be right on this post and the letters at the beginning of each sentence are not capitalized, my spell check on everything seems borked and wont do it automatically, and even after spell check it wont do it. so i guess we just have to suffer with lower case words. annoying i know.

[milestails 264]

Always thought that the masks needed an overhaul.

 

Looking forward to your work!

[djh269 264]

After seeing your work with the Canderous item reskins I'm excited for this project!

[Kexikus 995]

Sounds very promising.

I always used the Invisible Headgear mod, because of how ugly the headgear in vanilla is. So I'll certainly give this a try once it's done!

[xander2077 80]

here are a few screens of progress so far, but i had to take a break from the game because the temp was rising pretty high on the puter due to the extra effort it was taking with in game screen shots. so here are a few and more to follow...

 

the one with bling is teta's headband... an empress has to have bling...

 

hopefully you guys can tell why i say there needs to be bump maps on these, mainly because the models are so low in detail that the only way to make them appear more detailed is to have bump maps to raise the details off the plain surface of the model. but that is something yet to figure out.

 

i still have a few more pics to post but for now thats my max allowance for this reply.

 

im still missing about 3 or 4 mask screen caps.

 

first pic is aural amplifiers, second is the vacuum mask, third is teta's headband, fourth is the stabilizer mask (texture says sith 2 but the texture names can be misleading) fourth is advances aural amps, and the last one this post is the verpine head band, but the angle is not the best on it.

 

 

[xander2077 80]

last three for tonight, i have to use the cheat console to get the advanced breath mask and i need to get to bed.

 

anyway the sith mask may end up getting reworked a bit, but i think a bump map would help a lot even if i dont rework it. and i may also rework that breath mask a bit since to me it looks a bit off, but it does have more detail so im pretty happy.

 

the ocular enhancer came out pretty good and i dont think i can improve on it, but one thing i noticed is the mapping placement could be improved a bit... but i dont really have the know how for that, max is not showing me the menu for textures, its just a big blank space when i open the material menu. something tells me im going to have to fix my other desktop pc in order to get a dual boot system so i can work in windows natively instead of things not quite working in max...

 

first one is the ancient sith deprivation mask (sith mask one according to texture name), second is ocular enhancers, and third is the breath mask.

[djh269 264]

I like them all! I was looking forward to 4-6 from your list but your aural amplifiers and tetas headband look really nice!

[xander2077 80]

For now im staying pretty much vanilla and i try things here and there to enhance them, so if i find a change that makes something look a lot better, then it will go into the final pack. i still may rework the stabilizer mask and the vacuum mask, just have not found the magic formula to make them pop, only added more detail than the original. so far the only one that has made a huge departure is teta's royal band. the aural amplifiers texture is a bit different, but not much would make them or the verpine headband better than a bump map.

 

fior instance i like the light on the front of the vacuum mask, and i was lucky enough with a plugin i tried to almost make it look like you can see a chin and nose and some facial shadows behind the light and that was a random accident, but something seems missing on the mask body itself and i wont know what it is until i have a eureka moment. same with a few of the other masks too.

 

what i could do (and i thought about it) is just focus on doing the vanilla masks or close to them (besides teta's headband which will only offer one texture) and then save those all in one folder, but have a second folder for a few of the masks that are slightly different than the original vanilla design.

 

when i first start to retexture these one by one, i just import the original file, blow it up, and then start to interpret them blind (without seeing it on the model to know for sure) and attempt to visualize what the artist was trying to accomplish on the model by adding details to the different things on each picture, so i tackle getting the texture into higher resolution first... then i look at it on the model in game, and sometimes i misinterpet things on the texture, or completely get something wrong, but what helps is to see the texture on the model so i can adjust something. thats when i have a eureka moment, and try different things out. then i try looking at it on the model again, and if i like it i keep it, if i dont then i hit the undo button and overwrite back to the last version of it and then try something else. with a few of thses screens, now i have been able to look at them and really be picky going over them, and i can see quite a few things i want to change in the breath mask besides the color scheme of some parts, and that will translate to doing the same on the advanced breath mask as well. i may also change the weird blinds on the ocular enhancers, but i have to keep it somewhat similar since there is a transparancy layer on that part of the mask texture. but i dont see these things until after i finish the textures and try them out in the game. i probably wont be satisfied with things until i am sure it looks just right. figuring out how to do that depends on glow maps, transparency, reflection maps, and other factors that sometimes only show up by accident because they are already there, and just have to be figured out.

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

The textures look good, but they're a little on the "flat" side.

 

Could just be the screenshots though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Mephiles550 227]

Definitely better than the original textures by a long shot. I especially like what you've done with the Sith mask.

 

Keep this up and I may actually bother to uninstall Shem's invisible masks mod.

[xander2077 80]

The textures look good, but they're a little on the "flat" side.

 

Could just be the screenshots though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

 

well, they may have never had a bump map to begin with and now that they have more detail, they look just as flat as before, just more noticeable now. or the new texture doesnt work with the old bump map. until i figure out bump mapping in KOTOR, they probably will look flat for a while.

 

Or... Somebody who has photoshop and knows how to create bump maps can help me out (hint hint)

 

 

512x512 textures probably wont work with a smaller bump map if there is one, or the bump map is so timy the results are laughable. i have actually seen 64x64 maps or smaller in kotor and i just shake my head at that one. the polygons on the model are flat faces with the texture painted on. bump maps give the appearance of raised details so the flat polys dont look flat any more.

 

the problem is to get the most out of the texture map, the corresponding bump map should be at least the same resolution and size as the texture. some are RGB, some are purple looking embossed copies, and some are grey looking embossed copies of the original texture. some even have alpha channel and glow maps embedded. some textures in games have mip maps and all the textures and effects for one model on one tga file or dds file.

 

i would love to present these right away with bump maps, but im still kind of lost when it comes to txi files, and i really dont know where to look for the bump/normal/reflection/ or txi info yet. i just got xn view to work in linux under wine so i am browsing kotor tool to see what i can figure out from the display when i double click a texture file, but some of the txi data is garbled symbols and i cant make heads or tails of it.

 

i'm probably not the first one that has said that kotor tool wont display txi files properly, or extract bump maps right, or even extract txi files correctly all the time. i may have to really dig into the so called tutorials on bump mapping, but so far most of them are just show and tell of what someone figured out how to do and dont really give a step by step tutorial. or they assume everyone already knows how to manipulate txi files or create a normal map that kotor will accept without errors.

 

it can be frustrating at the very least when everyone is talking about windows programs and im trying to do it with alternatives in linux. yet another reason to fix my main desktop PC before too long so i can jump between 3ds max, photoshop, kotor tool, and other stuff without crashing anything.

 

wine is cool, but it can be a pain sometimes. theres no BSOD, but they sure love their unhandled exceptions. you figure by now they would have gotten more things to work in a wine wrapper than they do. or created suitable alternatives or ports of programs native to linux that game mod plugins are designed for. but beggars cant be choosers.

 

back to the ol grind stone.

[Malkior 476]

Regarding TXI files. The process is incredibly simple. Just create a notepad file (.txt) and rename the extension to .TXI

 

The code for a cubemap (typed in after opening the TXI with notepad)

 

is, "EnvmapTexture" followed by whatever the name of your cubemap is. For starters, "EnvmapTexture CM_Baremetal" is the code for the standard metal reflect map you see on vibroblades and a lot of armor.

[xander2077 80]

Regarding TXI files. The process is incredibly simple. Just create a notepad file (.txt) and rename the extension to .TXI

 

The code for a cubemap (typed in after opening the TXI with notepad)

 

is, "EnvmapTexture" followed by whatever the name of your cubemap is. For starters, "EnvmapTexture CM_Baremetal" is the code for the standard metal reflect map you see on vibroblades and a lot of armor.

well, i agree there, but i still have not figured out how to make a bump map for the txi to point at that the game can read without crashing. i was reading in another thread that it has to be done a certain way, but it was very vague, or rather not in layman's terms. but that is kind of a moot point since trying all these plugins crashed Gimp, and now my favorite plugins are missing, even though they came packaged with the program, so now i tried to reinstall gimp 3 times, and the first time the repository was hacked so the package didnt even show up at all. i could not even install the darned thing. then they put it back in increments so each time i checked... the plugins were missing one time, then the scripts, now they only put the plugins back, so the only way i can get this working again is to backup everything, wipe, rinse, repeat and install everything all over again in a cleaner system (which is actually a better idea because this distro is prone to problems and there are a few better options) its funny, gimp got hacked, the kernel for linux got hacked, and now i have to figure out what to write down tomorrow so i can install wine all over the right way for once and make sure all dependencies are met so i still have my games working. fun fun fun... i swear i used to do this with windows all the time, but i was sure linux was tooting their horn about how hack proof it all was and i dont know what happened here... so a minor setback and i will be back in business... i have not textured one thing all evening, but i have been typing commands in the console since 7 pm lol.

[Malkior 476]

From what I remember, you have to edit the model .mdl or .mdx file to enable bumpmaps, first, or the .TXI can't work.

[xander2077 80]

From what I remember, you have to edit the model .mdl or .mdx file to enable bumpmaps, first, or the .TXI can't work.

probably the mdx file since it contains the text. but i was referring to the actual texture, not what points to it. to make a new image  that *is* the bump map you have to do it in a very specific way (which is possible in photoshop but im not sure about gimp) so that is where im scratching my head, editing a text file is easy enough, but creating a bump map with the right information in it is another issue entirely, and i know this from trying to open these user made images/bump map files in gimp, and they wont load because the plugin was created for photoshop to be able to export them for the game specifically,  they have information in them that gimp or a tga viewer in linux will not read. it just gives a blank window and an error with a big red X

 

anyway...

 

im just now finally getting everything i had to backup saved to an external drive. what a pain that was. ran to walmart to get a drive, got it home, and then found out it wont connect to linux. turns out becasue of security risks they wont allow the autoexec bat file that comes on the drive to run so it never gets past trying to run and linux never sees the main partition. thats another issue, even with the main partition formatted it wont see it. so i had to get a bootable dvd and access the drive with a partition tool and completely unallocate the whol;e drive and start over, destroying the cute little autoexec bat partition that is soooo helpful, and finally i could connect to and mount the drive. now that i know this no wonder i cant read my other old windows external drives, because of that helpful little partition where they try to install the backup software for you!!! what a huge help! wish they offered OEM drives with no software just for storage at big box stores but oh well. anyway, once i get everything i need backed up or downloaded (so i can do more than destroy drives from a live dvd) then i can finally get some of this mess straightened out and get back to leisurely texturing for a change instead of playing computer technician. and just to be safe i have to compress the wine directories i have all my windows games and tools in by  terminal (command prompt) or they wont be any good when i try to restore them. be back soon...

[xander2077 80]

well, i finally settled on a distro of linux i like well enough to keep. mint was getting bloated, and with wine games taxing cpu with proprietary drivers for the video card, i decided to go lean. leanest meanest system so far is lubuntu, and it even has a very low impact mac like dock available. so i have been toying with it since i have to reinstall everything. knock on wood. next i will see if it actually runs kotor etc. im kind of hesitant to turn on the nvidia driver since the control interface for it is lackluster, and i have to do more research before i decide which nvidia driver is the most stable. then i can see my textures in game again. til then i wont be texturing much.

[xander2077 80]

well, this lubuntu is very cool stuff. after toying with settings to get things just perfect for a couple of days, a couple of goof ups, and one reinstall, i think i finally got it where i need it. and it is light weight, and smooth.

 

even after installing the nvidia drivers, and configuring it all, adding my wine directories back, and going through the hassle of customizing it so i dont have to click through a bajillion folders just to start KOTOR, i tried the game itself and WOW!!! it never ran so fast and smooth as it did in lubuntu! i literally got all the settings way up and this thing loads fast, and i can wiggle the character back and forth quickly... wish i had some screen cap video program so i could post it!

 

anyway, here is my WIP next texture achievement... the ocular enhancer texture, and i finally got my plugins to somewhat work correctly for filters etc in gimp, even though there are a couple im missing, they may or may not be borked permanently, we will see... one of the problems with open source projects like this, is gimp has developers of plugins arguing over whether python scripts or scm scripts are better, so two plugins can conflict that do the same thing, and one is broken, usually the python script, and that leaves me wondering why they dont have two forks? or why they dont have a choice when you install it? seems logical to me, but who am i ? they are probably having fun pecking away in some sort of weird keyboard coding war...

 

i cant even get into lubuntu forums because their anti bot security question is more like a final exam for lubuntu computer science and history than a simple question to prove your  human, so i know computer devs for linux are smart, but a** backward...

 

the in game texture looks pretty good, but here is a prime example of why the models need an overhaul. the triangular goggles dont fit the texture, even though it looks better, it could use some roundness to just the goggle lenses, and it would be a lot better. i dont know who chose cubes or triangles over cylinders, but it looks like they rushed this part, and you think with all the dialogue in this they would pay special attention to things on peoples faces?

 

also i have been noticing on these textures that it looks like at one point they intended to use the same textures for multiple styles of headgear, or that upgrades would make them change design a bit in game, which would have been pretty ambitious and certainly a selling point for the game, but it just looks like they never implemented it, or they got crunched for time and the modular headgear got the chop by the company execs... it certainly makes sense because a lot of the texture was not even used on these goggles, and this is obvious from the two screens. see how little actually went into the goggles? i wonder what other model shares this texture? or if it was one that got tossed and the few we have left that are restored textures and models that somehow escaped the purge?

 

musings...

[xander2077 80]

UPDATE: hey guys. have had more than my share of hiccups with my computer lately. and so im trying to iron them out. i switched over to my second drive which had linux mint for reasons that pertain to python, but gimp kept attempting to write to system files (drive was going bad) so i had to pull that drive and revert to my lubuntu drive and hopefully i can get all my modding tools installed here. so for now the texturing for KOTOR is just a tad bit on hold. as well as other projects i am working on right now. will be back into it asap.

[134340Goat 116]

Take your time with this. I LOVE the Sith Mask and Aural Amplifiers. Looks like this is going to be a must-have

[xander2077 80]

ok guys and gals, i have made some progress. i was finally able to find a working blender import plugin for the ascii-mdl format. and i have all the masks that are in vanilla saved to blender format. i was editing the meshes i thought need the most work, as in goggles with the round protrusions or surfaces. all of those have been edited to a little better detail on certain parts. i dont think it is necessary to up the details too much, just on anything with cylinders or round surfaces. will post some updates of the models soon.

 

the tricky part is going to be export. i dont think i have a viable plugin for that yet, but i might have it in the same one as the import, just have not checked yet.

 

as a side effect of the model editing, some of the textures will have to be redone to account for new UVs. this for me is not as easy as going into morrowind nifs and simply changing the texture and adjusting the UVs there, they will have to be unwrapped all over and then created from scratch.

 

the one i have not imported yet is empress tetas headband. one of the things i would like to do is slightly move the center of that model (it is a cylinder object) so it sits on the face better, however the scale of these is so tiny that it will have to be moved in small increments. i will have to try by trial and error, since the increments may be too large. however moving it manuually may be smarter and place it more accurately than trying to adjust it by imputting the numbers.

 

stay tuned for updates. i have other projects going on simultaneously.

[xander2077 80]

here are a few screens of the edited models that i will have to unwrap again in order to fix the textures that belong to them.

 

i only chose a few models to rework since they were the most in need of editing to remove the angular features that dont quite fit. the rest of the masks will be reviewed. in some cases the textures are sufficient to mask the very low poly models enough they wont need redoing, but in these cases they were badly in need of an update.

 

if i find that any of the other masks are in need of editing, i will do so, but it will be weighed carefully. there is no guarantee i will be able to get them in game, so i want to limit the editing to only those that need it.

[redrob41 86]

I just had a quick peek at all the images (sorry, I'm at work, and don't have time to read everything). Looking good so far. One suggestion that I can make: when uv mapping the goggles that have lenses, if you include a glossy highlight, it should be coming from the same direction on both eye pieces. For example, your red lenses on the ocular enhancer have shiny highlights on the outside of the lenses, which suggests two different light sources hitting each lens.

 

Most of the models & textures that I deal with (heads) have the eyes with the highlight directly overhead. That way, the developers could mirror the textures, and still look believable.

 

Anyway, keep up the good work

[xander2077 80]

im trying to take that into account, but some of the UVs have to be redone when i open the texture file, so i have to move the vertices around in the UV window to make that happen. of course some of the textures will not be the same because they were made for the lower poly models and wont look the same any more. so im trying to find a balance there.

 

for example even on these models i had to modify the UVs so it doesnt look stupid but still uses the same texture. it takes a bit of careful work. i dont need to change every UV, just the parts i changed, and so far it is working ok.

 

here are some of the changes i have made so far. i hope to extend some of these features to the other masks as well. now of course i never did finish the texture updating on some of the tga's so there are still those that are outdated, but once i get those done, then the texture should be good enough to make things look much better.

 

im torn between making some of the full face masks into helmets, and not doing that. the issue i will have most undoubtedly with the sith masks is they are usually on enemy npcs that have hoods, so clipping would occur, and so im not sure yet if i can pull that off right. if the mask were capable of replacing the whole head of the team members, then i might try it, but since that is unlikely, i might have to forget the idea.

 

below is the vacuum mask, the ocular enhancers, and tetas royal band. i redid the ocular chambers on the enhancers, and the texture is quite different from the original. the shape is an improvement, but im still wondering if i can improve the texture itself. tetas royal band was almost completely reworked, since the center point was not where it should be, so that was carefully moved using the eye/ear protection model as a reference for locating it. then i moved some of the parts around and edited them for better appearance. the vacuum mask was simply turned into a helmet and then the texture was applied to the rest of it creatively. it looks ok to me, but i wish there was more room on the tga for the top and back.

[Rinku 22]

I like what you've done with the Vacuum Mask! If you could work around the problems you mentioned and get a "helmet" to work with all the other masks that would be sweet (and almost definitely a permanet override mod).  I haven't worked with models before...but to address the clipping...maybe you could take one of the "hairless" head models and combine it with the mask model (you might've already be doing this lol) - not sure how much that would help.

 

In terms of the ocular enhancers, maybe changing the color? I've always thought of splinter cell when looking at that mask model - so maybe a bright yellow (to stay consistent with the color scheme of the texture).

[xander2077 80]

I like what you've done with the Vacuum Mask! If you could work around the problems you mentioned and get a "helmet" to work with all the other masks that would be sweet (and almost definitely a permanet override mod).  I haven't worked with models before...but to address the clipping...maybe you could take one of the "hairless" head models and combine it with the mask model (you might've already be doing this lol) - not sure how much that would help.

 

In terms of the ocular enhancers, maybe changing the color? I've always thought of splinter cell when looking at that mask model - so maybe a bright yellow (to stay consistent with the color scheme of the texture).

 

not sure yet. im still debating on that one. part of the issue here is the textures wont work with vanilla models any more if i change the wrong thing, but the vanilla texture doesnt quite fit with this model, so im trying to make it so one doesnt really effect the other badly. to do that i have to find a spot on the tga where the UV is not mapped, free real estate so to speak.. which i can do if i reimport the goggles and compare the UVs between the two models. then i may be able to get away with adding a detail that wont interfere with vanilla but enhance the textures on the new models.

 

the other issue, i have not yet imported one of the heads, but i would probably rather import one of the ones with male hair, like canderous, because if it clips his hair, it will look bad on other heads too. or i could be wrong and the hair model is replaced by the helmet. but it may also be that it has to specifically be a helmet to replace the hair model. im not sure how the game behaves yet. maybe there need to be other tweaks that i cant change with model editing.

 

i guess just for general reference it would be a good idea to import the head model in so i am sure the helmet is the right size.

 

as far as the other ones go, again, because of the hoods, i am just a tad leery of making the sith masks into helmets because they may clip the hoods if too big, and will clip hair if too small (thats why i wish i knew whether or not helmets can be set to replace hair or could be set to replace the head, since it would solve that problem), yeah they look stupid on canderous or anyone else with a hollywood hairstyle, but until i know more its one of those things i am still weighing.