Will it be possible that people can Model/skin PIECES of a skin for character customisation? Just a head, torso or legs?
Im actually wondering the same thing...at first look it doesnt seem that easy.
I think it depends on what you mean. If you mean just adding a new set of legs to, say, the female twi'lek model, then probably not. You'd need to replace the entire model just to get a pair of new legs or a head.
I've looked into that myself and found out how it was done and anyone willing to take the time to acutally make a customization model is (IMHO) CRAZY! I thought editing for JO was bad...RAVEN IS CRAZY!
Check this out. If you import the female twi'lek (just my running example) model, you'll notice a big huge ugly mesh. Each part of the model is there in it's proper place. For each head you can select when customizing, you'll see that mesh where her head is...so there are 3 heads there. Each one named with a letter signifying order...so the first selectable head is heada, the second is headb, the third: headc, etc... Same would go for legs and torso (and maybe other body parts too, but according to the customization gui there's no option to pick custom hands or arms; they could be part of the torso I assume if labeled right, they may just appear there). All caps should use the same name scheme...would have been nice for Raven to just use one set of caps for all different model parts; just keep chalking up the poly count...we don't need model detail...just lots of tags and caps and stuff (pardon the sasrcasm, but despite a pair of really good games I feel one extra polygon is wasted space, let alone a plethora just for hit detection).
So basically, if you want to extend the existing set of customizeable models, you'd have to edit the source model and add your own features...then export the entire model and recompile it. I feel pain for those wanting to create entire races that they could use.
My thoughts exactly:
That's what i've done for AOTC's Jango model, we kept adding new surfaces on top of the base mesh and use .surf files to turn on and off for variation...not too complicated but it took longer than a standard character.
The thought of messing with a glm from JA gives me a headache! :p
Unless the provided XSI files still have their weight info and new stuff can be added onto it then re-exported?
They aren't that crazy. It was probably the only way they could do it without doing dynamically assembled bodies (causing CPU load to go thru the roof and would require some heavy model ghoul2 code rewriting to allow animations to play across dynamically constructed models.)
What surprises me is that the turned off surfaces don't cause CPU load to any forseeable amount.
Why would they? They aren't being rendered, and it doesn't take a terrible amount of memory to store a few thousand vertices.
Hmm....how do you measure the performace difference? Are there tools you can use?
Originally posted by Psynex
Hmm....how do you measure the performace difference? Are there tools you can use?
Well, the normal way is to turn on the fps and watch the difference when you change something. I think the command is cg_fps 1.
Why would they? They aren't being rendered, and it doesn't take a terrible amount of memory to store a few thousand vertices.
Oh, I see. I wasn't sure if they were being rendered or not. :)
I apologize in advance for not reading the whole thread, but......
If you look in Jaconfig (base dir) you will find paremeters for your playermodel, it is possible here to select differnt heads on differnt bodies etc...but species doesnt matter..YOu can then spawn this by typing npc spawn player...
Hope that gives some ideas
I'm pretty sure that'd not correct. You can't put one species head/torso/legs on another without changing the actual model.