Tutorial How to Remap Carth's eyelashes :D

Transcription

1 Tutorial How to Remap Carth's eyelashes :D We will need: 1.The Kotor Tool you can find here: 2.MDLops here: 3.Gmax, if you are new to 3d modelling you should download the tutorials and help files too: 4.Nwnmax for Gmax: 5.Taina's Replacer Once everything is installed and working let's create a folder for the project...i'll call it CarthHead. Next we extract Carth's head model from the game to CarthHead folder...open Kotor Tools and select: Kotor I ->BIFs->party.bif->Aurora Model->p_carthh.mdl then press the button Extract File and save the file on CarthHead folder. Extract the.mdx file and save in the same folder. Kotor I->BIFs->party.bif->Aurora Model->p_carthh.mdx

2 To extract the texture, there are two texture files available, but only one is used by the game: Kotor I->ERFs->TexturePacks->swpc_tex_tpa.erf->P->p_carthH01.tpc If you double click over it, the image viewer will show the image, press the Extract file ans select Save as tga, and save it in the same folder. Now in CarthHead folder we have three files p_carthh.mdl, p_carthh.mdx and p_carthh01.tga. We are going to convert the p_carthh.mdl from binary to ascii file, using MDLops. Start MDLops, activate Kotor 1 button, and press Select file button, and select the file p_carthh.mdl. I usually let the Extract animations checked, I have seen some tutorials that says it should be unchecked though... Then press the Read and Write model, it will create a p_carthh-ascii.mdl file inside the CarthHead folder. Now we start Gmax, remember to start Gmax not using its icon, but using Nwmax's icon, it will start the Snooper script too, without it you will have to paste the text from the gmax listener and copy on a text file to export the model.

3 Ok, Gmax will start and the Nwmax roll-out will open. To import the model we select in the Nwmax roll-out MDL Loading, in the file name we use the browse button to select our p_carthh-ascii.mdl file, in Options check Import Geom Only and then press Import button. The model and a lot of other stuff will appear in the screen. Minimize the Nwmax roll-out. And now the fun begins :D I usually clean a little the screen before start working... I click on the 3d perspective window and in the Max/Min icon, in the bottom right of the screen. It will maximize the 3d perspective window.

4 If you press the V on your keyboard or click in the arc rotate icon, at the bottom right of the screen, a yellow circle will appear and you will be able to rotate the view clicking and moving the mouse. Those buttons at the bottom right of the screen are used to manipulate the view, if you rest the mouse over them you will get their names... Zoom, Zoom All (Zoom on all windows at same time), Zoom selected, Zoom Extents all (Zoom selected in all windows) Field-of-view (another zoom), Pan, Arc Rotate...they are very useful! To undo something you did wrong press CTRL-Z.

5 Here in the 3d window we have the painted head's mesh which is the model that we see in the game. There are some wire blue boxes, they are called helpers, they are used by the game to place other models or visual effects on the head's model. We should not change them, and we will use the bigger one at the base of the head to export the model. There are some white solid polygonal forms and small cubes, they are the bones, it means that if you move or rotate them, the head's mesh will deform or move to follow the movement. We will not use them either, they are only used on gmax when we need to fix the bones deformations. And there are some white wire tetrahedron and icosahedron forms, they are bones too, but they are used to place the solid bones. So let's select only the meshes and hide everything else that won't be used, on the Select by name icon, on the top tool bar in

6 the screen. It will open the Select Object window check the Display Sub tree this will show a tree showing the hierarchy between the meshes, which are linked. In the list we will select the names, with the SHIFT key pressed: Head, Hair, Tongue, TeethUa01, TeethLa01, eyellid, eyerlid, eyela, eyera. And then press the select button. Now with those meshes selected we click with the right mouse button in the 3d window and select Hide Unselected in the red menu that will appear. Now we have only the meshes that we see in the game... those are the only meshes we can modify, as we are going to use Taina's Replacer we can only move vertex and remap. Now we select the Head mesh, by clicking on it with the left mouse button, or using the Select by Name icon. And with the Head selected click on the Modify icon on the Max roll-out. Under the Modify icon there is the name of the Mesh, in this case Head, and the Modifier List, with the Skin and Editable Mesh modifiers. Those modifiers are applied to the mesh to modify it somehow, using the Editable mesh modifier we can move, delete, create vertices in the mesh, it is here that we model the it. The skin modifier is used to apply the bones to the mesh, and to change the influence of the bones over the vertices of the mesh. We shouldn't change the order that the modifiers are applied on the mesh.

7 Now to change the Uvmap we need to apply the Unwrap UVW modifier on the Head mesh. To do that we select the Editable Mesh modifier, because we want apply the Unwrap UVW modifier over the Editable Mesh one, when you select it a warning will appear, just say yes. And we click on the arrow beside the Modifier list, a big list of modifiers will appear and we select the Unwrap UVW in the UV Coordinate Modifiers. Now the Unwrap UVW modifier will appear between Editable Mesh and Skin. Clicking in the + sign beside the Unwrap UVW modifier will appear a Select Face, click on it to activate, now we can select the faces (i.e. the polygons) in the model and see where it is on the UV map, to see the model's faces press F4. Let's now open the UV map, pressing the button Edit in the Parameters below the list of modifiers. A new window will open, with the texture used by the model in the background and the vertices over it. If you want to see only the faces selected on the model click in the triangle in the bottom tool bar of the Edit UVW window. If you click again it will show all the model's faces. In this window you have some tools to manipulate the view at the right bottom of the window... you have the Pan (icon hand), Zoom, Zoom Selection, Zoom all.

8 Now we select in the model's mesh the faces we want to remap... in this case it is his eyelashes, so let's select it...and look where they are at the uv map. To select more than one face press the CTRL key while clicking on the faces, to remove faces click on it with the ALT key pressed. The selected faces will appear with a red border and there is a yellow plane around it, this yellow plane is used if you want to make a new uvmap from the faces selected, we won't use it.

9 Now, with some faces of his eyelashes selected in the model, we go in the Edit UVW window we press the triangle icon this will show where those faces are located in the uvmap, We click again in the triangle icon and now we press the move icon at the left in the upper tool bar. And we select all the vertices that belong to the eyelashes, by pressing the left mouse button and creating a square around them, the selected vertices will turn red. Then we move them to a unused spot. We can rotate the selection using the second icon on the left of the upper tool bar. There are some other useful tools beside it, like scale and mirror.

10 Now we can close the Edit UVW window, as other meshes uses the same texture, it is a good idea see if they are not using the same spot, to do that you need deselect the Unwrap UVW modifier, double clicking over it, and select other mesh on the 3d window, add the Unwrap UVW modifier and open the map. There are some meshes that have different modifiers applied to it, like his strand of hair which have a Aurora Flex and Aurora Trimesh modifiers, those should not be modified, and the Unwrap UVW modifier should be placed above the Editable Mesh.

11 Once all the remap is done, we must remember in what meshes we moved the vertices of the uvmap, because it will be asked by Taina's Replacer, in this tutorial we changed only the UV coordinates of the Head mesh. Now we are going to export the model, but we need see the helpers' meshes, so we right click the 3d window and select the Unhide all from the red menu. Before exporting we need a new folder to put the exported model, otherwise it will overwrite our original file that we will still be required. So we create a GmaxExport folder inside the CarthHead folder. Now we select the big box at the base of the head. In the Gmax roll-out, under the modifier list in the MDL Base Parameters, change the export dir using the browse button and selected the GmaxExport folder we just created. Now we press the Export Geometry only button. A message about Sanity Check will appear, just click yes to proceed. Now in the GmaxExport folder there is a p_carthh.mdl file that Gmax exported, we will change the name of the file to p_carthhascii_new.mdl and copy it in the CarthHead folder. We can now close Gmax, if you want, you can save the file to use it later. Start Taina's Replacer, and click the Open Ascii Models button it will ask to select the old.mdl file, the one we exported from the game file and converted to ascii, in this case the p_carthhascii.mdl. And then will ask for the new file we just changed p_carth-ascii_new.mdl.

12 It will give you an error External exception EEFACE click in the ok button and do it again. Now it will show two lists, one for vertex coordinates, if we remodelled the meshes we need to check the meshes that was changed here. As we changed none, we need to uncheck all of them The other list is the Texture Coordinates, our uvremap, here we will check only the head mesh. Now we press the Start Replacing button, we will do that twice, one for the.mdl file and the other for the.mdx file. So the first time it will asks you about the old binary file, you select p_carthh.mdl from the CarthHead folder and the new one will be created, give the name p_carthhnew.mdl. Now we do that again for the.mdx file, press the Start Replacing button and change the file type to MDX, select p_carthh.mdx from the CarthHead folder when he asks for the old file, and the new file change the name to p_carthnew.mdx. Close Taina's Replacer, we have the two new files, the p_carthhnew.mdl and p_carthh-new.mdx inside the CarthHead folder.

13 We copy them to the override folder (kotor 1 folder, the same can be done for Kotor2) and change their name to p_carthh.mdl and p_carthh.mdx, the best way to see if it worked is painting the texture (p_carthh01.tga) with a bright colour in the new position of the eyelashes and see if it is coloured in the game, but remember to make a backup file first, and inside the game check to see if only the eyelashes are painted with that colour! Hehe... poor Carth!! That's it! Good luck Kha :D