[WIP] Character & Companion Redone

[enVy 4]

Hey everyone my name is Chris, i'm new around here.

 

As some of you might already know i'm trying to rework some of the player/companion characters. I'm aiming at redoing the UVs for faces, adding better hairstyles and fixing overall topology errors. Why? Because let's face it in 2005 it was necessary to use mirrored face/hair textures and keep meshes at a low polycount, these days however we can afford a bit more in both areas. Don't worry i'm not going to throw 4k or even 8k textures at you and i'm not going crazy on the polycount either, i'll try to stay as close as possible to the originals so that they don't look out of place after all the game is pretty low poly. 

 

Thanks to help of DarthParametric i have a somewhat clear picture of what is possible and what is not and so far things are going as planned.

Now even tho i've already started with the first player character (as you can see below) i'm not sure how long one character will take since i have to do new textures and the hair itself and both tasks take a while, so don't get your hopes to high in seeing a release in the next days. 

Besides that i'm a Maya kid and utterly incompetent when it comes to working with 3DS, so i have to export the head meshes from Max to Maya, do the UVs there and reimport it back to Max so that i can copy the UVs from my "proxy" mesh over to the original. It works but some may laugh at me because of the extra steps but hey it gets the job done so peep it. 

 

One last note before i get to the end of the first progress update. I don't know if i ever will be able to do all characters since judging from the first one they do have some errors who are extremely tedious to fix, overlapping tris, open edges and horrible mangled UVs to name a few. But i try to do as much as i can manage and in the end it's a mod so i don't have a deadline chasing me . 

I'll also try to come up with a way to make creating textures for the "new" head mesh as easy as possible, so that anyone who wants to make their own textures can modify them, maybe through the use of Substance Painter or Photoshop layers, we'll see.

 

Now if you have any suggestions, wishes or spot anything i might have overlooked please feel free to let me know, i'm pretty open when it comes to modding so i'll share as much as i can with you guys. 

 

 

Update #1:

 

The UV Layout is not final yet since it's missing the left side of the hair and the bun but you get the idea of what is coming.

 

 

NinjaEdit: Does someone know how the jiggle bones (hair strands that move) work? Would love to know how i can add them or if anyone has the skill to do it will be willing to add them after i'm finished with the hair.

 

 

That's it for now, looking forward to your feedback.

 

[JCarter426 1,215]

Interesting. I'd definitely like to see better mapping for some heads. I've unmirrored a few but only with hack jobs, doubling the texture width and then moving faces...

 

I'd very much like better mapping for the armors, primarily so male and female bodies can share the same textures... but I'm sure just doing the heads will take you quite a while.

 

Does someone know how the jiggle bones (hair strands that move) work? Would love to know how i can add them or if anyone has the skill to do it will be willing to add them after i'm finished with the hair.

Those are handled through the AuroraFlex/OdysseyFlex modifier. There's a tutorial for it here and it should be possible to make them in KOTOR, but it's a convoluted process and I've never managed it successfully, so all I can say is it should be possible.

[DarthParametric 3,784]

The process is basically vertex painting. KOTORMax added a specific tool for it (at least I don't recall it being in NWMax), however as I recall it has a bug where it sets the minimum value to 1, whereas you want a value of 0 for static verts, necessitating manual editing of the ASCII.

[enVy 4]

I'd very much like better mapping for the armors, primarily so male and female bodies can share the same textures... but I'm sure just doing the heads will take you quite a while.

 

 

I haven't really looked at armors yet, it depends on how they are set up. Do you have any specific armors in mind? I can take a look at them and see if i'm able to bring them in line with their female counterparts.

 

The process is basically vertex painting. KOTORMax added a specific tool for it (at least I don't recall it being in NWMax), however as I recall it has a bug where it sets the minimum value to 1, whereas you want a value of 0 for static verts, necessitating manual editing of the ASCII. 

 

Those are handled through the AuroraFlex/OdysseyFlex modifier. There's a tutorial for it here and it should be possible to make them in KOTOR, but it's a convoluted process and I've never managed it successfully, so all I can say is it should be possible.

 

Nice i'm impressed how much is actually possible with the tools for such an old game, we'll see if i can manage to get it to work but i consider it just a neat little extra. 

 

[JCarter426 1,215]

I haven't really looked at armors yet, it depends on how they are set up. Do you have any specific armors in mind? I can take a look at them and see if i'm able to bring them in line with their female counterparts.

Hmm, I'd say the ones that have been the biggest pain are player armors C and H in both games and I in K2 (PFBCM/PMBCM, PFBHM/PMBHM, and PFBIM/PMBIM), and maybe the commoner clothing too (N_CommF/N_CommM). That's mostly down to how versatile the models are. There are loads of robe mods of course, while armors C and H and the clothing are useful for new NPC designs. I can also recall some models with rather bad mapping, like PFBMM and the Twin Suns body model.

 

In general, the male textures are of higher quality than the female textures. This was especially so on the Republic armor, which is one I already sorted. For that, I tweaked the male model to bring it more in line with the body shape of the female model, while retaining the male texture mapping. I tried to do the same for PFBCM, with underwhelming results. The best option would be entirely new maps, which would also get rid of the mirroring issues, but that's beyond my skills. So there's my wish list if you ever want to take a look.

[enVy 4]

Ok noted i'll take a look at them but you're right some of the armors and robes i've seen so far in the game could need a little love.

[Malkior 476]

It's great to see someone taking on the horrible lack of poly detail, especially on the Player Character. Unfortunately, I'm primarily a texturer, so I can't help you in the actual skinning, but I'd be more than willing to dust off my old HD full of my previous attempts at high detail faces.

 

 

Additionally, I have a small request regarding the armors. Is there any way you could clean up the horrible neckline on nearly all of them by extending the collars or just fixing the UVW so it looks more like a collar and less like a smudgy mess?

 

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/4/4e/Gerlon.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090914052904

 

 

This issue is quite evident on the robes as well.

 

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/6/66/TarisMaleDuelingFan-KOTOR.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/499?cb=20130505222158

[enVy 4]

Additionally, I have a small request regarding the armors. Is there any way you could clean up the horrible neckline on nearly all of them by extending the collars or just fixing the UVW so it looks more like a collar and less like a smudgy mess?

 

 

If i tackle armors i certainly will add proper collars since i can't stand those hard seams either.

[enVy 4]

Hey guys, today i'm coming in with some previews of the textures or rather the first face texture (PFHC06 if you're curious). Needless to say that they are still WIP but i managed to get a good amount of detail out of 1k map, even tho it's technically pointless since the camera rarely get close enough to capture it. But hey at least we know it's there. There are a few things missing at the moment mainly lip detail, makeup and depth/specular highlights but the latter are things i have to bake and i'm not yet sure how i will tackle this at least not in a timely manner.

 

Ok enough of the letters, have some pictures.

 

Just the Base Colors:

 

 

Skin details/breakups:

 

 

Close up of the previous image:

 

 

As always thanks for the interest in this project and i'm looking forward to your feedback.

 

Have good one everybody.