[KotOR] PFHC04: strange hair

[Salk 374]

Hello!

I was using for the first time a female protagonist for my game and chose the PFHC04 model. I noticed in the close ups that there are serious problems with the hair and I was wondering what that depends on?

Is it the .mdl/.mdx that needs fixing, rather than the .tpc?

I attached a couple of screenshots taken from my game, in case someone is curious about the odd effect...

If someone has a quick and dirty solution to it, it'd be nice.

Thanks!

[DarthParametric 3,784]

Looks like you are lacking transparency. That model relies heavily on alpha masking for the hair.

Edit: Or not? Looks like the texture doesn't have an alpha mask. Explains why it looks so terrible.

[ebmar 893]

1 hour ago, DarthParametric said:

Looks like you are lacking transparency. That model relies heavily on alpha masking for the hair.

Edit: Or not? Looks like the texture doesn't have an alpha mask. Explains why it looks so terrible.

Wow. So, proportionally this texture-model should have an alpha-mask applied to the particular part of the hair? And even the native texture doesn't have an alpha-mask applied. H[w]ow. 😂

If you don't mind me asking, DP; and Salk as the thread-starter- excuse me for asking. How can we identify which part of the hair that'll need fixes? I believe we would need to generate an [IIRC] UV map, and could you describe to us how to generate an UV map for a particular texture?

Many thanks for considering this!

Edited September 1, 2018 by ebmar
Fix "head" to "hair" to specifically point the UV identification.

[DarthParametric 3,784]

Given what an absolute mess the UVs are, I'm not sure it is worth the effort to try and salvage something out of it.

I'd just use a different head.

[JCarter426 1,215]

Yeah, the model is a mess. In addition to the overlapping UV islands, the hair is essentially lots of triangular meshes that clip through each other. Maybe you could flatten the hair and render to texture to add alpha masks, but I don't think that would help much. Also, any attempt to remodel the head would have to deal with all the smoothing errors generated by the modeling tools, unfortunately.

[ebmar 893]

3 minutes ago, DarthParametric said:

Given what an absolute mess the UVs are, I'm not sure it is worth the effort to try and salvage something out of it.

Spoiler

I'd just use a different head.

Oh my. I don't even 100% understand what a UV is but, looking from the shape of it... An abstract-art on another level. 😂

[Salk 374]

Thank you very much for explaining how there is not much to salvage from this particular model.

Sad to see how this rather glaring issue slipped through the net of the QA team before release (and I guess afterwards too...)

[DarthParametric 3,784]

I don't think it was a mistake. It was a conscious decision, just a poor one. You can see they did kind of the same thing with PFHA03, but it's a lot less egregious there because of the reduced number of planes and the darker hair colour.