Kotor Damage Decals

[Oriion3 0]

Just curious if anyone knows how this works....How can i create a new decal for a texture that is not assigned one....and how are the assigned to certain textures

[Fair Strides 509]

I'm afraid I don't understand what you're meaning. Are you referring to the color/design of the floating damage numbers?

 

If so, what are you hoping to do with them/it?

[DarthParametric 3,782]

He appears to be talking about overlay textures for damage and so forth. Like in certain games you get bullet holes appear on a wall when you shoot at it - that's a decal. I don't think KOTOR does decals though (not that I can recall ever noticing anyway).

[Oriion3 0]

I'm afraid I don't understand what you're meaning. Are you referring to the color/design of the floating damage numbers?

 

If so, what are you hoping to do with them/it?

Sorry i am referring to the damage overlay on certain textures like the ones on kotor tatooine that simulate blast marks and broken building walls...i know its an alpha texture on top of another texture. just cant figure how its done.

 

After looking at the mdl model it it appears to be assigned to a plane [Rectangle Model] in which the texture is then projected on to it....However not sure how to implement it.

[Fair Strides 509]

Ah. That is done in the area models themselves. The plane meshes have the decal textures assigned to them just as if they were a wall, floor, or any other object. The decals are UV-mapped to the meshes and the alpha channel makes anything but the decal on the texture transparent, allowing it to show clearly.

 

I don't know off the top of my head if the area models have the plane be a completely separate mesh from the surface it's supposed to show against or not, but each mesh can have up to 4 textures assigned to it. We don't officially know if the 3rd or 4th slots work, but the 1st slot is usually the texture in question and the 2nd is usually the lightmap or similar. It could be that the decal texture (assuming it's assigned directly to the surface itself) could either be in the 2nd or 3rd slot, I'd imagine.

[Oriion3 0]

Ah. That is done in the area models themselves. The plane meshes have the decal textures assigned to them just as if they were a wall, floor, or any other object. The decals are UV-mapped to the meshes and the alpha channel makes anything but the decal on the texture transparent, allowing it to show clearly.

 

I don't know off the top of my head if the area models have the plane be a completely separate mesh from the surface it's supposed to show against or not, but each mesh can have up to 4 textures assigned to it. We don't officially know if the 3rd or 4th slots work, but the 1st slot is usually the texture in question and the 2nd is usually the lightmap or similar. It could be that the decal texture (assuming it's assigned directly to the surface itself) could either be in the 2nd or 3rd slot, I'd imagine.

Well it looks to be separate mesh however getting the game to read it seems impossible.....also could you clarify what you mean by the 4 texture slots....im in uncharted waters here if i could completely understand how all this works it could be a way to to add extra detail to any textures.

[Fair Strides 509]

Each mesh has sections in the file format for up to 4 different textures to appear on the mesh, each with their own mapping coordinates as well. Tool-wise, we only currently support the 1 texture in MDLOps and 2 textures in KAurora.

 

I'm not sure what you're doing to try to get the game to read it.

[Sithspecter 909]

If I understand it correctly, you want to add more decals to various walls and such in the game to vary the textures a bit?

 

Unfortunately, that's not something you'll be able to do with just textures. You are correct, the game has planes with the decal texture applied to it as part of the area model. You could model your own additional decal planes and add them to the area, but you won't be able to do that using only textures.

[Oriion3 0]

Each mesh has sections in the file format for up to 4 different textures to appear on the mesh, each with their own mapping coordinates as well. Tool-wise, we only currently support the 1 texture in MDLOps and 2 textures in KAurora.

 

I'm not sure what you're doing to try to get the game to read it.

Ah ok thanks for clearing that up ive seen what you mean by looking into the file. 

 

If I understand it correctly, you want to add more decals to various walls and such in the game to vary the textures a bit?

 

Unfortunately, that's not something you'll be able to do with just textures. You are correct, the game has planes with the decal texture applied to it as part of the area model. You could model your own additional decal planes and add them to the area, but you won't be able to do that using only textures.

Yea i seem to run into it showing up black in game with no lighting to it..wasn't sure if new planes could be added.

[Kexikus 995]

You can add new planes. But you need to add an AuroraTrimesh modifier and set it's Self-Illumination color to white. Alternatively you could make a new lightmap but that seems to be overkill for some damage decals.

[Fair Strides 509]

@Kexikus: Except that going by his comment, I believe he's losing the Aurora Lights and/or lightmaps by using MDLOps to compile the area models. What he could do instead of modifying the original models and losing the data is import the basic geometry of a model, remove all of the textures and lights and stuff, and then apply the decal textures. Only thing is that this would be a new separate area model and would need adding to the .lyt and .vis and stuff.

[Kexikus 995]

Or he could use KAurora to compile them. Then he'd only loose animations, right? And there aren't that many area models with animations.

But making a new model and editing the .lyt and .vis would of course work too.

[Sithspecter 909]

Or he could use KAurora to compile them. Then he'd only loose animations, right? And there aren't that many area models with animations.

But making a new model and editing the .lyt and .vis would of course work too.

 

No, KAurora doesn't go both ways, you can only export models to binary with it.

 

Oriion 3, what you'll need to do is place the planes in 3DSMax, then export them as a separate model, then add the new model name in under the layout file. You'll need to do as Kexikus suggested, and add the Aurora Trimesh modifier to them, with the self-illumination set to white or light grey.

[Kexikus 995]

No, KAurora doesn't go both ways, you can only export models to binary with it.

 

Ah okay, so you loose the vanilla information when decompiling the binary model with MDLOps since KAurora doesn't support that direction? But using KAurora to recompile models with lightmaps etc. would work?

[Oriion3 0]

Ok thank you both for the clarification ill get try this out and let you know how it came out later