Stormie's new/ported models

[DarthParametric 3,782]

The boxes are the constraints for each vertex with a weight greater than zero. You're best to switch to the "scaled by weight" option.

You can select a vert or group of verts and hit the "read values" button to see what their individual weights are. You can also weight selected verts with the options in the top half of the tool's panel (the options are similar to skin weights, either relative or absolute).

As you can see, only the lower two rows of verts in her topknot have any weighting, so it's almost imperceptible in-game. I would guess that was done to prevent clipping into the back of her head/neck, since there is no collision. With your more vertical hair mesh, you could have more of it with weighting, just probably reduced in magnitude (or dial down the global Flex value in the modifier's base settings) since it is much closer to the back of the head.

[Stormie97 253]

7 minutes ago, DarthParametric said:

The boxes are the constraints for each vertex with a weight greater than zero. You're best to switch to the "scaled by weight" option.

You can select a vert or group of verts and hit the "read values" button to see what their individual weights are. You can also weight selected verts with the options in the top half of the tool's panel (the options are similar to skin weights, either relative or absolute).

As you can see, only the lower two rows of verts in her topknot have any weighting, so it's almost imperceptible in-game. I would guess that was done to prevent clipping into the back of her head/neck, since there is no collision. With your more vertical hair mesh, you could have more of it with weighting, just probably reduced in magnitude (or dial down the global Flex value in the modifier's base settings) since it is much closer to the back of the head.

Wonderful, thank you. I managed to get it to look good. I'll tweak it further when I get to the skinning of the head.

[DarthParametric 3,782]

Just be aware that only Trimeshes can be Danglymeshes, not skinned meshes.  If it is currently part of the head you'll need to split it out to a separate mesh.

[Stormie97 253]

4 minutes ago, DarthParametric said:

Just be aware that only Trimeshes can be Danglymeshes, not skinned meshes.  If it is currently part of the head you'll need to split it out to a separate mesh.

Good to know. It is just a trimesh though. The head still follows the exact same structure as the original.

[Stormie97 253]

The textures are almost complete. Here are a few screens of the finished product. I still have to draw her necklace though.

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I've also been tweaking the head a bit more. I've also added some geometry to the eyelids objects to give her some eyelashes. The eye texture was also modified a bit to look a bit more human-like.

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And I've created her extra-long lightsaber from the concept.

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So pretty good progress overall. Off to skinning now and putting everything in game nicely.

[DarthParametric 3,782]

Hah, I have to laugh about all those people on Reddit crying about covering her up. If you do want to do an overlaid robe option though, I'd suggest looking at @JCarter426's TSL robes port Cloaked Jedi Robes and grabbing the modder's resource bundle and using that. You should be able to take something like this:

and make it work over the top of your existing model, albeit likely with some positional tweaking required. The hooded version is an addition I added for my Dark Jedi Wear Robes mod, which you are free to use as a basis if you wanted a hood option (although you'd have to lop off her top knot and make it a full body model).

[Stormie97 253]

7 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

If you do want to do an overlaid robe option though

Damn, wish you'd told me sooner.

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Jokes aside, adding a cloak is actually a smart idea. After about 30 minutes reshaping, here's what it looks like:

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Not bad honestly. Think I'll create a new, more silk-like texture for the cloak since I want to give it a lighter feel than the default one does.

[DarthParametric 3,782]

Since she'll need a unique appearance row for this as the DS Grove look (I'm assuming that's the intention anyway), I'd advise changing the names of JC's ported TSL supermodels to something unique (e.g. s_strmjuh_m01, s_strmjuh_f01, etc.) and redirecting the robe model to whatever the renamed equivalent is. Since the head will need to point to them too I would just make it all a single full body model. If you do it that way then you can make it a simple copy and paste option between the too naked and not naked enough versions with no further install requirements. And you won't be overriding the global supermodels which cuts down on potential clashes/incompatibilities, and enduser questions.

[Stormie97 253]

23 minutes ago, DarthParametric said:

Since she'll need a unique appearance row for this as the DS Grove look (I'm assuming that's the intention anyway), I'd advise changing the names of JC's ported TSL supermodels to something unique (e.g. s_strmjuh_m01, s_strmjuh_f01, etc.) and redirecting the robe model to whatever the renamed equivalent is. Since the head will need to point to them too I would just make it all a single full body model. If you do it that way then you can make it a simple copy and paste option between the too naked and not naked enough versions with no further install requirements. And you won't be overriding the global supermodels which cuts down on potential clashes/incompatibilities, and enduser questions.

Alright, I see. I was thinking about using that supermodel for the skirt anyway so that method is welcome. I've played a bit more with the robe and found something I like better:

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I think the short sleeves work better with the Jedi warrior concept.

The idea is that the "naked" appearance will be default. So both as companion and when she's at the Grove. I'll add the cloaked version as an alternative redeemed appearance.

[DarthParametric 3,782]

Hrm, there may be issues then if mixing a head with the vanilla K1 anims with a body with TSL anims. I guess you'll need to test it and see how it goes.

[Stormie97 253]

11 minutes ago, DarthParametric said:

Hrm, there may be issues then if mixing a head with the vanilla K1 anims with a body with TSL anims. I guess you'll need to test it and see how it goes.

Not sure if I follow. Would that happen as well with the method you described above?

[DarthParametric 3,782]

Not if it was a full body model as I suggested, where the head is part of the same model. If it is a parts model, like regular clothes/armour, then the head will use whatever supermodel is specified in its model, independent of the body it is attached to.

[Stormie97 253]

1 minute ago, DarthParametric said:

Not if it was a full body model as I suggested, where the head is part of the same model. If it is a parts model, like regular clothes/armour, then the head will use whatever supermodel is specified in its model, independent of the body it is attached to.

Ah I see. So, in that case, would I also have the head as a separate model for all the other body models?

[DarthParametric 3,782]

Well probably best to establish if there is a problem first of all. But assuming there is, you can only have a single head per appearance row, so there's no way to avoid mixing body models using different supermodels if you want that outfit to be wearable (other than a disguise).

[Stormie97 253]

21 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

Well probably best to establish if there is a problem first of all. But assuming there is, you can only have a single head per appearance row, so there's no way to avoid mixing body models using different supermodels if you want that outfit to be wearable (other than a disguise).

Alright then, I'll see how it goes with the all-in-one models.

[Stormie97 253]

New, small project I'm working on.

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[DarthParametric 3,782]

Pretty good likeness, but it seems like some extra subdivision wouldn't go astray.

[Stormie97 253]

4 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

Pretty good likeness, but it seems like some extra subdivision wouldn't go astray.

Thanks. It used to have a lot more but I cut it down to get the head mesh closer to the number of polys on your typical vanilla TSL mesh since I don't know how many polys I can safely go for.

[DarthParametric 3,782]

Single skinned meshes up around 10K polys tend to turn to mush, presumably due to some upper limit for weights in the model format or something (@bead-v would know more). Shadow casting meshes above around 2Kish polys cause crashes. It's mostly the hair that's the problem, and that should be able to be completely separate static mesh, so you shouldn't have too many hard limits.

[Stormie97 253]

I see. Well I don't think it's necessary to go too high, but I'll add a couple subdivisions around the jawline and chin to make everything smoother. The braid is already its own separate mesh since there is no good reason for it to be directly integrated in the head mesh anyway.

[bead-v 251]

19 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

Single skinned meshes up around 10K polys tend to turn to mush, presumably due to some upper limit for weights in the model format or something (@bead-v would know more). Shadow casting meshes above around 2Kish polys cause crashes. It's mostly the hair that's the problem, and that should be able to be completely separate static mesh, so you shouldn't have too many hard limits.

The format can store 65535 verts and 4294967295 faces per mesh. Weights are per vert, so they're also tied to the 65535 limit. It's also possible there's some limitation in the engine, but I wouldn't know about that.

[DarthParametric 3,782]

Hrm. I'm not sure that I have the specific mesh I encountered the problem with any more. I know it was a Nautolan head that I ran through Turbosmooth. But the version I dug out of my crap pile is only around 8K tris/4K verts (if it were a single mesh - it's actually split out to about half a dozen). It does seem that was only a single iteration though. I think the mush version must have been 2 iterations as kind of a "let's see what happens" experiment. But running the source low poly through that still only comes out to ~32K tris/16K verts. Maybe it was actually ye olde MDLOps choking on it.

[bead-v 251]

2 minutes ago, DarthParametric said:

Hrm. I'm not sure that I have the specific mesh I encountered the problem with any more. I know it was a Nautolan head that I ran through Turbosmooth. But the version I dug out of my crap pile is only around 8K tris/4K verts (if it were a single mesh - it's actually split out to about half a dozen). It does seem that was only a single iteration though. I think the mush version must have been 2 iterations as kind of a "let's see what happens" experiment. But running the source low poly through that still only comes out to ~32K tris/16K verts. Maybe it was actually ye olde MDLOps choking on it.

I think that's why we brushed it off to some limitation in the engine, IIRC

[Zhaboka 91]

bahahaha just seeing Juhani the Nun. Leia looks good too!

[Stormie97 253]

She is no Jedi.

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