weirderwest 2 Posted November 29, 2019 (edited) Hello! I'm using DarthParametric's excellent work on importing Kira's SWTOR head to KOTOR2 to quickly (or so I thought) make myself a custom exile head, since I always had a very particular vision for her appearance and would like to do a KOTOR2 replay - I have mucked around with extracting files from the game code via KotorTool in the past, but ultimately wanted the higher-poly version that DarthParametric had made (+ a non-symmetry-reliant UV map, since this character has asymmetrical scarring, etc.) (EDIT: I have no intention of ever releasing this mod for anyone else's use, since it's highly specific to my exile - I hope that it's alright that I'm building off of someone else's mod!!) So! I read a few tutorials and made an .ascii file from the existing .mdl files with MDLOps; I imported that into Gmax, edited the head and hair a bit, and then exported back to .ascii, rewrote it to .mdl & .mdx with MDLOps, and popped it into my overwrite folder. However. There's clearly something I'm missing in the exporting/importing/editing, as I've now done this routine threeish times over the past week, and have grown increasingly frustrated that No Matter What, I've somehow mucked up the animations/how they're applied to the head somewhere in Gmax, resulting in abominations. Photos below show some of my previous attempts 😕 (texture & modeling are both WIPs, ofc, and I've now started From Scratch on the modeling like three times) I think that the mesh is getting disconnected from its anchor points (for lack of a better descriptor) when I use the "convert to editable object" option in Gmax (since i've tried importing/exporting both with and without using that option, and it only acts up when I use that), but I don't know how to actually edit the mesh without using that. Is there any advice that anyone can pass on for working with models directly in Gmax, or for importing/exporting? I'm not quite familiar enough with KOTOR2's guts to solve this problem on my own, I think. Thank you! Edited November 29, 2019 by weirderwest Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DarthParametric 3,777 Posted November 29, 2019 She looks great. You should play like that. At a guess, I would suggest you have destroyed the skin weights on some or all of the meshes. That last pic is definitely an instance of what should be skinned meshes no longer deforming due to animation. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
weirderwest 2 Posted November 29, 2019 2 minutes ago, DarthParametric said: She looks great. You should play like that. At a guess, I would suggest you have destroyed the skin weights on some or all of the meshes. That last pic is definitely an instance of what should be skinned meshes no longer deforming due to animation. We love a floating eye & mouth with hair & skin floating motionless behind them. Iconic. And yeah, I was wondering! I'm used to Maya, so trying to very quickly acquire a functional knowledge of Gmax hasn't included me learning how it deals with weighting at all. I was following a tutorial for something that wasn't quite the same as what I was working on that mentioned that I should import/export with geometry only, but should I disregard that and use the Model+Anim import/export option instead? Thank you for the original mod, by the way!! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DarthParametric 3,777 Posted November 29, 2019 There's no animation on the model, so that won't make any difference. Post your ASCII. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
weirderwest 2 Posted November 29, 2019 4 minutes ago, DarthParametric said: There's no animation on the model, so that won't make any difference. Post your ASCII. Ah!!! You mentioning the weights made me remember something I was doing without thinking about it, but I just figured out what I was doing wrong and my test run seems to be working properly! Which is more than I can say for the past 10ish test runs. Thank you! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
weirderwest 2 Posted November 29, 2019 13 hours ago, weirderwest said: Ah!!! You mentioning the weights made me remember something I was doing without thinking about it, but I just figured out what I was doing wrong and my test run seems to be working properly! Which is more than I can say for the past 10ish test runs. Thank you! & here we are. I was overriding existing skin weighting when I 'converted to editable object' - it seems really silly now that I know what it was, but thank you all the same! I'm now fully ready for a KOTOR2 replay :^) 2 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
