[WIP] Star Maps Revamp

[CarthOnasty 214]

Try using this on it and seeing if it might work before giving up.  My apologies if I've misunderstood the problem.

 

No need to apologize, I wasn't very clear. This was mainly a post about creative block frustrations.

 

Your best course of action would to either give the existing sphere a new UV layout more suited to what you have in mind, or outright replace the mesh with something else.

 

Yeah, that's what it seems like more and more would be the best course of action. If I go down that road though, I'd do the whole thing. That's more of my version 2.0 plan, but I really might have to for stop-gap.

[CarthOnasty 214]

Alrighty folks, I think I'm done with v1.0. I'm double checking a couple of things here and there, cleaning up a few seams, but within a day, two at most it will be ready to go. Let me know if you'd like to "beta-test" for me before an official release. Thanks for staying tuned in.

[CarthOnasty 214]

Doing some 2.0 work today.

 

[DarthParametric 3,785]

You'll want some padding around those islands. I'd go for at least 5 pixels, 10 is probably safer (and you'll need more at higher map resolutions like 2k/4K).

 

Edit: Something like this:

 

 

Although obviously the exact layout will need to change depending on what other islands are present.

[LiliArch 115]

May I say that I like the look of what’s going on here?

[CarthOnasty 214]

Here's another thing.

 

[CarthOnasty 214]

Reaching out to anyone following or checking this mod out, I'm starting to put together some ideas for a second version. If there are any suggestions you would like to have seen, or would like to see, please let me know. I appreciate any and all feedback!

[ebmar 893]

Hi CO, congratulations on reaching phase 2.0 of your 'Star Map Revamp'!
 
I've got an idea that may be possible to pull off but I'm not sure if it's scientifically legit or no and/or out of a Star Map concept in the first place.
 
Here's what I am thinkin':

 

This is my in-game screenshot of your 'Star Map Revamp 1.1'- isn't she lovely?

 

How about adding revolving planets, as they appear in Galaxy Map?

 

I don't know if it's already on your 2.0 master-plan as I am sure a 2.0 offer major differences compared to the former.

[CarthOnasty 214]

///// 01. Two-Point-Oh /////

First off, thanks to everyone who’s downloaded and offered support through this process. I appreciate all of your comments, critiques and suggestions. Through the creative process, the gears started turning for future plans. Here’s loosely what I’m planning thus far:

 

///// 02. Planned Improvements /////

• Remap the UVs. A lot of the patterns repeat, e.g. details on arms are also on feet, or also on base, etc. I know I wanted to remedy those first and foremost. I wanted the arms to have their own textures, the feet their own, etc. etc. etc.
  • Progressive: Create a UV for each arm and leg, which would increase the work significantly because then we go from 2 pieces to 6. Overkill?
• Planet rotations. When the map opens and you see the location of each planet, they slowly (and very choppily(?) rotate. I’d really like to smooth that out a bit, as it’s just a hacked together animation. I think it has 9 frames right now? At a minimum, I’d go up to… 18 frames?
  • Progressive: Each planet has its own custom shape and visual identifier. Right now, it’s random Aurebesh numbers (which technically didn’t exist as it does now, same with planet names), but we’ll see. Does it even need those I guess? Maybe it’s actually the type of planet referenced by the terminal, i.e. barren, arboreal, etc.
• More “Builder-esque”. Until ebmar pointed this out (and it should have seemed so obvious), this is a Rakata structure. I got the Aurebesh (see comment above) in there, but what else can I do to make this more “Builder”? I started looking around at a lot of source photos and ran around the Unknown World location a bit. I think I can change the rock? metal? country? to be a bit more… just “of that world”. Perhaps I made it too sleek in 1.0. While I have the texture itself pretty roughed it, it’d also make sense that some parts got chipped/rotted off here and there.
  • Progressive: ebmar and I have been chatting about having a new sound for the opening of the maps.
• Dodecahedron. I really hate that thing. I want to make it a sphere or I dunno, just something different. I was so difficult to figure out how to reskin it before. There would be so much more I could do with a different shape. At the very least it’s been given a new UV map.
  • Progressive: Play around with some transparency ideas.

 

///// 03. Planet Customizations /////

Let’s just go ahead and mark this whole section as “Progressive”. The idea would be to create a star map for every location, customized to that planet. The thing with that is there would need to be at least 4 more placeables created or they’d have to be built into the room itself. Hard to say what the route would be at this point, I mean, there are a limited number of placeables in the game. Anyway, the custom ideas:

• Dantooine
  • This would just be the base model.
  • Similar to what it is now, though with a violet glow.
• Tatooine
  • Yellow glow.
  • Sand-blown, sand in crevices and piled around base.
  • Maybe throw some krayt scales in there? Like the dude was using it as a scratching post.
• Kashyyyk
  • Green glow.
  • This thing has been in a jungle for what, 10k years? Let’s thrown some moss, vines, etc. on there. It’d only make sense that the jungle would start taking it back.
  • Moisture stains.
  • Rust? I’m iffy on that one.
• Manaan
  • Blue glow.
  • Heavy algae growth.
  • Coral, barnacles growing on it?
• Korriban
  • Red glow. (durrr)
  • I’m a little stuck on this one because it’s unexposed to the elements basically.
  • I was thinking along the lines of blood splatters and saber burns. Thinking maybe someone fought in that room at some point.

 

///// 04. Recent Dev /////

• The model has a completely new UV map. Every part has its own map to avoid pattern repetition. While I don’t know if I’ll recreate all 3 arms and all 3 legs still remains to be seen.
• Lots of reading about creating placeables and modding rooms.

 

///// 05. Future Dev /////

I really don’t care for the end animation of when you open the final star map. It seems so lackluster and very anticlimactic to me. I envision once the final map opens and the coordinates triangulate, you now have a large hud of the starforge. As of now there are just blue streaks and dinky animations (no offense Bioware). All of this really gets into some hardcore modeling and animation and that’s way, way, WAY over my head. I’m using Blender too, and well, it doesn’t like KotOR animations that much.

 

///// 06. Final /////

So that’s what’s going on at this point. Thanks again to everyone who’s download the mod, given their opinions and suggestions and more. This has been a fun project and I’m hoping it will continue to be so! If there’s anything you’d like to add to the above list or have anything else you’d like to share, by all means. Feel free to follow this post for updated now and then. Cheers, -CO

[DarthParametric 3,785]

Given the issues with K1 placeable limits, I'd probably rule out discreet placeable versions altogether. You could try the room model edit approach, but I'd question whether the effort required would be worth it. If you do want to pursue that though, I'd suggest you not actually making the map itself part of the room. but instead just focus on adding some static props around it. A middle ground approach that minimises the work required and the sources of things going wrong, but still gives you some differentiation.

 

As to your animation points, yeah, at this juncture there is no practical alternative to creating custom animations in Max/GMax. Perhaps one day you'll get an equivalent functionality for Blender, but for now I'd probably curb your ambitions in that regard (at least if you want to stick with Blender).

[LiliArch 115]

Technically, you could make the map and its accessories a separate ”room”. Rooms can exist inside each other.

[DarthParametric 3,785]

It wouldn't make it any less of a pain in the ass to implement.

[LiliArch 115]

Probably not, but it would save you from the trouble of screwing up the original room binary.

[JCarter426 1,215]

If you only need different textures for each version, you can manage that without making any duplicate models by packaging the textures in module files rather than putting one in Override. That adds the annoyance of having to use module files for the installation, but it would get around the placeable limit. I'd lean more towards adding the maps to the room models if not for the mess of the scripts involved. They better all decompile or you'll be out of luck.

[CarthOnasty 214]

Testing out the new UVs. They seem to be lining up just fine. 😀

[DarthParametric 3,785]

You've lost all the smoothing information by the looks. I gather the Blender script doesn't export that data.

[ebmar 893]

On 5/30/2018 at 2:03 AM, CarthOnasty said:

• Dodecahedron. I really hate that thing. I want to make it a sphere or I dunno, just something different. I was so difficult to figure out how to reskin it before. There would be so much more I could do with a different shape. At the very least it’s been given a new UV map.
  • Progressive: Play around with some transparency ideas.

I like that idea too- to make it a sphere? Yes!

Actually, here's an idea- but do not know if it's possible and plot-legitimate or not.

IF- you decided to make it a sphere; then could it be possible to make it a "CM_Baremetal"-ed golden sphere? [Attached is a rough-visualization of how the idea looks like].

Note: So far, I am impressed with how the Star Map Revamp 1.1 looked like. And I can't thank you more if you decided to give it more lift.

May the Force be with you CO!

[CarthOnasty 214]

12 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

You've lost all the smoothing information by the looks. I gather the Blender script doesn't export that data.

I guess I hadn't really noticed that. I think what I'll do is a straight unedited export/import to see if Blender is indeed stripping that info out. That'd be a damn shame if it was.

 

2 hours ago, ebmar said:

I like that idea too- to make it a sphere? Yes!

Actually, here's an idea- but do not know if it's possible and plot-legitimate or not.

IF- you decided to make it a sphere; then could it be possible to make it a "CM_Baremetal"-ed golden sphere? [Attached is a rough-visualization of how the idea looks like].

Note: So far, I am impressed with how the Star Map Revamp 1.1 looked like. And I can't thank you more if you decided to give it more lift.

May the Force be with you CO!

It could be possible, sure. I'd have to see what it looks like in-game. We were just talking about this on Discord last night and the difficulty of getting cm_baremetal to not look like "it was coated in Vaseline". 😝

Thanks for the support as always. 🤜🤛

[DarthParametric 3,785]

You could always do the smoothing in GMax if necessary. Or get someone else to run it through Max/GMax for you.

[CarthOnasty 214]

3 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

You could always do the smoothing in GMax if necessary. Or get someone else to run it through Max/GMax for you.

The first image is the model with just a white skin, and then the model imported then exported from Blender.

[JCarter426 1,215]

Yeah, although ironically you're not losing smoothing - you're getting smoothing where there shouldn't be, because the real smoothing data is gone. It looks like whatever Blender is doing, it's making the whole model have the same smoothing group and then MDLEdit is applying smoothing based on that.

Is the UVW map the only thing you've changed?

[CarthOnasty 214]

44 minutes ago, JCarter426 said:

Yeah, although ironically you're not losing smoothing - you're getting smoothing where there shouldn't be, because the real smoothing data is gone. It looks like whatever Blender is doing, it's making the whole model have the same smoothing group and then MDLEdit is applying smoothing based on that.

Is the UVW map the only thing you've changed?

In the above screen caps, I changed nothing. Just a direct import/export.

So I tried doing this with leaving Compute smoothgroup numbers unchecked, and it's even smoother.

Edited May 31, 2018 by CarthOnasty
Added a comment.

[JCarter426 1,215]

1 hour ago, CarthOnasty said:

In the above screen caps, I changed nothing. Just a direct import/export.

Right, but what about before? I don't think there's anything you can do in Blender to get it to work, because it's most likely the KOTORBlender export script that needs to be fixed. But if the UVW map is the only thing you've edited - if you haven't changed the geometry, most importantly the number of vertices - it should be easy enough to copy the new map onto the original geometry (export through KOTORBlender -> import both versions in 3ds/Gmax -> Unwrap UVW -> copy from one to the other -> export via KOTORMax).

[CarthOnasty 214]

1 hour ago, JCarter426 said:

Right, but what about before? I don't think there's anything you can do in Blender to get it to work, because it's most likely the KOTORBlender export script that needs to be fixed. But if the UVW map is the only thing you've edited - if you haven't changed the geometry, most importantly the number of vertices - it should be easy enough to copy the new map onto the original geometry (export through KOTORBlender -> import both versions in 3ds/Gmax -> Unwrap UVW -> copy from one to the other -> export via KOTORMax).

Hmmmm, I'm going to try this, excellent idea.

[CarthOnasty 214]

Working on some new UVs. I thought I was making things easier for myself, but in fact was making them more difficult. I've been trying out different unwraps to see what might work best and make the work much more efficient.