The Workshed

[Alan The Magic Goose 14]

Well, ultimately I don't think we'll have too many conflicts on the end result as I'm not planning on getting rid of the hood idea. But similar to how Kreia does have hair underneath her hood, as well as the Handmaiden, I just figured it would be good to add those things. 

And maybe we could just reimagine the no eye sockets issue as more of a no eyes thing? I mean, that's plausible and fits with the lore. It doesn't fit with the canon design from the comics, but I don't know if those are canon anymore anyways.

I'm totally willing to compromise and currently, I'm seeing a few options:

1.) Just do multiple textures so then that way everyone has an option to get what they want.

2.) Do a revised hybrid. (Eyeless instead of socketless)

3.) Cheat. Cover it up with hair, bandages, shadows, armor, etc.

4.) Just give the girl a helmet. Much easier than all the eyeball drama.

5.) Give her Gruntilda's Head from Banjo Kazooie.

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Thinking about it, having eyes that are sealed over with smooth skin -- where you can clearly see the bumps of the eyes -- depending on the texture work, could look both beautiful along with unnerving. And legends altogether is not canon, and I wouldn't hold the comic up as a standard. I find in particular a lot of the comic book "lore" to be rather unsatisfactory -- juvenile writing pandering to early teen boys.

 

I think she is meant to be like a "counselor" type, and not really a warrior. So thinking about what works in that context might be best. So, a helmet that fits that as long as it doesn't feel like something a warrior would wear..?

 

Still, it is your work and I think as a creator that at the end of the day, it has to be something your happy with.

[DarthParametric 3,795]

I just realised your ASCII has none of your actual meshes. You must not have made them children of the AuroraBase before exporting. You'll need to do that and re-export. This is unrelated to your compiling issue, but in effect the compiled model I have now is just a skeleton.

[Malkior 476]

Thinking about it, having eyes that are sealed over with smooth skin -- where you can clearly see the bumps of the eyes -- depending on the texture work, could look both beautiful along with unnerving. And legends altogether is not canon, and I wouldn't hold the comic up as a standard. I find in particular a lot of the comic book "lore" to be rather unsatisfactory -- juvenile writing pandering to early teen boys.

 

I think she is meant to be like a "counselor" type, and not really a warrior. So thinking about what works in that context might be best. So, a helmet that fits that as long as it doesn't feel like something a warrior would wear..?

 

Still, it is your work and I think as a creator that at the end of the day, it has to be something your happy with.

That "comic" everyone is referring to was a what if scenario, so even if anyone holds it up as canon its validity is dubious at best.

 

Second, how do you figure she is a councilor type?

 

Are you referring to her player class or personal philosophy; because, let me tell you, in game she only exists to fight and to do her "master's" bidding. Her council is more or less whatever her master told her and that is almost the antithesis of what a councilor is.

[JCarter426 1,220]

Comic was 100% canon in the previous Expanded Universe canon, and written by Chris Avellone himself. Miraluka are also long established as having no eyes, going back to the 90s here. So my vote would be for that as well, although I understand the technical challenge. I don't think it would look too weird, and you could include an option with a bag over her head. It should even be possible to unlock her headgear slot and make that an equippable item for her.

[Malkior 476]

Comic was 100% canon in the previous Expanded Universe canon, and written by Chris Avellone himself. Miraluka are also long established as having no eyes, going back to the 90s here. So my vote would be for that as well, although I understand the technical challenge. I don't think it would look too weird, and you could include an option with a bag over her head. It should even be possible to unlock her headgear slot and make that an equippable item for her.

Well, color me impressed. I had no idea Chris Avellone wrote those.. I guess I was thinking of the other Kotor behind the scenes stories. (That Rakghoul arc that basically went nowhere for example)

 

Also, I thought Miralukas were brought in specifically for Kotor. Thanks for the clarification, man.  

 

My opinion regarding validating the EU, is that if the property was created by the many publications during the EU, then it should be the final source on what is or isn't true.

If someone during the new establishment of Expanded Content decides a property from the past should be added into the new Canon, then they should respect its origin rather than retconning everything about it and retaining its name.

If they want something similar, then just call it a different name as their new universe should be able to stand on its own content.

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Comic was 100% canon in the previous Expanded Universe canon, and written by Chris Avellone himself. Miraluka are also long established as having no eyes, going back to the 90s here. So my vote would be for that as well, although I understand the technical challenge. I don't think it would look too weird, and you could include an option with a bag over her head. It should even be possible to unlock her headgear slot and make that an equippable item for her.

 

OK, I take it back.

 

Really though, my reasoning was more with this Vader comic I picked up and read a while back. Rated well but devolved into 12 year old boy super cyborg fantasy stuff. Never actually read the comic that the image is from, was just generalizing based on that experience and others regarding EU books.

 

Anyway, I think I'll leave my comment there as I don't want to get too sidetracked.

 

More on track: if she wore something more like a face plate, ornamental armor, that would work as well I think. Kinda like a super hero mask in that it is molded to the face, maybe with fake eyes...

 

@ Malikor: well she plays an adviser role to Darth Nihilus whom she is seen advising her master at times regarding the Jedi -- vague memory. She is also not really a marauder type from my recollection. Meaning, her lightsabre isn't her only tool that she uses to solve problems.

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

More on track: if she wore something more like a face plate, ornamental armor, that would work as well I think. Kinda like a super hero mask in that it is molded to the face, maybe with fake eyes...

 

Hmmmm.... blind superhero....

 

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Hmmmm.... blind superhero....

 

 

Yep, was thinking of Dare Devil having seen the Defenders recently. Though, probably more of an ornamental crest to it and less horns 

[Alan The Magic Goose 14]

Okay so I finally got the source to compile, I don't know in the end what exactly did it, but I re-extracted the files from KOTOR Tools (I found that I was having XML export issues so I just reinstalled before exporting.)
And I created a sub folder for the files. Did the proper renaming.

Also, just randomly did some housekeeping around my computer. (Doubt this helped. Though there were some XML and DLL errors)

Just to cover all my bases, I also reinstalled the NWMAX scripts and exported from Max. The runtime warning persists, but it seems to still export to my designated folder.

I'll include my files as a ZIP here just in case.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6GSFmpZMBVRQ04wNnJ4dG12cUU

So, after the compiling step, I do what again?


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Secondly, regarding the head, people say that it's much harder than the body and I'm wondering if that's just because of the rigging and lip synching or is there actually a more involved process and not just hyperbole?
 

[DarthParametric 3,795]

It's mostly hyperbole, yeah. KOTOR heads don't have a lot of bones to start with, and assuming you keep the bag (or equivalent) over most of her head, all you really need to worry about for Visas is the mouth. Aside from that, there is one trick with heads which is probably what gets people's pants in a twist. By default the model won't correctly link to the neck of the body, meaning it will be offset and floating in the air. You can fix that by patching the binary model that MDLOps compiles with VP's HeadFixer.

 

Regarding the model you posted, you presumably missed my last post after it was buried by all the off topic spam. Your ASCII doesn't contain your meshes because they (presumably) weren't children of the AuroraBase. The script ignores anything in the scene that isn't a child of the base. You'll need to fix that and re-export, then recompile.

[Alan The Magic Goose 14]

Ah. So just parent everything else in the scene to the base and it shoukd be good to go?

 

And as for the head I figured from playing the game that were're looking at roughly less than thirty bones. Which by today's standards is nbd.

 

And I think we're keeping the hood. Ill start accepting idea proposals on her face after the body's playable.

 

I'll get that done asap. And let you guys know.

[DarthParametric 3,795]

Excluding the eyes and eyelids (which Visas doesn't need), it's more like 14 bones including the jaw. Very simplistic indeed by modern standards.

 

Make your custom meshes children of the AuroraBase. You shouldn't need to touch anything else, assuming you haven't modified the rig. As an aside, this is a useful trick when using an existing model as a template. You don't need to delete the vanilla meshes, just make sure they are outside the AuroraBase and they won't get exported.

[Alan The Magic Goose 14]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6GSFmpZMBVRQ04wNnJ4dG12cUU

Parented the mesh to the Aurora base. And thanks for that tip.

So from here I just need to change the 2DA file through KOTOR tools right?

[DarthParametric 3,795]

You can do it with KTool, but I prefer Convert2DA myself. As the name suggests, it will convert 2DAs to a tab-delimited text file, which you can open in a spreadsheet like Excel. Once saved, you can convert the text file back into a 2DA. The original GUI-based version is a little hard to get hold of these days though. If you are well stocked with ad and script blockers, you can brave this link - http://deadlystream.com/forum/topic/3649-im-getting-into-modding-and-doing-fairly-well-but-i-have-one-issue-i-really-could-use-help-with/?p=37788 Alternatively, there is a commandline tool available as part of the Xoreos Tools package that will do the same thing - https://github.com/xoreos/xoreos-tools/releases

 

Edit: Actually, Convert2DA isn't in that package. Fortunately the Wayback Machine comes to the rescue - https://web.archive.org/web/20161229181814/http://www.starwarsknights.com/tools.php

 

Also I'm still not seeing your meshes in the ASCII.

[Alan The Magic Goose 14]

Hmmm. Even after parenting them to the Aurora base? That's strange.
Is there a reason for that you can think of? I can also include the Max File if that helps.

[DarthParametric 3,795]

I can take a look at the Max file if you want. Might save some guesswork.

[Alan The Magic Goose 14]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6GSFmpZMBVRV1ZMX0tBVklQZGc

Here's the Max file.

[DarthParametric 3,795]

So I can export the meshes fine on my end. You don't have the "compile on export" checkbox enabled do you?

 

I noticed a few unrelated issues:

 

Your mesh names are possibly too long. I'm unsure what the maximum the MDL format can cope with is, but I would suggest capping them to 15 characters.

 

You have uncollapsed Unwrap UVW modifiers in virtually all your mesh stacks. I'm unsure if NWMax will handle that, so I would advise moving all those modifiers underneath their respective skin modifier and then right clicking and choosing "Collapse To" in order to bake in your changes.

 

Your scale seems to be an order of magnitude or more off. I suspect in-game you will have a titan on your hands. Did you do some sort of scaling of the rig to match your mesh? A rescale units of around 0.039 seems to get it back into the ballpark.

 

Here's a revised ASCII - https://www.darthparametric.com/files/kotor/misc/Goose_VisasAssassin_Rescaled_ASCII.7z

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Your mesh names are possibly too long. I'm unsure what the maximum the MDL format can cope with is, but I would suggest capping them to 15 characters.

 

 

 

Well, it doesn't appear to care itself. The names array is a bunch of strings that are separated by null characters. They can be as long as you like when stored in the model format. Whether MDLops has an issue or the engine itself... not sure, but, I'm a guy who grew up with MS Dos. I tend to establish some kind of succinct naming convention and then I stick to it.

 

I would suggest sticking to the max length found for other string values in the format, that being a max of 32 characters. In some odd cases it appears to be capped at 24 in the model, however, I suspect if the engine has any max cap on strings (names / labels) then it would be sticking to that which is found in the model format: 32. If you want to use less, it won't hurt none as long as you can still read the label and understand what it is.

 

Now whether MDLops itself has a set cap... You'll have to ask someone who cares to look at the Perl junk.

 

EDIT: to help illustrate...

 

 

There is an index for each name array pointer, there is actually no cap in the model itself. Any cap is in engine or the original tool -- or any mod tool -- that exports into the MDL and MDX files that the game engine reads.

[DarthParametric 3,795]

I would suggest sticking to the max length found for other string values in the format, that being a max of 32 characters. In some odd cases it appears to be capped at 24 in the model, however, I suspect if the engine has any max cap on strings (names / labels) then it would be sticking to that which is found in the model format: 32.

Half the names were at 37 characters, so it seemed advisable to rein it in a bit.

[bead-v 251]

Half the names were at 37 characters, so it seemed advisable to rein it in a bit.

 

Definitely. As sELFiNDUCEDcOMA mentioned, the format itself doesn't have a limit for them, but we don't know anything about the engine.

 

A lot of the time the mdl format allows for 32byte strings, but you should actually keep them under 16bytes in those cases, because other game files are limited to 16byte strings. I think that holds for the filenames inside the .bifs too. So to keep it simple, I'd advise everyone to keep their strings under 16 characters in all cases if they want to be safe.

 

(ignoring texture0 and texture1 in the mdl, which are 12bytes – those are unused and we don't know how to use them or if they even work)

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

Actually, I don't think that the engine would bother loading the model mesh / node names. That's for people to understand what each are, the engine doesn't need it.

 

More than likely these are just ignored and aren't loaded. Can't say for sure, but, as people tend to write game engines to be optimized and memory efficient... That would have been even more so the case when trying to get a PC game to run on an Xbox.

[bead-v 251]

Actually, I don't think that the engine would bother loading the model mesh / node names. That's for people to understand what each are, the engine doesn't need it.

The *hook dummy nodes can only be identified by their names, which suggest the engine reads them. Also, the animroot is specified as a string, so the engine needs to compare it to the node names to find the right one.

[sELFiNDUCEDcOMA 98]

The *hook dummy nodes can only be identified by their names, which suggest the engine reads them. Also, the animroot is specified as a string, so the engine needs to compare it to the node names to find the right one.

 

Maybe, or it just uses the predefined naming convention to find the correct mesh/bone/hook and then loads it into memory where the string name is lost as the data is now a memory object of a certain type that is referenced by whatever needs to reference it.

 

That part is a moot point, as you shouldn't be creating your own names for things that have a set naming convention like "Rhand_g" otherwise the engine won't know what to do with it. Plus as I showed, there is no actual limit on how long these names can be.

 

Now when specified as part of a model or mesh header, there is a limit of 32 characters (or 24 in some cases) -- actually it is always 32/24 characters in the model format as the remaining characters are filled with null characters. In engine this would vary as they would just use the first null reference to trim it down, however, if you look at the model format you'll see that the various nodes don't have associated names within the data. That's because it doesn't need them. It knows which is an animroot as it either has a pointer to it if a child, or, it is the first anim node that is loaded in. Things like super models are capped at 32 characters and are the model filenames that the engine needs to load in order to find the animations to use. Once it is loaded in it becomes another memory object referenced by other memory objects.

 

It's a bit hard to be 100% as you'd need to decompile the KoTOR exe or have some kind of code debugger running -- forgotten the names for some of the types of tools available -- in order to verify what is going on. Not really inclined to see myself, as the answer is to simply stick to any predefined naming convention for things like bones, and, make sure to keep your other names as short as possible -- and definitely not make it go past 32 characters in length, or 24, for things like texture filenames used.

 

EDIT: the real issue and thing to check is whether MDLops actually cares about the string lengths of certain things; my hazy recollection is that it actually doesn't, but, I could be wrong. As long as you stick to naming conventions and keep your model / mesh names to 32 characters, and textures, to 24 characters. I don't think the engine will likely have an issue.