[WIP] Twisted Rancor Trio Revamp

[CarthOnasty 214]

///// 00. Disclaimer /////

I haven't given up on Star Map Revamp 2.0, just messing around with a little side project.

 

///// 01. Background /////

This is about .01% of the game, but I thought the Twisted Rancor Trio puzzle in Taris could look better. This was also a good opportunity for me to branch out from skins to editing .utcs, .utps, .gits, etc. So here's the original:

The models are pretty pixelated, and the animations are very choppy. These are holograms, thousands of years from now, surely they can be displayed better and in a 3d space.

 

///// 02. Planning /////

I started digging around in the files, bugged @A Future Pilot for who knows how long and got an idea of what I wanted to do. It turned out the holograms were an animated .tpc that consisted of 8 frames, hence the choppiness. There were already Bith musicians in the game, so that was an easy replacement and I could bring the Twilek dancers over as well, but Elinda and Ashana are not Twilek, so there's still some thought to go into that.

 

///// 03. Work Thus Far /////

Here's a basic proof-of-concept.

Through some alpha channels and .txi entries, I maintained the hologram look. I think these look so much better now and much more "realistic" holograms.

 

///// 04. Next Steps /////

There's still a good bit to be done, mostly scripting.

• These new models show versus the old animations.
• They are placed above the hologram base versus behind it as they are now. (for proof-of-concept)
• Any interactivity with them is disabled.
• They are customized to their respective names, (editing .utcs and such) and then clothing.
• They all face the right direction.
• Find models to replace the Twileks. Apparently Elinda and Ashana were human (hard to tell from the hologram), so it'd be a matter of finding a female human model that I think would work.

 

///// 05. Future Plans /////

This is silly, but creating an item that would activate these holograms wherever. I'm on Dantoonie, I want to hear some music. Fire up the hologram and watch these guys perform (music included of course!).

 

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

Thanks for taking a look and by all means holler with any comments, questions, or suggestions.

[ebmar 893]

Great things often comes from the smallest details. Good luck with this one, CO!

Edit: Is it possible to put background music to the Holograms playing? I mean, just assume that those device down there has built-in speakers there 😂

Edited June 9, 2018 by ebmar
To made notice is there a possibility to put BGM to the activated Holograms.

[CarthOnasty 214]

2 hours ago, ebmar said:

Great things often comes from the smallest details. Good luck with this one, CO!

Edit: Is it possible to put background music to the Holograms playing? I mean, just assume that those device down there has built-in speakers there 😂

Yeah, I was thinking that as well. I mean, it just seems to logical.

 

On another note---and this makes sense---the instruments are a separate model. I'll have to grab those and make them translucent as well.

[DarthParametric 3,782]

So a cursory glance at the vanilla files suggests that there are just the two placeables for the bases. The actual band member images must be scripted in? That's an unexpected approach. Also a painful one given K1's placeable limitations.

 

7 hours ago, CarthOnasty said:

On another note---and this makes sense---the instruments are a separate model. I'll have to grab those and make them translucent as well.

Yeah the instruments are just dummy blasters. I think they are rifles, check the last few model variations.

[JCarter426 1,214]

Interesting idea. Not much impact, as you say, but why not? I do that silly puzzle every time I play the game, so it's an improvement I'd see every time I played the game.

16 hours ago, CarthOnasty said:

Find models to replace the Twileks. Apparently Elinda and Ashana were human (hard to tell from the hologram), so it'd be a matter of finding a female human model that I think would work.

It looks to me like the closest match for the body would be PFBAL. The shirt with the midriff would just need a little retexture, but the legs would need a bit of a model edit to turn the shorts into pants. I was actually working on a similar model before, so if you want to use this I could look to see what progress I made.

6 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

So a cursory glance at the vanilla files suggests that there are just the two placeables for the bases. The actual band member images must be scripted in? That's an unexpected approach. Also a painful one given K1's placeable limitations.

Not a problem, I think. It looks like there are two placeables, one for the Biths and one for the twins, and for the on animation there's an emitter that creates the hologram. I believe that, rather than simple on/off, the placeables could be scripted to use the 10 looping animation slots. That should be just enough to have 4 different Bith characters since they need 2 animations each at most (turning on, and on). Then it would be a matter of animating the alpha values for every single mesh or something easier like sending the characters down into the floor when they're off.

I'd also suggest taking a look at G0-T0's holoprojector, v_holo_dur. A visual effect like that would help the hologram objects blend in more. You'd have to fiddle with the settings to reposition it and probably decrease the size, but it doesn't require any assets that aren't already in K1 already.

[CarthOnasty 214]

12 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

So a cursory glance at the vanilla files suggests that there are just the two placeables for the bases. The actual band member images must be scripted in? That's an unexpected approach. Also a painful one given K1's placeable limitations.

Yeah the instruments are just dummy blasters. I think they are rifles, check the last few model variations.

Right, the images are scripted in.

The instruments were indeed blasters. Seems there's a trombone, clarinet, guitar, and accordion. It'd be pretty funny actually to make these usable blasters that shoot musical notes at people. Or maybe even cuts "swords".

 

5 hours ago, JCarter426 said:

Interesting idea. Not much impact, as you say, but why not? I do that silly puzzle every time I play the game, so it's an improvement I'd see every time I played the game.

It looks to me like the closest match for the body would be PFBAL. The shirt with the midriff would just need a little retexture, but the legs would need a bit of a model edit to turn the shorts into pants. I was actually working on a similar model before, so if you want to use this I could look to see what progress I made.

Not a problem, I think. It looks like there are two placeables, one for the Biths and one for the twins, and for the on animation there's an emitter that creates the hologram. I believe that, rather than simple on/off, the placeables could be scripted to use the 10 looping animation slots. That should be just enough to have 4 different Bith characters since they need 2 animations each at most (turning on, and on). Then it would be a matter of animating the alpha values for every single mesh or something easier like sending the characters down into the floor when they're off.

I'd also suggest taking a look at G0-T0's holoprojector, v_holo_dur. A visual effect like that would help the hologram objects blend in more. You'd have to fiddle with the settings to reposition it and probably decrease the size, but it doesn't require any assets that aren't already in K1 already.

Exactly! Player sees it every playthrough, and it just seemed like a good small project to practice with.

Thanks for the heads up on PFBAL. I was thinking along the same ideas of using a female starter. And I'd be happy to take a look at the model!

Novel way of approaching the holograms and the animations. That's so far beyond my capabilities as of now, but again, this is a practice project.

And then isn't G0-T0 a K2 npc? Or we it ported into K1 via K1R?

[Kexikus 995]

1 hour ago, CarthOnasty said:

And then isn't G0-T0 a K2 npc? Or we it ported into K1 via K1R?

He is, but you can still look at the techniques Obsidian applied there and then transfer those to K1 as all the necessary assets are available in K1 as well. Or at least, that's what JC suggested (I think).

[DarthParametric 3,782]

He's talking about the projecting hologram VFX. It's just a single emitter, and the texture it uses, fx_slash, is also in K1. You could change the placeables to use an emitter with the same values.

[LiliArch 115]

4 hours ago, CarthOnasty said:

The instruments were indeed blasters. Seems there's a trombone, clarinet, guitar, and accordion. It'd be pretty funny actually to make these usable blasters that shoot musical notes at people. Or maybe even cuts "swords".

I believe someone has done that in the past; if the target was stunned, they did a ”dance” animation instead of the ”stunned” one. I think. I never tried the mod.

[JCarter426 1,214]

Turns out either I lost the model or I was mistaking it for something else. So I whipped out a replacement. It's a bit of a hack job but I think everything else could be handled on the texture.

The source models were PFBAL for most of the body and N_CommF for the boots. I made a double-wide texture and I haven't changed the UVW mapping much, so anything mapped to fit PFBAL will work on the left side and anything mapped to fit N_CommF will work on the right side. The texture I've included was just made from the first texture variants of each.

 

Twisted Rancor Trio v1.zip

[Zhaboka 91]

LOVE this. Tiny details.

[Stripes__ 0]

Little mods like this one make the game so much more enjoyable for me! Keep it up!

[GNihilus2 88]

wish there was an easy way to boost into 3D HD holos Elinda and Ashana .... seems not right? been just humble 2D only?

keep up your awesome 'mini-modding'