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Making textures for "rankpc" models
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Sir W. Raleigh
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 30, 2018 7:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pirate wrote:
Yeah I’m sure your right but I do believe it’s possible to make stronger fencing opponents with the kfm files. Something is making Moltaban a harder opponent then some of the others and if you noticed basically all the movements for each nif is in those kfms. Even the facieial problem of theCaptain of the guard using miss vixen could probably be fixed by replacing certain kfms. I once used Blackbeard as a cog but he had a goofy look until I swapped kfms. Hell I even had criimanals upstairs swing by imagenery ropes. Dont put any rope swing kfms in those guys or they will fight the same as on a ship. Take them out and your fine.


Perhaps, though it seems the timings are in the exe and not the kf/kfm chains. Not sure on that yet.

The distortions on the SV-CoG swap can be fixed with some trial and error using Nifskope, its just a matter of getting the offsets for the facial "bones" right (she's a bit bug-eyed atm). (Edit: Nifskope WILL NOT show an accurate render of what you'll see in game, due to the kf issue(s) Pirate mentions. ) All animations are relative to the initial pose of the elements, and the CoG head is not so different in size from the Vixen's that distortion should be an issue once the initial position is refined.

The main problem I have with the Sea Vixen is that the head and face mesh doesn't seem to be properly parented and weighted to the PC skeleton, so the face doesn't move like it should. That'll take some time to fix but is a fairly straightforward process.

Wow, guys swingin' on phantom ropes, that must have been a sight!
Shocked

Edit: Update; I did some poking around and 'twould seem you are more on the mark than I wrt the role of the kf/kfm files. Not surprising, given that you've clearly been poking around in 'em longer than I.
To me they look like the "canned cycles" I'm familiar with from CNC code though, which admits some intriguing possibilities.
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Pirate
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 30, 2018 6:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually I didn’t think the sea vixens face looked as terrible as one might make it out to be or at least on the one I used before. True she didn’t look like somebody I would walk up to and ask for a dance but a lot of it is she is in a mans animations rather then something more suitable for her. So far I think my favorite cog replacement was Jack Racham . Didn’t have to do anything except swap nif. Some nifs are more swap friendly then others: Blackbeard and some others look great after swapping animations but not so good swapping nifs only
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parksbanyon
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 31, 2018 12:46 am    Post subject: Slow the roll Reply with quote

Had to back up to page 3 to catch up. Way to much info for this gin raddled skull. There was mention of moving the face or head dummy node to stop the joker look. Does that work? Also mention of blender 2.49b vs 2.7xx, I tried that and could never get 2.7xx to work. Blender 2.49b is beyond my patience settings so I'll stick with 3ds max. Have to say Sea Vixen with Sir W's texture rates in the top end for sure. I dropped her in as a barmaid and had the dual pistols swords and joker's grin but not to bad at all. As for kf and kfm shouldn't be kf: individual file showing a complete animation sequence kfm: file to determine which kf to use in a multiple outcome scenario. As for my humble self I'm getting my feet wet again (relearning) making the plain daug less fugly by adding her head to the UBS and changing her hair. Thinking about a long tight fitting skirt and evening gloves. Would love to see you guys mount the Sea Vixen v2 on either Mony or Rays skeleton. Still love the top 10 female pirates concept but other than Ray and Monty everybody else (pirate wise) is a 1 shot deal.
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Sir W. Raleigh
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 31, 2018 1:14 am    Post subject: Re: Slow the roll Reply with quote

parksbanyon wrote:
... There was mention of moving the face or head dummy node to stop the joker look. Does that work?


Yes, insofar as positioning. WRT the CoG, I ran the vanilla versions and saw that there are no facial anims (grimaces or whatnot) for the CoG so that part's really not a bug after all. I saw your post in another thread in which you state "Plain skeleton doesn't have the hair bones the beautiful skin needs to animate", which fairly well answered my question on that point wrt the CoG mod (i.e. CoG lacks the face bones needed to animate PC properly).

As a matter of principle though, there shouldn't be any problems with making tweaks to the translations for any "non-bone" element, as far as I know. As you explained for the case of the "footsteps" bone, those values simply establish the positioning.

Quote:
Also mention of blender 2.49b vs 2.7xx, I tried that and could never get 2.7xx to work. Blender 2.49b is beyond my patience settings so I'll stick with 3ds max.

You lucky devil. I also tried 2.7x and it wouldn't work at all for me either. Blender 2.49b absolutely is the pits, no doubt.

Quote:
Have to say Sea Vixen with Sir W's texture rates in the top end for sure. I dropped her in as a barmaid and had the dual pistols swords and joker's grin but not to bad at all. As for kf and kfm shouldn't be kf: individual file showing a complete animation sequence kfm: file to determine which kf to use in a multiple outcome scenario.


First, thank you very much for the compliment, that means a lot coming from someone with your skills with this stuff.
I'm not sure if you're asking but, that seems to be my understanding as well, and the files' structure bears that out. What's still unclear since I don't have a hex interpreter, is whether things like timings or "odds" outcomes, if such exist, reside in a kf somewhere, or are they hardcoded in the exe.

Quote:
As for my humble self I'm getting my feet wet again (relearning) making the plain daug less fugly by adding her head to the UBS and changing her hair. Thinking about a long tight fitting skirt and evening gloves. Would love to see you guys mount the Sea Vixen v2 on either Mony or Rays skeleton. Still love the top 10 female pirates concept but other than Ray and Monty everybody else (pirate wise) is a 1 shot deal.


And there was much rejoicing throughout the kingdom! Glad to hear it!

An idea I had, seeing that the skirt bones were left in place on the beautiful daughters "legs" mod, was to make a mesh or even splice one back in from the original, and make it so one could make the dds file with different areas alpha-manipulated to partial or complete transparency. 'Course, most of the rest of us castaways seem more interested in gettin' the clothes OFF the girls, rather than on.
Laughing
Thanks for stopping in!
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Sir W. Raleigh
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 01, 2018 12:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ran a Blender 'spearmint today to merge SV meshes to single object, remap to 2048 x 2048 and export direct to nif.

I put the SV's pretty_x and player_~ images into separate 1024 x 1024 areas in lower half, with upper half mostly background and/or base tone, and renamed the resulting image before import. Nif was edited in Nifskope to link new image name to both objects before Blender import.

After remapping UV and fiddling some vertices around (I suck at that, for the record) I exported nif from Blender, renamed it pc.nif and dropped into custom. No changes in Nifskope were made post-Blender.

Started game and found the nearest swordfight. Some lag seemed to occur during scene startup, but once the fight started no flaws detected in performance. Startup lag may be due to fact the texture is not "baked" and may still be drawing material data from original links. (?)

But anyway, she worked. Probably not a good idea to have too many such high-res models running about, but I'm thinking its worth considering for the "majors".
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parksbanyon
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 01, 2018 6:38 pm    Post subject: Keep up the excellent work Reply with quote

(SIR W)Perhaps, though it seems the timings are in the exe and not the kf/kfm chains. Not sure on that yet.

KF stands for kinetics file and KFM is Kinetics File Manager. The game loads things in 2 ways: at startup which remain a constant memory value thru out the game and in "variable" ram which changes thru out the game. An example, most of the text is stored in the pirates game exe and is placed in specific places in memory. Things like the civilopedia and rank text are variables which are pulled from text.ini values and therefore can be changed. Read some posts by AdamMilt, dogcigar, and jlangsdo for better in depth threads on coding and the exe.
An example: the pirate barmaid. The nif ,kf ,kfm ,and dds relationship is hard coded in the exe. The location of these files are searched for at game start and placed in memory. Because the pirate haven can not be conquered she always looks the same. U should be able to play the game stop in at a pirate haven look at the barmaid, sail away, freeze the game by hitting the windows key on ur keyboard, swap out the dds to a different version of barmaid_p.dds, reenter the game and she should be wearing the new dds.
One of the Ancients, K-Bob, was working on a work-around for textures. He wanted to use his mod manager to periodically swap the dds's she characters cloths changed every few minutes. He never got it finished tho.
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parksbanyon
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 01, 2018 6:54 pm    Post subject: BTW Reply with quote

at the beginning of this thread was the discussion that the PC glitched on custom ranks depending on what scene was running. whenever I run my Graybeard mod (which is always) it has the goatee mod and the all black uniform mod. I customized the all black by removing all the sashes and medals and using the US military grade on his collar and USN grade on the epaulets. The scenes where he is wearing rags is the same except for the goatee. Never noticed any glitch. BTW that answers my question on alpha transparency as I simply don't paint anything on the hat portion of the UVW.
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Sir W. Raleigh
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 01, 2018 8:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Parksbanyon,

What does your Greybeard mod change? Is it a modified original pc_govm or a swap? Frankly I'm off the whole govm thing right now, it's too maddening. But I'm curious to know what your mod does.

Any other nif we can change texture path without difficulty, including the governor and the daugthers. Heck, somebody's got a mod out that changes all the "extra" dancers to nude women. Try to change pc_govm.nif's texture path to anything except the original file and the model not only doesn't work but crashes the game. (Your info seems to suggest this is due to that path being hardcoded in the exe which severely limits flexibility at least wrt the pc).

But really, all I needed was to be able to see the blasted thing's textures in an editor and I STILL can't do that. I even tried stripping away everything but what should be the "base" layer (i.e. no shadow) and nothing shows. Nifskope and Blender both show textures for any other models, but not these. So ... I've given up on that one, but thanks anyway.

Regarding kf/kfm I have long thought of them as keyframe/keyframe markup, or keyframe menu, but we could call them kiwi fruit and kangaroo f__g monkey, the name is irrelevant. The issue is whether we'll ever be able to directly edit them, or are we stuck with swapping around the pre-canned variety? (Obviously, the kf's require ability to interpret and alter hex, but with the tools available these days I don't see that as a major barrier. At least, not the edit part ... figuring out what to edit is the trick).

I had some crazy notion about changing the options for the daughters intro, such that instead of having choice of refusing the dance and returning to "town", you would instead have to either dance or fight the daughter to get out. Like I said though, crazy.

Has anyone ever done animations from scratch for SMP? I've not read a peep anywhere recently to indicate anyone has, and I'm curious to find out if it's even possible. Blender, and I would presume other aps as well, has the capacity to write out kf's, but I've no data on if those files would work for SMP.

A bloke named NASSAU was posting here ten years or so ago, and seemed to have been able to do full-up animations to give the pirate crew cavalry in land battles, but that might also have been simply adapting the existing cavalry animations. Either way, there's not enough info in his posts on the process for me to know how he did it, and he's long since left port. And frankly, it's a bit depressing how little progress has been made on the issue in the ensuing decade.

So there's my daily TL/DR for y'ns to digest or discard at your discretion, it's back to the mod lab for this lad.

Say Parks, race to see who can get the prettiest plain daughter out the quickest?

Sailor

Edit: (C'mon, you had to know there'd be an edit). One other thing, in case ya do make it this far ... WHERE ON EARTH DID YOU GET THAT KATRINA MODEL????!! Holy #^%$@ dude, you been holdin' out! She is ... is ... what's the word ... @&&%! there is no word! Fess up!
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Sir W. Raleigh
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 03, 2018 5:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

parksbanyon wrote:
Would love to see you guys mount the Sea Vixen v2 on either Mony or Rays skeleton. Still love the top 10 female pirates concept but other than Ray and Monty everybody else (pirate wise) is a 1 shot deal.


Right then, here you go. As you will see, still quite rough everywhere, let alone edges, but it works.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/00en9conb1yjr7l/uber_SVIR_1.jpg?dl=0

This was result of simply renaming a copy of the SV "pc.nif" as "uber_villain.nif", which I think is also the one used for Raymondo, but not sure of that last.

As you will see from the screenshot, there's problems with the skin around the eyes and mouth, among other minor glitches. The eyes most likely result from Monty's eye-patch graphic, and the mouth is the usual mess we see with SV-NPC swaps.

I did nothing with the swords and pistols, so Monty appears sans pistol (pointing his finger and shooting anyway ofc, which was rather amusing). I'm betting that the same fixes applied for the SV-CoG swap will work here as well.

Some of the "dummies" also seem to be mislocated, but I can't really tell from the available playbacks. (I did the battle again with vanilla Monty for comparison, but my low-rent video capture ap dropped too many crucial frames to be able to make full assessment).

At any rate though, I should think that the idea of making a "Ching Shih" or the like is doable.
More screenshots in Screenshots folder along with a couple with vanilla Monty for comparison (uber_SVIR and uber_van series):

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9tlbi5g2cvjvxam/AADlUo2jz3drwNXLyiE9AjI7a?dl=0

Edit: Oops, my bad. Ran that test with the modified "SV_CoG" texture paths (sv_cog_upper and ~lower). Added a couple shots to Screenshots of what I got using the original SV (uber_SV_a1-2). As you'll see, Monty's gained a couple weapons.
Laughing
Again though, this should be easy to fix in Nifskope.


Last edited by Sir W. Raleigh on Sat Feb 03, 2018 7:26 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Pirate
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 03, 2018 6:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I like what your doing. Later when I’m ready I will attempt something the same: I might mess around a little with those kf files until her face looks a bit better.
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Sir W. Raleigh
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 03, 2018 7:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pirate wrote:
I like what your doing. Later when I’m ready I will attempt something the same: I might mess around a little with those kf files until her face looks a bit better.


Thanks. I would suggest trying to tweak some offsets in Nifskope (e.g. the face bone thing) before going to the trouble of messing with the kf's. The model appeared to animate just fine aside from the weaponry. The skin issues are undoubtedly the result of a misalignment of the UV coordinates or something, not something easily remedied in the kf I would think.

Edit: See my previous post, I made a mistake on this test but it's not enough to invalidate the result entirely.
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Sir W. Raleigh
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 03, 2018 9:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I ran into a major snag in trying to refine this latest swap. The SV nif is version 4.0.0.2, whereas the stock uber~.nif is 10.1.0.0, and Nifskope will not allow "transplant" of elements from differing versions.

Further checking shows that all of the recent mesh mods (e.g. GD, nude dancers, barmaids) are the older version, whilst all those from my recent install (from Steam) are 10.1.0.0.

This is a huge problem in this particular case because Monty (and I presume Ray as well) uses an independent nif (uber_villain_sword) for the sword and a different setup for "pistol dummy" as well.

So now I'm wondering how common these old 4.0.0.2 nifs are? Anyone? Bueller? ...
... and has anyone with an older install of SMP (i.e. with 4x's) tried the pc_cog mod I uploaded (which is 10.x)? Be nice to know if it even works for older game.
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Pirate
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 04, 2018 3:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well no doubt your smarter then me so I won't interfere with what your doing. Keep up the good work. My thinking simply was Monty's animations wouldn't look right on this nif simply because they are to differnt. I mean the texture looks decent until the animations are applied so that how I came up with that. I really don't know much about making nifs though so I take your word on it
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Sir W. Raleigh
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 04, 2018 10:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pirate wrote:
Well no doubt your smarter then me so I won't interfere with what your doing. Keep up the good work. My thinking simply was Monty's animations wouldn't look right on this nif simply because they are to differnt. I mean the texture looks decent until the animations are applied so that how I came up with that. I really don't know much about making nifs though so I take your word on it


Pfft, brother please ... don't sell yourself short. There's no way I'd have the patience to seek out, modify and rename all the files involved in your Beta girls mod. Kudos, sir.

My background in CAD/CNC gives me some basis for understanding the essentials of 3d modeling, yet I've only been doing the latter for a short time. And I've only had this latest (for me) version of SMP for just over a month now.
So you've undoubtedly got more recent experience with how the game works now, and I hope you continue to share any insights you may have.

It may well turn out that the answer lies somewhere in a fusion of our two perspectives, or three I should say, in the event p-banyon hangs in.
I've found myself wrong on several points just in this thread alone, after all.
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Pirate
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 04, 2018 11:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When it comes to nifs Parksbanyon knows alot more then I do. In fact I know almost nothing nor have I pretended to. I have worked with animations a little as in that beta girls mod if you only use the bd nif then it won't work right. It has to have the bd animationons as well so the easiest way to do that is renaming the kfm files and so making it unnecessary to rename tons of kfs. Sorry if I sounded frustrated in my last response. I can assure you I wasn't and I guess I just didn't know what else I could say since I know nothing about making nifs. My opinion and its only that is these animations kind of like pull and tug on these nifs and these original nifs are designed for that certain tug and pull that gives them movement so to speak. Swapping nifs and you did that with the cog and the results of those movements and the bones or whatever the heck makes the nif capable of moving wont match up leaving less then dis arable results. You may could move them bones in a way that makes the nif and kfs jive together but it would almost seem to me like that would be distorting the nif in another way. Anyway rest assure I believe in you in being a good modder with a better education then mine and I tend to speak up because I'm just geared that way I suppose. Keep up the good work.
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