MOD:TOR Ports: Meetra Surik AKA Jedi Exile Female Player Head for TSL

[DarthParametric 3,777]

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TOR Ports: Meetra Surik AKA Jedi Exile Female Player Head for TSL

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This mod adds the head model of the “Jedi Entity” AKA the Jedi Exile AKA Meetra Surik from The Old Republic MMO, ported to TSL as a selectable player head for female characters.

A few notes:

• While aligned as closely as possible, the neckline probably won't match perfectly. Expect some visible gaps on body models that don't hide the join.
• The TOR head models use separate textures for the face, eyes, and hair. In order to allow for DS transitions, these had to be merged together (and the UVs adjusted to match). The eyes are the big loser in this. They went from having their own dedicated 256x256 texture to being shrunk down to a corner where they could be squeezed in.
• An additional consequence of the texture merge is no normal maps, due to the hair requiring alpha masking.
• TOR heavily relies on tint mapping textures for variation - skin tone, hair colour, eye colour, etc. Unfortunately, while the tint colours are available in the material files, the specifics of their shaders are currently unknown to me, so the best I can do is experiment with various blend modes to approximate the look. It may require some further experimentation and kludging.
• Not even having specularity, much less the advanced (by comparison) graphical features of TOR, expect textures to look pretty flat by comparison to the originals.
• KOTOR has a maximum bone limit per mesh of 16. This creates a problem for TOR meshes, as adding the eyelids to the face bone array pushes that to 18. I had to drop 2 bones to make it work. I chose the two nose corner bones, as they seemed the least important. I don't know what effect this may have on various facial animations though.
• The hair meshes are currently completely rigid. Possibly I may add a danglymesh version in a future update.
• Dark Side transitions are included, but they are relatively mild. I'm not a big fan of the zombie look.

Installation:
If you are using TSLRCM or the hybrid TSLRCM + M4-78 from the Steam Workshop, make sure to choose its Workshop folder as the installation location, not the main game folder.

Acknowledgements:

• Original models and textures ported from The Old Republic MMO
• Thanks to @bead-v for KOTORMax and MDLEdit
• Thanks to @ndix UR for TGA2TPC
• Thanks to zaramot on the Xentax forums for the TOR GR2 Max import script

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• Submitter
  DarthParametric
• Submitted
  07/06/2018
• Category
  Mods
• TSLRCM Compatible
  Yes

 

[runtwolf 0]

Mate this is absolutely amazing. I've been waiting for the day I didn't have to play with those old ugly heads. Is it possible to request this head but with a different hair style? If not I completely understand and its no worries. Thanks for your hard work! can't wait to try this out.

[DarthParametric 3,777]

I don't have any plans to make variants, no. People wanted the "canon" head and this is it, more or less.

Although that said, the Kira head I released is the same head mesh (hence why I did it), so there's always that one.

[UnusualCharacters 105]

Hi DarthParametic, excuse my noobiness, but beyond this and TSLRCM, I'm not really into modding my game. Could you give me a bit more specifics of how I get this to interact with the Steam version? You said to install it in the Workshop folder. Steam>Steamapps>workshop, right? And from there, what files exactly am I extracting to that location? Again, sorry for the nooby question and I appreciate your help. Been waiting for a mod like this for a long time.

[DarthParametric 3,777]

Run TSLPatcher. It will ask you for the location of the game. If you are using TSLRCM (or TSLRCM + M4-78 combo) from the Workshop, you'll need to use that as the installation location. If you are using the standalone Workshop version of M4-78, you need to use that instead. If you are using any other Workshop mod that alters 2DA files, you are probably screwed.

Locations:

Base game folder - <Steam or SteamLibrary>\steamapps\common\Knights of the Old Republic II

TSLRCM (English) Workshop folder - <Steam or SteamLibrary>\steamapps\workshop\content\208580\485537937

TSLRCM + M4-78EP combo (English) Workshop folder - <Steam or SteamLibrary>\steamapps\workshop\content\208580\1402798020

M4-78EP Workshop folder - <Steam or SteamLibrary>\steamapps\workshop\content\208580\485560877

By default the Steam root directory is usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam but substitute your location, or that of the Library if you are using one (Workshop items reside in the same Library as the parent game).

[Guest Sam Fisher]

Glad to see the porting rule is dead. 

[UnusualCharacters 105]

Thank you so much for the rundown, DP. 

EDIT: It worked!

[DarthParametric 3,777]

40 minutes ago, UnusualCharacters said:

It worked!

Glad to hear it.

[arizer11 0]

I'm using the GOG version of kotor 2 with TSLRCM and M4-78. I don't know if i did something wrong but i installed both using separate installers. When i just used TSLRCM the head worked fine but when i installed M4-78 the head became invisible...

[DarthParametric 3,777]

Because M4-78 nuked your heads.2da, probably. If you must use M4-78 then it should always be installed straight after TSLRCM. And you never install it part way through a game.

[Darth Atticus 1]

I'm sorry its phenomenal work but it simply isn't enough for me, the model simply looks too smooth compared to the rest of the models giving it a kind of uncanny valley look, also her hair is the wrong colour 

[Stormie97 253]

On 9/28/2021 at 3:32 AM, Darth Atticus said:

I'm sorry its phenomenal work but it simply isn't enough for me, the model simply looks too smooth compared to the rest of the models giving it a kind of uncanny valley look, also her hair is the wrong colour 

That characteristic flatness is due to the different texture systems used by K1 and TOR. I'm not familiar with TOR's engine but I suppose it uses some form of PBR rendering or, at minima, a somewhat classic combination of diffuse, specular and normal maps.

In layman terms, this means that TOR uses various texture maps to render things like depth and variation in roughness, while the diffuse (or basecolor map) simply handles color information. Good ol' Odyssey on the hand doesn't have such fancy features. Everything you want a model to display must be contained within the diffuse map: depth, shadows, etc. What you see in your diffuse texture is what you get in game. Since TOR's diffuse maps are likely little more than just color information, you don't get much detail in them.

To fulfill the quality level you seek would require a comprehensive retexturing job. Luckily, skilled texturers are still active on this site. Best you can do is ask DP's permission and post a mod request in the appropriate section, or tackle the challenge yourself.

[Darth Atticus 1]

On 9/29/2021 at 3:05 PM, Stormie97 said:

That characteristic flatness is due to the different texture systems used by K1 and TOR. I'm not familiar with TOR's engine but I suppose it uses some form of PBR rendering or, at minima, a somewhat classic combination of diffuse, specular and normal maps.

In layman terms, this means that TOR uses various texture maps to render things like depth and variation in roughness, while the diffuse (or basecolor map) simply handles color information. Good ol' Odyssey on the hand doesn't have such fancy features. Everything you want a model to display must be contained within the diffuse map: depth, shadows, etc. What you see in your diffuse texture is what you get in game. Since TOR's diffuse maps are likely little more than just color information, you don't get much detail in them.

To fulfill the quality level you seek would require a comprehensive retexturing job. Luckily, skilled texturers are still active on this site. Best you can do is ask DP's permission and post a mod request in the appropriate section, or tackle the challenge yourself.

i can't my computer skill is a 3 at best