The state of "all race" PC/NPC model part/robe upgrades?

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Figured it would just be easier to ask here.  I have some time and I want to play around with re-mapping some nicer body/clothing textures onto existing player or NPC models and maybe even wind up convering them to PLT.  Since I haven't had time to check into the community much in the last year, I'm wondering what the state of "all race" model improvements is right now.  Publicly available stuff which can be modified without someone flipping out, obviously.  I know that there have been either attempts to upgrade human male and female and some robe work for nude/form-fitting skins, but the ones I'm aware of aren't expansive enough to cover all races, fat and normal.  The only person I can recall who ever hinted they'd done that was OldMansBeard, but I'm almost certain he never released them.

 

The reason I ask is the current player models/NPC models are pretty damned rough and if I have to map higher-res images onto those....well, I might try that anyway.  But because it's a time intensive task (especially if it winds up involving part-based models), I'd just rather get it "right" the first time, if there are better models to work with.

 

Thank you very much!  Anything, even "Nope, don't think that's been done" is helpful.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

Project Q just incorporated Gunner's Body Rebuild/Retexture (Male & Female, All Races & Phenos) package of models. They would probably be a good place for you to start with your project.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Wow!  Yep, that's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for.  Thank you very much!  Now, to dig into these guys and see how many triangles we're talking about....

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               

I think it's more of a problem that the models are so low poly than that the textures are too small. That's something Gunner fixed for two models, but it would be nice to have higher poly models of all heads, especially to get rid of the 'bearded lady effect' (the chins are so low poly that because of the smoothing they all look dark and beard-like).

I know The Barbarian made overrides for heads, but though they are nice heads, they don't really work as overrides because the style is too different from the original heads and the skin is too smooth and often has even less detail than in the original textures.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

@Pstemarie - Quick question for you: Did Q incorporate Gunner's hands and feet or stick with what they were already using?  I think Gunner's hands might be overkill and I kind of prefer Q's.  I haven't taken a look at the feet yet.  Beyond questions about those parts, were there any parts Q didn't use and, if so, why?  

 

I think it's more of a problem that the models are so low poly than that the textures are too small. That's something Gunner fixed for two models, but it would be nice to have higher poly models of all heads, especially to get rid of the 'bearded lady effect' (the chins are so low poly that because of the smoothing they all look dark and beard-like).

I know The Barbarian made overrides for heads, but though they are nice heads, they don't really work as overrides because the style is too different from the original heads and the skin is too smooth and often has even less detail than in the original textures.

 

Coming in from a very long break, I'm admittedly rusty.  I agree.  You're right.  There's also the matter of, uh, I believe it's the automatic mip-mapping that's done unless a TXI forces it off.  I'll have to check into some of that and how much it really affects image quality.  While I described what I'm playing around with as "hi-res textures", there's a bit more going on; an additional bit of cleverness the community will hopefully find useful in creating clothing/skins.  If everything works like I think it will, anyway.

 

 Looking over the PLTs in the HotU content, at 512x512 most of them are more than decent, resolution-wise.  The content I'm working with (right now, anyway) are solid 1024x1024 whole-body images and the detail from a 1024x1024 PLT/DDS over 512x512 is probably not worth it.  Probably.

 

Can you explain what models Gunner fixed?  Are you talking about heads?  I agree about the low poly causing the beards, but isn't it the case that the original Bioware content only got the awful beard shading after the models were converted to ASCII and edited?  Or has the beard thing always been there?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

I took the entire package. The hands and feet that they replaced were actually the hands LoW had done for Arbor Falls - and the second set to be used with Q. Although the new hands might be "somewhat" overkill, they still seem to perform better than the hands they replaced - they also have less clipping issues.

 

Gunner's package doesn't modify any heads. I have been slowly reworking the Bioware heads for Q - the ones I can't use by TheBarbarian (for the reason Zwerk stated), using the tessellate modifier and then rounding out the chins manually. The ones I've done so far don't look too bad with Gunner's bodies, but they still aren't as good as the KotR heads or the other hi-poly heads in Q. 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Frush O'Suggill]

               

I started going through the Bioware elf heads, adding a liitle bit of tessellation (tension set at 5), and only had to adjust 2 verts to get rid of the chin shadow. It almost looks like the heads were designed at this higher poly count. I've never had any luck posting pictures on these boards, but there's a shot of Aluvian below... It's a subtle difference, but the model shadows much better.

 
http://imgur.com/Wwh3dSI

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_GunnersaurusRex]

               

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with, Old Time Radio. Unfortunately I've not had much time for NWN these past couple of months as been busy with moving house and starting a new job. But yeah, as it says on the project page, feel free to use/modify my models any way you want. If you'd find it useful to have the original .blend files (or the Photoshop ones before I merged the layers) let me know and I'll send you them.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Thanks, Gunner!  This is actually looking pretty sweet for what I have in mind.  Two questions (well, two and a half) that I can think of right now:

 

1. Do you happen to recall the parts which were made individually as opposed to the ones that were through the armor scaler?  Once I get the right UV mapping for, say, a male chest, I'm going to want to save off those UV maps and apply them to as many of the same chest as possible.  If two chests have a different number of vertices, that process won't work.

 

2. Speaking of armor scaling, which process did you use- the NWNArmory .exe or the script (I believe there's one) in NWMax?

 

3. This last question is more meta: The way you released the parts is very nice to play with because they're freshly modeled with lots of rings if I need to deform stuff, like puff out part of a bicep to replicate a rolled-up shirt sleeve.  If I can get the UV mapping to work, I'm probably going to try to reduce some of the triangles by merging some of the coplaner faces-  I think that's the term, where four triangles could be reduced down to two because the angles between them aren't that different.  Did you avoid doing that for any reason related to lighting problems over the model or anything like that?  I'm definitely not complaining, I just don't want to optimize them and hose something because I don't understand the implications.

 

Thank you very much for contributing this work to the community!   '>

 

Right now, the files I have from your Vault submission should be more than adequate.  Thank you for the offer of more materials!

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Malagant]

               

The new Q hand work better IMO, but the body parts clip like mad on a lot of the robes, especially on females in the waist / hip area because of how they fit together. There's quite a few impressions of Prince's Butt-Out pants from the 1991 VMAs.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

The new Q hand work better IMO, but the body parts clip like mad on a lot of the robes, especially on females in the waist / hip area because of how they fit together. There's quite a few impressions of Prince's Butt-Out pants from the 1991 VMAs.

 

Hmm. There shouldn't be a lot of clipping going on with the robes, since Gunner's work on the pelvis only replaces models 001 and 002. For most of the robes the pelvis should be hidden. I'll have to go through them and see what adjustments need to be made.

 

[EDIT]

 

Can you post a screen shot? I've just cycled through 15 different robes and cannot see any clipping occurring in the waist/hip area. I was assuming what you were talking about was the pelvis model showing through the robe skin but, when you look at parts_robe.2da, for all but a dozen robes, the pelvis is hidden.

 

Furthermore, robe models typically have their own geometry for various body parts that, when the item is equipped, replaces the body part geometry chosen at character creation. Therefore, if any clipping does occur, it is directly tied to the robe model and would have nothing to do with Gunner's work.

 

[/EDIT]

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Malagant]

               

I should have been slightly more specific and said lower torso instead of waist / hip which I should have figured most would think pelvis part. I get that most of it is avoided by using something other than the base body part so it's not something most people would notice often, and easily circumvented by simply not using them (I'm not at home so sorry on the screenshot issue until later). I'm just noticed on some, were one to use the base top for females with something like the Roman skirts or any waist-down robes, they don't mesh well. That extended lower front waist likes to poke through with breathing (lower back as well). The butt issue was skirts, IIRC.


I was really just pointing out that unless one were inclined to redo every previously existing popular robe model, a discerning eye is probably needed to accommodate them when creating the new parts.


I do enjoy your work, so I apologize that it sounded like a larger issue than it was.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Malagant]

               

I just remembered a specific one: Lisa's fancy dress that was used in the Hex Coda module for Six O'Klok. The buttocks and left thigh poke through (74 in the toolset, I think).

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Verilazic]

               

There are some belt-based skirts that definitely could have an issue, since they're not robes, and so the builder would have to know to remove the pelvis body part manually in order to avoid clipping.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

Thanks for the additional info, Malagant. Now I know more of what to look for. It's not really that hard to fix either - just a few tweaks to the models and they should be all set. Definitely something else to add to my list of projects since I'm not willing to give up the higher poly bodies and return to the blocky look of the Bioware base models.