For a bit of fun, I've started reskinning characters from the LEGO Star Wars game.

You can check progress & developments in this fbtb.net thread (http://www.fbtbforums.net/viewtopic.php?t=5093).

There's a more general (scripting, model swapping) LEGO SW modding thread here (http://www.fbtbforums.net/viewtopic.php?t=2830).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v194/jaepee/bfskin10.jpg)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v194/jaepee/bespinleia.jpg)

Unfortunately there are some limitations with what can be done, depending on the whim of the programmer who made the UVmaps for the skin wraps over the models. (The Leia above should have brown arms, but the skinmap uses the same colour block for the torso base and the arms, sadly, and that's the only model with suitable hair to convert Padme to Bespin Leia).

Still, plenty of scope to get reasonably close approximations of existing official minifigs, and of course endless possibilities to make custom minifigs working within the limitations of the skin meshes.

I will be writing a tutorial and including the texture extraction/insertion scripts in a Lego Star Wars Mod tools.zip in the next month or so.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v194/jaepee/obiwan-ot.jpg)

Unfortunately I can't colour the hip piece independently of the torso due to the skinmap pulling the textures from both pieces on this model from the same area of the skin. It should be dark brown.

I may try fudging it and adding a brown strip to the bottom of the torso front decal & see if that looks any good. And I don't think he ever came with a cape in the LEGO Sets (but he looks better in the game with one regardless). All in all, not too bad...

they're great, if only I had lego stars wars on pc...

OH MY GOD THEY ARE BRILLIANT.

The good news is that I have recently received permission from the developers/publishers/lucasarts to mod the game (the EULA doesn't actually allow it). The condition is that mods be posted to lucasfiles.com.

I am currently writing a 'LEGO Star Wars' skinning tutorial so you can all have a go at skinning soon enough - here's the character I talk you through in the tutorial...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v194/jaepee/tiepilot.jpg)

I'll keep you posted when it goes live...

What I actually need is to find some scripting whizz to write an installer/uninstaller program / utility that will allow the mods to overwrite the existing character files, shunting the overwritten one to a 'safe' directory, and having the ability to restore the original one back again when you didn't want to play with the skinned character any longer.

oooh, that vader model is great. did you make it or was it the original model?

I really like Inno Setup. (http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php) If you dont fancy doing it yourself, I can make you an installer :)

The Vader is in-game. All I do is reskin existing models. That TIE pilot was a stormtrooper, Boba ett was Jango Fett & Old Obi-Wan was Young Obi-Wan.

BG, thanks for that link, I'll take a looksie, and may come back to you if I need some help - cheers!

My tutorial is now up (though still a work-in-progress)...

jp-30's LEGO Star Wars Skinning tutorial (http://www.hansen.net.nz/lswtutorial/)

Thank you so much for all your work jp-30. I was interested in modding this game quite some time ago but I ran across a post you made somewhere detailing the legal difficulties preventing us so I stopped thinking about it.

Now that we are allowed to mod the game, I am definatly planning to get involved. I am not sure how much I can help, but I do have some programming experience and I will start working on a mod manager as soon as this semester is over (only one week more :cowdance)

Again thanks for getting the ball rolling!


in case you have not seen this already...
http://xbox.ign.com/articles/704/704458p1.html)


[edit]Hmm... I just realized how old this thread was. Sorry for resurrecting it.

Nah, thanks for posting here. Our new defacto thread for LSW modding is here;

http://www.minifigcustomizationnetwork.com/forum/1962)

If you can assist with a mod manager, that would be amazing.

Email me once your semester is over (my address is at the end of my tutorial) and we can talk about what the manager needs to do, which is basically (inso far as character reskins go) just copying and pasting files from a mod directory directory to the character directory, and restoring the original file when done.

It would be great to also insert an icon into the icon file (things.nup), but that can come later. And mangaLord who does level editing may require the mod-manager to do some other copy-paste-restore functions along the same lines as the character swapping.

:)