Stormie97 253 Posted July 20, 2022 I'm delighted to finally be able to open this thread. Here, I'll be posting updates on my latest project. I've been posting pictures on the KOTOR Discord and in status updates here on DS for a while. Now I'm finally stopping the teasing and will instead post new stuff here. After my Juhani mod, I was inspired by Koru's work on creatng high poly head models for K1. I felt that the aliens in the Kotor games were in dire need for a makeover, and after much much trying and failing, I have learned modern techniques used in 3D character creation. I was able to apply it for no other than Master Vandar, the first entry in this modding series. Animation.mp4 My objective with this project was to create a character from scratch that would fit the vanilla rigs to facilitate the process when it comes to porting the 3D model to Kotor. I started off from a bunch of very simple objects. Spoiler From there I slowly formed the main shapes, and refined the details until I had a high poly sculpture I was happy with. Spoiler I then retopoligized the model. In plain English, this means I created a low-poly version of the character on top of the sculpted one. In the process I would ensure that the geometry was suitable model for the game engine. The final model has about 12k triangles, including 3k for the hair cards. Spoiler For the texturing part, I used Substance Painter. I baked the details from the high poly sculpt onto the low poly retopologised geometry into a set of textures called mesh bakes. Within Substance Painter, these are used to drive the procedural creation of layers of color information (but not only), mostly using masks. Very similar to the way Photoshop works. Spoiler This looks really flat though. Remember that Odyssey doesn't use much more than the diffuse texture (i.e. the base color information). To create a sense of depth, I've used the mesh bakes like the ambient occlusion and curvature maps to add shadows and highlight to the texture. Other bakes were used as well to add even more fake lighting. Final highlights and shadows were then painted by hand. Spoiler The eyes were fully painted by hand in 3DCoat. Also, I stole a neat trick from this 80LV post to add some depth to the eyes. The iris has been sunk in, while the geometry for the cornea was cut separate from the rest of the eyes and features a painted reflection. Spoiler That's it! After some preparing, I then brought the model over to 3DS Max to deal with the skin weights. As I had planned ahead for the model to fit pretty much perfectly to the vanilla rig, I had no real issues in the weighting process. Spoiler Turntable.mp4 Pictures and gifs are nice, but discovering the model in 3D is much better. Check it out on Sketchfab here: https://skfb.ly/ow9Mn Make sure to zoom in to evaluate all the details in the texture ! I hope you find this post was insightful! I'll include details on the next pieces of the project in the next messages of this thead at a later stage! 7 3 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Effix 532 Posted July 20, 2022 Really amazing 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
StellarExile 53 Posted July 21, 2022 So who's next? The Duros? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Zhaboka 91 Posted September 25, 2022 This model is incredible! The hair texturing is the one spot where it falls down for me – it's too white and spaghetti-stringy and sparse. But other than that, this is a AAA-ready model and skin! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Stormie97 253 Posted December 19, 2022 This update is long-overdue, but here goes. I'm aware there are some issues and areas of improvement for Vandar which I intend to address soon. Meanwhile, I have been busy with the next entry in this mod series. Here's a preview for the Rodian: Finding quality references for this one was difficult, so I mainly based the design on the Battlefront 2 Greedo model by Dice. This is still WIP of course, though fairly advanced. Pants will be tweaked before moving onto skinning. Feedback is, as always, very much welcome. 3 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DarthParametric 3,782 Posted December 19, 2022 I assume you are going to swap to the standard human rig? Doesn't seem to have the giant-sized hands of the KOTOR model. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Stormie97 253 Posted December 19, 2022 53 minutes ago, DarthParametric said: I assume you are going to swap to the standard human rig? Doesn't seem to have the giant-sized hands of the KOTOR model. Yeah I want to give a shot, the big question mark though is how the mouth area will look like in talking animations. If it doesn't turn out right, I'll resize everything to use the vanilla Rodian rig. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DarthParametric 3,782 Posted December 19, 2022 You could leave it on the human rig and just do a local talk override animation to get a suitable amount of snout movement. How much does the vanilla one move anyway? 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Stormie97 253 Posted December 27, 2022 After some in-game testing, I'm happy to report that the mouth area works just as expected. Here's a preview I've posted yesterday. With all 5 texture variations (see below) ready, I'm now moving closer to release. Only need to tweak a few skin weights and set up the TSL Patcher! Spoiler Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DarthParametric 3,782 Posted December 27, 2022 I wonder if you should swap the clothing for the last two. The current arrangement doesn't seem to have enough contrast with the skin colour. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Stormie97 253 Posted December 27, 2022 26 minutes ago, DarthParametric said: I wonder if you should swap the clothing for the last two. The current arrangement doesn't seem to have enough contrast with the skin colour. Yeah the orange jumpsuit one lacked contrast with the skin. I've adjusted that version now. Spoiler Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
