Retexturing masks

[Fair Strides 509]

If you're doing a complete remodel like you are, it's safe to say you don't really need to worry about keeping the original texture intact.

 

And the game just renders the helmet somewhere near the GoggleHook in the head models; it doesn't make any effort as far as clipping, so if it clips, it clips. That's why most headgear aren't full-head helmets and instead are masks.

[xander2077 80]

If you're doing a complete remodel like you are, it's safe to say you don't really need to worry about keeping the original texture intact.

 

And the game just renders the helmet somewhere near the GoggleHook in the head models; it doesn't make any effort as far as clipping, so if it clips, it clips. That's why most headgear aren't full-head helmets and instead are masks.

ok so what if it was a vanilla helmet? then how would the game render it? how does the game treat an actual helmet model? i realize that may be beyond the scope of the abilities of modding tools available (as in converting the model category to an actual helmet instead of a mask), but if it is not, then how would it be achieved? is it flagged somehow as a helmet? does it have the same type of hook?

 

i am not really doing a complete remodeling of things, even with the vacuum mask i only added polys to the original model, it really did not take that much effort. luckily if i only do something like bevel edges (on round surfaces like tetas headband) the UVs stay pretty much intact. i only had to remap a few polys here and there, like the nose ridge and the top of the front lenses. also the same with a few other models. but things like the ear pieces on the glasses style goggles, i leave alone, so i would rather retain the UVs from those parts. since i have some pretty cool plugins for blender that allow me to pick and choose what is unwrapped (including the smart unwrap project) and i can select only those vertices that need a new UV, it makes it easier to selectively fix UVs that need it, and parts that dont i leave as is.

 

im not really going for super high poly here, just a tad bit better than they offered in vanilla, and something that better fits the rest of the vanilla models comparatively speaking.

 

im also not sure if KOTOR recognizes things that are shaded smooth or not, but i have also added that to the faces so it may or may not effect how the game renders it.

 

as far as trying to keep the textures intact. i spent a lot of time on them updating them and increasing their resolution, so it would be silly of me to waste that effort by discarding it for new ones. what i can do though is (as i mentioned earlier), keep the textures and modify them so they work on both vanilla models, and these new versions as well. best of both worlds. that way my texture mod can be stand alone, or it can be in addition to these models. there is actually plenty of real estate on most of these goggle style masks or even  the ear pieces to embellesh the empty areas that dont get used, and actully add things in there for the higher detail models, like the ocular tubes on the two sets of goggles, or perhaps the lenses on the enhancers, without interfereing with the existing vanilla UVs. it is just a matter of finding those empty areas by viewing the vanilla UVs on the texture. the ones i dont have any real estate left for are the sith masks, and the vacuum mask. so i had to place the new UVs on the helmet part of the vacuum mask as best i could to make them sort of fit.

[Fair Strides 509]

ok so what if it was a vanilla helmet? then how would the game render it? how does the game treat an actual helmet model? i realize that may be beyond the scope of the abilities of modding tools available (as in converting the model category to an actual helmet instead of a mask), but if it is not, then how would it be achieved? is it flagged somehow as a helmet? does it have the same type of hook?

 

That's what I was saying above. No matter what, all the game ever does is render the headgear model and position it relative to the head model's goggle hook. The game doesn't have any full-enclosure headgear because of the variety of hairstyles and the high rate of clipping.

[xander2077 80]

That's what I was saying above. No matter what, all the game ever does is render the headgear model and position it relative to the head model's goggle hook. The game doesn't have any full-enclosure headgear because of the variety of hairstyles and the high rate of clipping.

 

ok, im not talking about those, im talking about the actual helmets, like the sith trooper helmet, or ones like them. it has to have a different hook, or way of rendering, because the hairs do not clip. carth has more hair, and so do some of the other character models that would even have access to that armor. what about all the clone trooper armor, or even the mandalorian armor, all of those have enclosed helmets.

 

i can understand the goggles using one hook because of the hiarstyles, but a fully enclosed helmet (like the canderous armor mod) doesnt have hairs that clip (see my avatar). so how is that done? how would one make the vacuum mask that i modified, or something similar behave as a helmet instead of goggles?

[Fair Strides 509]

The Sith Soldier thing is a full-body model; it has the body, arms, legs, and head all in one. When you equip the Sith Armor, it has an item property to disguise you as a different row in the appearance.2da file, and it references the Sith Soldier row itself. So you're basically transforming/polymorphing with the disguise effect.

[Sithspecter 909]

i can understand the goggles using one hook because of the hiarstyles, but a fully enclosed helmet (like the canderous armor mod) doesnt have hairs that clip (see my avatar). so how is that done? how would one make the vacuum mask that i modified, or something similar behave as a helmet instead of goggles?

 

A fully enclosed helmet will definitely clip on many heads. I made the Canderous' Mandalorian Items mod, and if you put that helmet on say, Mission, Bastila, or many of the female PC heads, you will see that the hair goes straight through it. It's modeled to fit so that hair on most males does not show though it.

 

The Sith Soldier disguise is an item that simply makes you use a different appearance. You'll notice if you put it on Mission or a female scoundrel PC that they are suddenly tall, and have lost some of their femininity. The game has completely substituted the whole original model for the Sith Soldier model.

 

There's a couple ways you can get creative with helmets. First, you can make the helmet a disguise. This would allow you to use a faux head with no hair, which is great for eliminating clipping, but limits you to one appearance.2da row (check out my Boba Fett mod to see how this works). Secondly, you can do like I've done and make the helmet cover most male hair types. This is a good all-around solution, but will fall short with a number of female models. That's unfortunately about it.

[xander2077 80]

ok thats the meat and potatoes i was grasping for. so it is all in the appearance 2da. that actually does a lot. as long as it can be modified to work with most of the male heads that is kind of a relief. but that is down the road. i know some of the gals (or even guys) who role play the female characters might not like it though, but i guess you really cant make a one size fits all in this case.

 

i guess the second concern is if it would clip with hoods or the heads of the sith/dark jedi npc enemies that also wear some of these masks, which im not sure of. i guess i could do as i did with the vacuum mask and try to approximate the size to accomodate most of the male heads, and therefore make those helmets as well, but they will defintely be a lot different than just making extra polys on the mask. i will have to get creative on the design to get them to work well with the textures, and i have an idea: making the extra polys wrap around the top and back like a row of plates or scales. should be interesting.

 

as far as the rest of the masks go, there are a few like the breath masks that i wanted to really give an extra kick without enclosing the whole head. so i may scan the web for reference pics and see if i can come up with something.

[Sithspecter 909]

 

i guess the second concern is if it would clip with hoods or the heads of the sith/dark jedi npc enemies that also wear some of these masks, which im not sure of.

 

As far as I remember, there aren't any enemies in KotOR 1 that actually wear mask items. I don't recall any in TSL either, but I'm no expert there.

[xander2077 80]

ok then they must share a similar model and UV then for appearance sake so the mask that drops can look like the ones the enemy is wearing (i know that is not always the case but it does happen)

[xander2077 80]

just a quick pic of one of the sith masks in the game in helmet style. i think i may do some more work on it once i import a head model to fine tune it, but for now this is pretty much where i want it.

 

this is what i meant by scales running back around the head.

 

to give it a better look i may add some geometry on that corner and transfer the texture from the center seam to give it less of an accordian appearance. theres a few other ideas i have too but im going to experiment first and then decide.

[xander2077 80]

here is an example of how the vanilla textures can actually be used regardless of the style. now of course i really want to update these textures on the alternate texture, but thats for later. im just glad that the texture works as well on the helmet version as it does on the regular mask version.

 

i also did some minor UV adjustments to take the stretching out of the rivets around the mouth guard area. of course i could not seem to do that when i used that portion of the texture for the sides but oh well, cant win em all. maybe i can duplicate part of the texture to a blank area, minus the rivets and round vents, and that will improve things.

 

for that alternate texture, i plan on doing some really cool details, maybe throw a little HR Giger.

[milestails 264]

I must say again that I applaud your efforts at tackling a part of the game that hasn't gotten much attention over the years!

[xander2077 80]

well i tried to update that alternate texture, but it was too clean, so i guess i just have to resize it and then try and paint a few more details in that wont be too defined. it actually looked better with the old texture than the new one i tried to make.

 

i guess it is time to take a break. i have to get out of here for the day.

[xander2077 80]

ok, i think this is about as good as it gets for the alternate sith mask texture. i know there is a mod out there that specifically adds this as a variant for some of the bad guys and as another item in drops. luckily i can sort of fake it with this one. it would have been cool if i could have painted the additional grunge on the model itelf to fine tune the texture, but i still have not figured out how to do that correctly in blender. and it turned out ok. it will probably look better on the original model, and the npc models, but im not complaining really.

 

just for kicks i did another alternate texture, to kind of fuel some ideas a bit. what if there were some new bad guys that were sort of a sith droid? or a sith cyborg? or heck if you just want to have bad guys with gold helmets? anwyay.

[xander2077 80]

three more eye candy pieces to relish today. that means three alternate texture for the vacuum mask. i also redid some of the UVs on that to better place the new textures and i like how it looks a lot better.

 

well, scratch that, after a bit of tweaking and texture experimentation, i had to do a whole lot more tweaks and ended up with a bunch of new textures for this mask.

[xander2077 80]

ok, next is the sith deprivation mask, there is also a player made mod texture that goes to this mask that i redid as well. it actually took longer to do the alternate texture than it did to edit the model. i might tweak the transparency a bit or darken it some, not sure how im going to do that yet.

[Red Hessian 9]

These look really great. Keep 'em coming

[xander2077 80]

ok i certainly will!

 

next up is the breath masks, there are two texture versions by default. i added some geometry to the bottom to cover the chin better, and i also moved the "tusks" (?) to help get rid of the gag mustache look, so hopefully that helps, but if not then the tusks can always be removed or i can create something new to replace them (which i may do anyway)

 

in the mean time i also had to add some geometry to the front of the mask because of UV issues, so the tube is now actually a tube instead of a wedge, and there is another surface so i could fill in the empty space on the brown version a bit better.

 

i was also thinking of a funny dailogue mod where if someone has a mask there is a chance they will trigger a dialogue where you talk to another character, and instead of the usual dialogue, they open up with "m-mmfph-mmm-mpfph" and the main character ways "wha? i couldnt understand you" and "nope, still cant hear what you are saying"

 

anyway i also just got finished with the motion goggles. this was a very troubled model. in spite of it being fairly simple and not worth the effort of adding detail, the texture was really grainy, so i tackled that, and after doing it once, i thought i was all done, but then realized the shadows were upside down, so i had to do parts of it over. then once i got that done the UVs were terrible. probably one of the most rushed texture jobs ever in the game. so i had to really tweak the UVs to get thing lined up right and in some cases i completely moved parts of the UV to another location on the texture. but the results are quite nice. so one more done.

 

and another one. i also did the ocular enhancers over, and i added some details to the texture in a way that will never interfere with the vanilla model this one was a lot of fun, and i also used to texture spaces that were not being used by the original UVs for some reason. lots of wasted texture there. i cant believe they didnt utulize it better considering there was something for every part of these goggles on here. perhaps they forgot? or accidentally put an alpha of the goggles in the game? i dont know. anyway, now the details are poppin.

[xander2077 80]

last one for tonight. circlet of saresh. by far probably one of the most difficult to update because of the complexity of the texture. but i was determined to get it done.

 

 

[djh269 264]

These are beautiful!

[xander2077 80]

thanks dj. sometimes it is simply a new texture and UVs they need, and sometimes they need a bit of model work.

 

the saresh model may need a bit more tweaking though. well all of them really. ideally if i can find a good median for the heads then these will fit nicely. the only pic i found of the saresh model in game was kind of disappointing. it doesnt really hug the face like it is supposed to. so i kind of want it to do that.

 

i did a bit of research on the styles of ornaments and stuff from the time of empress teta (tales of the jedi stuff) and so that kind of style was applied to things like the sith deprivation mask and tetas headband. i think most if not all the textures will get some decent tweaks, even some of those that i thought were done before. any of the textures i did recently on the models are done, but stuff i did months back will be revisited a bit.

[xander2077 80]

next up is the infragoggles. thanks to sithspecter for getting me the vanilla texture as a reference. this is a great example of how a good texture can make a low poly model really come alive. now i would not be ashamed to wear these things. they actually look like something a galactic mercenary would utilize.

[N-DReW25 1,336]

Will there be a kotor 2 port because to me the mask look cool in kotor but after seeing the mask overhaul images a kotor 2 port would be nice since some mods that remake HD models (Example weapon overhaul mod and weapon overhaul texture rework)that do a great Job at the mod but there isn't a fully committed kotor 2 version and it Just loks horrible when compared to kotor 1.

 

Now not all mods do that for example blaster pistol enchantment has a kotor 1 and kotor 2 version and it would be great mod if it was avalible for both games,keep up the great work.

[Malkior 476]

All of these look good, especially the various goggles. I had an idea for a retex nearly identical to your "infragoggles", so that's awesome to see your take.

[xander2077 80]

im not sure, if someone wants to port them to k2 that is fine. this is pretty much just an override mod, so i am not even sure how to port it to the second game.

 

these models are really not high poly at all, just have better textures for the most part. yes some parts have been redone, like the infragoggles above, but that was only the optic chamber. i have also done some remapping of UVs where necessary, because they realy needed that as well.