How do I change the appearance of this bard?

[Legacy_Vivienne L]

               I have found these excellent animations by Tom Banjo on the vault namely this:

nwvault.ign.com/View.php

and this:

nwvault.ign.com/View.php


I know that CEP has included the social drinking phenotype with instructions how to change the appearance and such and I think that the visualeffects 2da in the CEP top hak include the relevant content from Tom Banjo for the playing instrument animation but if I use his hak, I can't seem to be able to change the appearance of the bard. I know that only male humans can play the animation but I'd like to be able to at least change his appearance.  And if I don't use the relevant hak, my bard just stands there with the lute or guitar and doesn't play the animation despite the proper scripts being applied to him. 
Thanks to everybody who helps me in advance!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par vivienne.l, 19 mars 2012 - 07:06 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Vivienne L]

               Maybe I should rephrase my question.... Am I going to have to change this bards appearance by fiddling with mdls and such or will just changing something in some 2da do the trick?  There might even be some way of getting the bard animation in the CEP (as there's so much content in there) that I just don't know about.
As far as I can tell, technically, this should be working with all the male humans with the appropriate script, as the visualeffects.2da of the Cep includes the appropriate lines.
But the tbx_bard.hak includes mdl files, are these mdl files responsible for the animation?
               
               

               

                     Modifié par vivienne.l, 20 mars 2012 - 06:54 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_WebShaman]

               When you make a reference to appearance, what exactly do you mean?  What he is wearing, or do you mean the actual face, etc?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Vivienne L]

               Yes, I mean it would be nice if I could dress him in clothes of my choice and change the head (just changing the head makes the NPC's look different from each other), for instance using the dynamic human model I could change the head, the skin and hair color etc.!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par vivienne.l, 20 mars 2012 - 02:52 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Well, after looking this over briefly, I think one way to do it would be to start by extracting a copy of the file pmh0.mdl to your override directory.  You can extract it using something like NWN Explorer Reborn and search for that file in the tree list (ctrl-s) under the section "NWN: HotU Patch Data".  Be sure to export it in ASCII, of course.  Then edit it in a text editor and change the line "setsupermodel pmh0 a_ba" to "setsupermodel pmh0 a_ba_bard".  Make sure a_ba_bard.mdl is in your override directory.

This will hook the animation into the chain of animations which are loaded with the male player and you should be able to get them to play it by using the ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM2 scripting constant.

If the custom looping #2 animation slot already has something in it that you want to keep, you just need to edit the a_ba_bard.mdl ASCII file and search for "custom2start", "custom2lp" and "custom2end", changing the number two to whichever slot you want the animation to reside in (1-20) and then use the appropriate animation constant to play it.

That should allow human male players and dynamic NPC's to play the animation .  It's just one way to do it.  There are other ways, but I think that's the simplest.  I haven't gone through these steps myself so I may be missing something.  If you need more help and I don't respond to a message in this thread, just PM me. 
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 20 mars 2012 - 05:41 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Vivienne L]

               Thank you, you've been very helpful, OldTimeRadio, at least now I know which files to start fiddling with; i will follow your directions and see what happens and keep the results posted here.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Vivienne L]

               I have done what you said but I still couldn't change the bard's head or his clothes.... and placing the altered pmh0.mdl file in the overrride folder changed my PC into a stick figure without any animations... LOL (he looked funny just floating along without doing the walking or running animation)... and it does seem I've bitten more than I can chew meddling with these files!  But I'll still keep trying, and keep my progress posted here!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

vivienne.l wrote...

I have done what you said but I still couldn't change the bard's head or his clothes.... and placing the altered pmh0.mdl file in the overrride folder changed my PC into a stick figure without any animations... LOL (he looked funny just floating along without doing the walking or running animation)... and it does seem I've bitten more than I can chew meddling with these files!  But I'll still keep trying, and keep my progress posted here!

Well, just to be clear, you'll never be able to change that specific bard's head or clothes.  He's a non-dynamic model.  The changes I indicated should allow you to make a dynamic male human NPC or a male human player perform those animations.

Make sure you edited pmh0.mdl and changed the line "setsupermodel pmh0 a_ba" to "setsupermodel pmh0 a_ba_bard".  There shouldn't be quotes and there should be no .mdl extension at the end of the file name you reference in pmh0.mdl text file.  As in, it should not read "setsupermodel pmh0 a_ba_bard.mdl".  The stick figure floating around means it can't find the animations and what you're seeing is the plain model with no anims.

At least the following files should exist in your override directory and be named as such:
pmh0.mdl
a_ba_bard.mdl

If your PC is still frozen, zip up both of those files in your override, upload them to www.mediafire.com and PM me the link to download.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Vivienne L]

               Thank you very much for your help!! Just on a whim, I tried out Project Q's base module (Sadly I only found out about Project Q these last few weeks) and found a musician in there with his phenotype set as "social". I know that the tavern patron in CEP uses this phenotype and to change his appearance we change the phenotype to normal, then change his appearance and dress him however we want, then change the phenotype back to social again! So I imported the musician with his scripts into my module, then changed his appearance as described above and voila! It works! I did have to change the script a little to match the right line in CEP visualeffects.2da but that was not very hard! I'll probably have to tweak the scripts and his conversation for him to only play at certain times or whatever....
The information you gave above will probably come in use if I try my hand at some other animation!
This is the new bard with his altered appearance:

http://social.biowar.../1325667/191553
               
               

               

                     Modifié par vivienne.l, 22 mars 2012 - 07:21 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Nice!  Glad you got it working.

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