Long story short, I finally decided a couple days ago to try my hand at modding myself. So far it's been a blast, and I'm currently working on a few things I hope to release in the near future.

I've tried to do it all on my own, but enivetably I've run into a few road blocks that I just can't seem to figure out. First, I wanted to change Belaya's appearance (Juhani's lover who is rude to you when you first come to Dantooine). But no matter what I change her appearance or clothing too, she always appears as default. I've tried these kinds of changes on other characters and it usually works fine, just not with her.

The other exception is with the Sith on Korriban. I thought it would be neat if all the lightsaber weilding Sith in the academy would wear dark jedi robes instead of the Sith officer uniform, but when I replace their clothing with dark Jedi robes all that happens is their clothing darkens instead of change.

I'd appreciate if anyone could explain to me why this happens, and how I might fix it.

I think you'll find you can't change the clothes of alot of the NPCs. Commoners, for instance. I'm not sure about this though, as this isn't my area of expertise by any strech of the imagination.

Long story short
(snip)
I'd appreciate if anyone could explain to me why this happens, and how I might fix it.

Check that you are modifying the proper UTC template if your changes don't seem to take effect. Some NPCs have multiple templates (that may or may not be named identically) in different modules if they don't just appear in one place.

Also, make sure when you are testing that you haven't been in the area of the NPC before you test. An NPC is instantiated from their template the first time the area loads (or when they are spawned if they aren't pre-placed in the area). After this the UTC template is no longer used. The instantiated NPC is now stored in the savegame and no changes you make to the UTC template will appear (unless you destroy and recreate the NPC).

If none of the above are the cause, it may be related to the creature's appearance settings...

The appearance of an NPC in the game is determined by which appearance type they have assigned. An appearance type determines the head and clothes/armor/robe models the NPC will use, among other things.

Unlike the appearance type for the player character and party members, many other appearance types does not have a full set of models and textures specified for all the different clothes, robes and armor available in the game. Many of the "uniformed sith" appearance types have the uniform model set for all types of clothing worn in the body slot.

Look in the UTC template of the NPC you want to modify and check what appearance type they have set. This is most easily done if you open it with a GFF Editor and check the value in the Appearance_type field (since KotorTool doesn't show the line number if the dropdown menu). Then open appearance.2da and look up the line number corresponding to the value of your NPC's Appearance_type field.

Check the Model* and Tex* columns and see what models are assigned there. If it's the same in all the columns, then the in-game appearance of your NPC will not change no matter what you equip them with. The columns to look for are the following:

Model Texture Description Male / Female
-------------- ---------------------- -------------
modela/texa underwear model, PMBA* / PFBA
modelb/texb common clothes model, PMBB* / PFBB*
modelc/texc armor w/base defense 4, PMBC* / PFBC*
modeld/texd armor w/base defense 5, PMBD* / PFBD*
modele/texe armor w/base defense 6, PMBE* / PFBE*
modelf/texf armor w/base defense 7, PMBF* / PFBF*
modelg/texg armor w/base defense 8, PMBG* / PFBG*
modelh/texh armor w/base defense 9, PMBH* / PFBH*
modeli/texi jedi robes, PMBI* / PFBI*
modelj/texj Revan/Starforge robes, PMBJ* / PFBJ*


The third column above is the base name of the model used for player characters wearing that type of clothing. If you want characters with that appearance type to properly show what they wear, you'll need to manually set the Model and Textures in appearance.2da. The textures are named like above (without the wildcard), though some models use the same texture files for both Male and Female variants. For the model columns, replace the wildcard with S (for small/scoundrel model), M (for the medium/scout model) or L (for large/soldier model).

For example, to make a medium-sized female appearance type look like they wear jedi robes when those are equipped, you'd set modeli to PFBIM and texi to PFBI.

Some NPCs (like Malak for example) has a single full model rather than the separate body+head model variant though. Check the ModelType column. If it reads "B" then it's a body/head separated model (like the player/party member ones) and you can fix clothes as above. If it's "F", "L" or "S" then the above technique won't work since the NPC doesn't have a separate head model to use with the body models for the clothing/armor.

I've been hard at work the last few days trying what you said Stoffe, and things are coming along great now. I still have a few problems to figure out (Yuthura's character is especially stubborn, refusing to wear a jedi robe until I reach Naga Sadows tomb for some reason), but I think I'm well on my way to understanding everything. 2da editing was really intimidating until you explain it, so thank you Stoffe. ^^

But again, my plans hit a snag. I took the "create custom armor" tutorial and was all set to make my own armor that would use the games "Republic Soldier" look, until I realized that this armor isn't available in the BIFs-->templates.bif-->Blueprint,Item folder. I'm not sure how to go about making the armor I had in mind, and not have it turn out a horrible mess. (Boy did I create a few doozies already XD) I think I've seen this kind of thing done before, so someone should be able to help hopefully?

Concerning Yuthura, there should be three UTC files (note that I didn't checked): one for the Cantina, one for the Sith Academy and one for the Tomb. If you have already entered a module, then the first appearance has already been saved and you won't see the changes. Either load a game from before entereing that module for the first time or exit the module, minimize your game (don't close it) and go to your swkotor directory: you should see a folder called "gameinprogress". Inside this folder there are several blabla.sav. Erase (or just move to another location for the time you test your mod) the .sav file corresponding to the module in which your npc is and re-enter.

There's one thing you have to be careful about when editing *.utc files: make sure the file has a unique name or you will overwrite all the files using the same name when you drop your .utc in your override folder. You could end up with broken quests as their contents are not necessarily the same. You have an example of the kind of mess you can run into here: http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=145328) (it's for Kotor 2 but there have been numerous problems like this with Kotor 1 too). Use tk102's Findrefs to verify if your .utc has a unique name: http://www.starwarsknights.com/tools.php)

For the republic armor, if it's not in the BIFs, then look in the RIMs: it should be located in one of the Taris modules (the one in which you get it - I don't have the game with me so I can't tell you which one exactly).

I've been making some good progress, but I'm still stuck on that one armor problem. I wanted to make the uniform that the Republic soldiers wear into armor for your party, and found the appropiate texture files. But because this appearance wasn't designed as "equippable", I can't find the UTI file. I know its got to exist somewhere, along with the other clothing in the game. A little help please? @_@

There is no .uti for the uniform. You will have to make a change to one of the body model columns in apperance.2da. Doing this will however change what ever items used the model already assigned to that column.