ok so I been trying to put my armor that I made in maya now its in gmax I have been trying everywhere to find the answer e-mail like crazy ok so here is my question I am putting my armor in gmax fully rig (with bones) everything is going good got a skin on it unwrap everything is good all I need is to Compiling it here is where I am having trouble I am trying to put the last step into place by putting it in MDL and MDX right should be easy but its not going right I use MDLOps and seleted my exported model from gmax and hit the read and write model it say this:

"reading ascii model
loading original binary model"

what the hell does that mean??!! did I do it wrong? I waited for it to load but nothing seem to happen loosing my mind over this can any ANY body help me? to see what I did I took a screen grab

http://s20.photobucket.com/albums/b221/darthreapper/?action=view&current=somethingwhenwrong.jpg)

Since you made it in Maya, I'm guessing you made a completely new armor model? Unfortunately all we can do is edit and merge existing body models; making completely new ones is impossible at this time. Same goes for heads :(

are you sure? I though I have seen many many new armor in kotor 2 but thanks for the reply does any one know what else could be the problem?

What kind of mods? I'm positive that there are no new models put into either game... the only "new" types of armor mods either replace models with other models that exist in-game or merge two existing models together.

hey I got it to work but now its doing this thing called "bad strRef" how do I get rid of it dak drexl?

From my experiance new custom armor models are possible and you'll actually be the first to pull it off-I hope. Tutorial time.

Note this is partly theory part experiance.

What you'll need
Kotor Tool
gmax/3dsmax
Modlops v.6alpha1

1. Open kotor tool go to Kotor II>bifs>Aurora models/Aurora model extension extract any armor mdl plus mdx to any folder, note-choose one you are familiar with.
2. create a new folder called output
3. create your model
4.rig your model
5.Link your skin to the aurora base.
6. Rename your aurora base to the name of the armor mdl you extracted
7.. export your model to output folder
8. Add an extra letter to your models name ( from pmbim.mdl to pmbima.mdl)
9.copy your model from your output folder to the folder that you extracted the model to.
10. Fire up modlops v.6alpha1 and click select model.
11. locate your model (pmbima.mdl) and select read and write.
12. it should create a pmbima kr2-bin.mdl/mdx or something like that.
13. drop pmbima kr2-bin mdl/mdx into the override and rename them to pmbim.mdl/mdx
14. Start kotor or in this case kotor 2
15. Cheat in your armor ( in this case jedi robe) and you should see your new armor.

If this works take some screen shots and post them on Holowan labs and I'll share my theory on how you can make it custom.

thanks for replying to me hunters run but well I did what you said to do and in the kotor save game editor kse it said that my armor is "bad strRef" I'll try again but I fear it will happen again the "bad strRef" thingy again hey can I send you my gmax armor file? what is your e-mail so you can see what I mean?

Take a look at this (http://lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=203993&highlight=strRef) thread. About the armor pm me.

Moving to Holowan Labs...

cool hey does anybody know how to add helpers?? or how to use them? and/or what the are for?

I don't know anything about them but you should check this thread out:
http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=143261&highlight=helpers+revan+model)

I really hope you succeed here; it'd be really cool to see new armor models!

ok so I done some re-serach on this and found very little on how to put custom armor build by scratch into kotor 2 anyone out there can help me on this? I have about four armor done but I cant seem to put them into kotor 2 ingame.....

has anyone succeed in putting a custom armor in kotor 1 &2 ???? if so can you show me the right way of doing it???

Darth DeadMan has done it, check out his movie mandalorians mod and his work in the clone mod...

wait Darth DeadMan has done it? put custom armor in kotor ?? coool thanks dak drexl!!! wait where's the movie do you have a link that I can go to or is it in his page??

Haha sorry it's not a movie, his mod is called "movie mandalorians". Check it out here (http://deadlystream.com/forum/files/file/63-movie-mandalorians/) and be sure to look at his response to my comment in the comments section. Good luck!

hey dak drexl can you help me with something I came across a problem I did the weights in rigging my custom armor and did everthing right but when I am going to export it as a MDL file and I got the MWmax green light going on but when exporting the model I get a red light look at what I mean.....

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b221/darthreapper/rediconNWmax.jpg)

I dont know what to do from here

hey so I got the red light problem fix now I face another problem maybe someone can help I cant see my armor that I mod just the original model that I was trying to replace ok to make it easier I'm trying to replace a_heavy_04 which is the Durasteel Heavy Armor....right I got my mod the armor I want to replace rig and everything with texture and I before exporting it out of gmax I name it PMBHS to replace the original model would seem right, right? but when drop it in the override folder it doesnt show I even change the .UTI file to a_reapper_04 and the template ResRef to a_reapper_04 and the tag the same. I name the AuroraBase to PMBHS to export and fired up mdlops06a1 and hit the read & write and got two files .....pmbhs-k2 bin.MDL and pmbhs-k2 bin.MDX ok rename both pmbhs.MDL and pmbhs.MDX put them in the override folder like so right here are the files I put in the overide folder:

the texture for the model.......PMBH78.tga
the UTI ..............................a_reapper_04
both MDL and MDX................PMBHS
the icon..............................ia_reapper_04
thats all if I'm missing something please anyone let me know

EDIT:

come on no one knows what I'm missing? is it a baseitems.2da?? or the appearance.2da??? come on somebody anyone???

You need to check appearance.2da to see which model your character uses for that type of armor. In baseitems.2da you can see which column in appearance you'll need to edit.

BTW, if I remember right, the heavy armor model should be called PMBHM (it will replace the default armor model).

hey thanks darth deadman it works well sort of I got this new problem maybe its the rigging I dont know but watch here


http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b221/darthreapper/ingame.jpg)


so anyway I think its the rigging what do you think?

UPDATE......

hey guys ok I I seem to fix the problem with some help thanks to darth deadman for helping me thank you.....all is left is just tweeking it some more here is what I got so far


http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b221/darthreapper/reapper.jpg)

as you can see I need more rigging on the arms and the texture is too dark but overall it look great!!! again I want to thank darth deadman