Well, I decided to try my hands in kotor modding too. Kinda wanna give to community something back after playing all them cool mods.

Stupid as I am, I started with the hard stuff of course, so I'm just gonna do some outline of a couple of Ideas I have and if somebody thinks anything of it might be cool and want's to lend a hand or thinks it's crap and impossible anyways, well, just post it :)!

Ossus Mod
I always found Ossus an mysthical place and though a visit in k2 of the Exile there would be a nice thing to get some custom Jedi-items and stuff.
So far I just created the planet on the galaxy-map. I though using the korriban-module, unless somebody want's to model some whole new modules for it, I'm simply too inexpirienced to do that.
Contet will be the ruins of the old Jedi-temple there where you can find some Jedi-items and possibly the Jedi Master Ood Bnar in treeform (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ood_Bnar).

Togruta PC head
I always liked the Togruta-species and found it a shame that they didn't make it into kotor. Now, I don't know how much can be done to head-models, but I gave it a try today with a Twi'lek head. The I got the upper horns pretty nicely actually, but had trouble in getting the headtails more to the side of the head (instead of the back).
I have no idea, how well it'll be textureable though.

Zabrak PC head
Haven't started on that one yet, but shouldn't be too hard to do something with bao-dur's head.

Alien heads new!
I'm working on making most of the aliens ingame available to select as a PC-head. With VP's new method i get them fully working, animated and with headgear.
I'm also working on a Togruta-head together with Bullobrien, but we're stuck with UVW-mapping right now ...

custom spaceships
Just an idea there, nothing concrete yet, but I always thought that other ships than the Ebon Hawk could use some more prominence in the game (like the Hammerhead or the ship that can be seen docked in Nar Shadda and with which the Sith land on Dxun).


I also might give the Dvakvar Grahrk resotration (http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=205423) a try. Not sure if it makes sense to have him beeing recruitable after TSLRCM's release, but still it would be nice to have some more sentient live on Korriban.

I'm also very open to suggenstions :)!

dvakvar grahrk, that would be more of revisioning than a restoration but if you have the right skill ill bet you could pull it off. and the ship thing would be cool too

My alien PC-heads are coming along nicely. I just managed to reshape my Zabrak-head (that I altered from Bao-Dur's) to fit on a normal male body, so you can use aaaall the items with it and it'll be visible.
I guess I'll release a PC-version of my custom Devaronian head that I was working on for Dvakvar Grahrk.

http://www.musicforthepeople.ch/Clipboard01.jpg) http://www.musicforthepeople.ch/Clipboard02.jpg)

Now I gotta do all them dark-side transitions ect. ;)!

That's a Zabrak...

yep, it's supposed to be one ;)!

maybe I didn't express myself clearly ... I was just philosophizing about making a PC-head version of my Devaronian head too. I was WORKING on the Zabrak head.

I finally got sorted out now too, how to set up the TSLPatcher properly to add additional PC heads without deleting existing one (a real drag with many custom-heads mods out there). So this will ensure optimal compatibility with everything else :).

what you chould on the Dvakvar Grahrk resotration is you chould get micel if you are light side and if you are dark side get him....because he is ment to be a darks side giy.....and you chould yous the same script as micel so then it will not interfire with the tslrcm ;)

hey how did you connect it to a body without the bao dur model /which has the electric arm?

what you chould on the Dvakvar Grahrk resotration is you chould get micel if you are light side and if you are dark side get him....because he is ment to be a darks side giy.....and you chould yous the same script as micel so then it will not interfire with the tslrcm ;)
Interesting idea. Still, it'd be a incredibly huge task to complete a full recruitable character with side story as the others ect. that would fit into TSLRCM as well. I'm focusing on the alien-heads right now ... but I'm sure I'll come back to Dvakvar someday :).

hey how did you connect it to a body without the bao dur model /which has the electric arm?
I actually only made the neck a little bit longer :D. I just set the lowermost vertexes of the neck to the exact same coordinates as they are on a 'normal' head.
with bao dur's zabrak-head that is only slightly above a normal head, the longer neck is almost negliable.
I'm totally new to 3d-moddeling, so I don't know if it works, if you move the whole head around, but I wanted to try it out with other alien heads anyways.

The devaronian head is luckily fitting. So, meet the all new green-skinned Devaronian (and it's inspiration from wookipedia)!
http://www.musicforthepeople.ch/Clipboard03.jpghttp://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20061121100212/starwars/images/5/5a/UDH.jpg)

^ You don't know if it works? As in, haven't tested the facial animations for talking and expressions yet? It looks like it works in the screen :)

Novel fix for the problem... Good problem-solving!

Oh, I do know that the Zabrak-with-a-long-neck works ;).
I DON'T know, whether the method of adjusting the lowermost vertexes still works, if you move the whole head around (I mean, you have to move the head, the eyes & tongue, the white boxes, ... all seperately and I have no idea whether the model still works afterwards).

well, forgive me, if I'm not sticking too long with one thing. that's just how I work. when I get frustrated or stuck with one project I just work on the next to come back to the first one later.
after experimenting with all kinds of alien heads now (and possibly on the way of detaching some from their body-model to be made fully playable with armor and all) I'm working on my favorite alien head so far now:
a Lethan Twi'lek woman
I know, there are quiet a number of Twi'lek PC mods already out there, but none ever satisfied me, a decent Lethan I could never find at all. might be, because the vanilla textures for female Twi'leks in TSL kinda suck and their colors come out funny with most Photoshop-tools.
After some trying and more trying and even more ... ( ;) ) I found a way to get a texture that I liked.
But what would be a hot Twi'lek chick without hot underwear? That stuff the vanilla PCs wear is just ... uhm ... awful.
so, I spent hours now to get something nice out of Handmaiden's underwear. After having found out that it's probably the worst UVM-mapped thing I ever will see in my life (just kidding, but it does suck badly), here's what I came up with:

http://www.musicforthepeople.ch/lethan1.jpghttp://www.musicforthepeople.ch/lethan2.jpg)
I know, it doesn't look like much, but there're a few things I changed in the model:
- smoothing the neck to make the texture without the collar work well
- smoothing the upper bra-border to make the reshaped bra-texture work
- giving her some breast-implants (hehe, sorry, couldn't resist ;))
- reshaping her waist to a more natural form (the Handmaiden-model looks like she hasn't eaten in YEARS!)

The smothed areas of the bra and collar still appear darker or lighter than the rest, I'm not sure whether that's due to shadows or just a texture-problem, I'll look into it again, but as I said, the UVM-map sucks (the collar goes borderless over to the central area of her panties, which are split up in like half a dozen pieces!).

I really like her new leathery headband though :D.
So, what do you think?

The only thing, I think, that could improve is matching the skin tone on the head & body; Aside from that, it looks great!! :haw:

The ship thing I am actually already starting. I am trying to use the ship docked on nar shadaa for a story mod I am making.

The ship thing I am actually already starting. I am trying to use the ship docked on nar shadaa for a story mod I am making.Are you starting on his project, or your own? This is an example of an off-topic post.

On-Topic: Bob, the thing that sticks out to me on the red twi-lek, aside from the neck/body connection coloration, is that the red seems so saturated that the underwear becomes fuzzy/lacking detail. IMO...

Are you starting on his project, or your own? This is an example of an off-topic post.


I think they are talking about this:

custom spaceships
Just an idea there, nothing concrete yet, but I always thought that other ships than the Ebon Hawk could use some more prominence in the game (like the Hammerhead or the ship that can be seen docked in Nar Shadda and with which the Sith land on Dxun).


You should learn to use the "quote" feature. That way you can put the thing you are responding to right in your post so it is clear for everyone to understand.

Welcome to the forums and I love your avatar :p

@Bob, I agree with Qui-Gon about the saturation of the skin on the Twi'lek. Once you get the color right, you might want to try adding some "noise" to the skin as it looks rather flat right now. Its coming along :)

yep, it's supposed to be one ;)!

maybe I didn't express myself clearly ... I was just philosophizing about making a PC-head version of my Devaronian head too. I was WORKING on the Zabrak head.

Ah... Well, I feel stupid...

The only thing, I think, that could improve is matching the skin tone on the head & body; Aside from that, it looks great!! :haw:
... the thing that sticks out to me on the red twi-lek, aside from the neck/body connection coloration, is that the red seems so saturated that the underwear becomes fuzzy/lacking detail. IMO...
I agree with Qui-Gon about the saturation of the skin on the Twi'lek. Once you get the color right, you might want to try adding some "noise" to the skin as it looks rather flat right now. Its coming along :)
Thanks for the feedback. Those things I already had in mind for fixing. The screenies are only a glimps in the middle of the work-process. I simply finally got the whole collar removed without getting anything else red. Now I can work on get the color adjusted to the head.
I think I'm gonna try a different color for the underwear anyways (white or baige or something, I gotta try for what's working with the red skin). And I'm gonna change her boots to something that makes more sense to wear inside a kolto-tank yet anyways.

Thanks for the feedback. Those things I already had in mind for fixing. The screenies are only a glimps in the middle of the work-process. I simply finally got the whole collar removed without getting anything else red. Now I can work on get the color adjusted to the head.
I think I'm gonna try a different color for the underwear anyways (white or baige or something, I gotta try for what's working with the red skin). And I'm gonna change her boots to something that makes more sense to wear inside a kolto-tank yet anyways.

It may be cool to mirror the style of the leathery headband in the underwear. Maybe something worth playing around with?

Wellweeeell. I finally got an update on my work. With the great tutorial from VP it is finally possible to change head-models in any way we want.
So I already got the Twi'lek head with working headgear as well as a fully animated Weequay-head done.

http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/7133/clipboard01it.jpg)

an excellent start.

Cool, if you skin the body to match I will so use that.

Very good looking. Contact me if you need any skinning help.

Aqualish, fully animated, maching human body (neck), working headgear:
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/7569/clipboard02vb.jpg)
The Aqualish head is bigger (wider) than the human ones, so not all headgear work perfectly, most are clipped a little bit on the side, but the result is much better looking than I feared. Masks work too (though an Aqualish with a breather-mask is quiet a joke ;)), gotta adjust them a little yet though.

I'm pretty excited about the whole stuff right now, but I'm also realizig that it's still a biiig bunch of work.
I totally plan on making matching underwear-models to all the aliens. I'm not a fan of releasing amateurish or unfinished stuff. But I suck at skinning (or at least I don't overly like doing it).
So, Darth Snard (or anybody else), your help would be highly appreciated. Basically I'd just need a underwear-texture where the skin is matching the according alien head.

Planned are:
Aqualish (called Walrusman in gamefiles)
Bith
Duros
Gran
Nikto (called Swoopgang in gamefiles)
Quarren
Rodian
Sullustan
Trandoshan
Weequay
Devaronian
Twi'lek

The rest of the aliens ingame don't make sense with a human-shaped body (as they're considerably smaller, like the Yoda-species or don't wear any clothes, like Wookies).

Awesome, I think you are getting the hang of this idea. Good work, you have my download when you realease.

Same here! These guys are just too much fun to pass up. Can't wait for the Nikto!

I'm so glad you're doing this! Like you I played around with this alien heads thing a while back (here) (http://knightsoftheoldrepublic.filefront.com/file/Daks_Fully_Playable_Duros;115423) only to find no good way of making it fully possible.

But we can do it now :) But anyway I'm really glad you're taking up this task. Can't wait to play as a Rodian!

Also, are you planning on making a few head options of each species (reskins) or just having one of each? Some of the game models, like the Rodians, already have multiple skins anyway so it'd just be a re-naming thing for most of them.

I'm pretty sure that I'm gonna make some custom variants of those heads. A custom Zabrak, Devaronian and female Twi'lek are already in the pipe.

But for now, I'm gonna focus on making the standard heads playable, which is a sufficient task in itself. First I gotta chop the head from the body and tweak it, so it'll work as a head-model, then I gotta reshape the neck to match a human body and finally I have to set the Mask- and Goggle-helpers right (which is essentially a trial-and-error thing, after which I have to compile the head each time with VPs method to see ingame, how the result looks). And that's for every alien.
And them I still need underwear-models and darkside-transition (any good skinner wanna help?) as well as to set up the TSLPatcher, so the head can be used as new ones and won't overwrite anything.

So far, I've only done the Weequay and the Aqualish, so I'd say I'm about 10% done (for all you percentage-lovers out there ;)).

Awesome, I think you are getting the hang of this idea. Good work, you have my download when you realease.

QFT This will have a permanent override folder spot once you are done. Congratulations on such great work :)

thanks, folks, and sorry for the slow speed, I've lots of real-life work at the moment ;).

btw. I was working on the Bith-head the other day and for some reason my first compilation of it hasn't got the animations. can anybody who has a safegame somewhere where there's a Bith around confirm, whether or not they have a 'normal' animation of the neck-movement, or if they got kind of a stiff neck (I figured that this might be the case to have them match their instrument, they're holding when playing in a cantina).
The model is also missing a part, that all the other models I worked with so far have in he neck area and has tons of strange animations at the end of the file. I haven't seen those in any other model-files.

Just an idea, those strange animations may have something to do with them playing their instruments which no other characters do in game.

they most definitely do. the question is, how does that affect the Bith-head itself and the way it's animated.

It's missing a bone. necklwr_g.

In order for the animations to work, they have to be linked correctly.

and that's torso_g > torsoupr_g _ necklwr_g > neck_g > hturn_g. etc

Thing is, the Bith head is totally missing the necklwr_g bone, it skips right from torsoupr_g to neck_g. You're going to need to add that bone in there somehow if you want it animated.

If you check out the section for Skinning and Modelling Tutorials, there should be two that mention bones. One was by Kha, and the other was started by Jolly Boots (but all the info is also from Kha).

ah, thanks guys. so, my suspicion was right. I just wasn't sure as I don't have much knowledge about the theory behind 3d-modelling (like bones and stuff). so, I'm gonna seh, whether I can shove a bone in that Bith's neck ;).

well, coudn't get that bone-business straight yet, so any advice on how to add a necklwr_g bone to the Bith head would be welcome.

got the Duros-head done now though. it's fully working, although most goggles are just too tight for that old bubblehead. I think it'll be a good idea to make my heads compatible with the no-headgear mod ;).

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/4708/clipboard01ux.png)

wow; amazing to see these previously full-body models be able to use any regular outfits :) Out of curiosity, will they be open source for other modders after they are released?

I know this would be more work, but you should modify the body models too so they match up with the alien heads. You know how the Duros have the hunchback kind of stature, and three fingers too, I think. I suppose you would have to make a model for each alien with a different stature, but that would be quite alot of work. I suppose you could use the same model for Duros, Rodian, Bith and Gran (Sullustan too), since they're all pretty similar in size.

EDIT: Okay, scratch that. I guess according to Wookieepedia anyways, Duros are about 1.7-2.2 meters in height, so at least as tall, if not taller than humans.

For the taller ones like Weequays, Trandoshans, Devaronians, etc...

But I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself, you should probably finish the heads first :P

wow; amazing to see these previously full-body models be able to use any regular outfits :) Out of curiosity, will they be open source for other modders after they are released?
absolutely. I'm actually thinking of releasing just the heads once I've got them all done for modders who might wanna use them somehow.

Making matching bodys and good dark-side transition will be the second big step.
I'll definitely try to make matching underwear-models for all the alien heads. I don't know how easy it is to change the size of body-models (has that even been tried before?). But unless there's an easy way to change the size of all models rather than making a new one for every single armor-item, I think I have to stick with the human-body models.
There are several canon-appereances of Duros with 5-fingered hands though and also much less hunched-over stature (for example Cad Bane in the animated Clone Wars series).

If anybody wants to help me with the skinning (underwear & darkside transitions), I'll gladly accept, as I don't like skinning too much, mostly, 'cause I'm not really that good at it ;).

well, next one up, the Gran ... this guy has one huuge thing of a head ;). So, again it would be handy to know how to rescale a model, if that's possible at all! Any suggestions?

also, for some reason the game won't display his ears. they're there with texture and all in NWMax. but ingame the head's just got a transparent hole on both sides.

with the Gran I think I'm gonna leave the headgear away anyways, as with his three eyes most of them just don't make sense/don't fit. but I also found out that both masks and goggles are at the place where the gogglehook is ... which leaves me wonder what good the maskhook is for at all!

Well heads are easy to rescale since they are one piece. Just select all the verts and select the "select and scale" tool (90% sure that's what it's called) at the top toolbar. Then just drag it down with all your verts selected and you'll see your head magically shrink.

Watch out though! A lot of the time eyes, teeth, and the like don't shrink down with the rest.

Well, you could always start using the large models.

You know, instead of PMBCM: PMBCL. Might need to rescale the arms and legs for some aliens though.

How far along are you in terms of the heads anyways?

there are large body-models? hm, I gotta give that some investigation then, I guess.
rightnow, I'm just getting the other heads done.

Nikto:
(I know, the neck is a bit wierd, but the hood is just part of the head-structure, so I don't know whether it could be removed at all. It could be reskinned to skin-color, I guess and the head accordingly reshaped, but there are not that many vertexes in the neck/chin area to work with in the beginning.)
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/8484/clipboard02cu.png)


Quarren:
http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/2408/clipboard01pr.png)

I have now fully working heads of Aqualish, Duros, Nikto, Quarren & Weequay.

The Bith-head is animation-less due to the missing necklwr_g-bone, but VP offered me to look into it.
The Gran-head won't display his ears for some reason and is preeetty big.
Left to do: Rodian, Sullustan & Trandoshan.

Congrats man! You're progressing pretty fast!

well, separating the heads is the easy part. now that I know what to do, it takes me less than an hour to chop off the head from the body, adjust it and add headgear-helpers ... that is, if all goes well ;).
the ones that don't work so well and the underwear-bodys will take longer, I think.

Looking good!

With the Nikto I would say you or someone else can reskin the parts of the head where there is a hood. Even if the reskin could be done to design the hood different so it would not wrap around the neck since that would be the main issue i see.

Keep up the great work!!

Quarren looks great! Good luck with the Nikto, that sounds challenging.

For the Nikto, you could try adding a few polygons to the neck, and shape the back of the head to be smaller. Then you could retexture the hood and neck to be skin. This might make a good example:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/File:JoopiShe.jpg)

by polygons do you mean vertexes? how is that done?
but it's basically what I had in mind. the ears might be a bit tricky too and the uvw-map might have to be redone to smooth the borderline of the face and the rest of the head.

I'd set the selection tool for edges, then use the "extrude edge" tool. You should be able to select all the edges of the neck hole, and drag them, creating new polygons and verticies. You'll probably have to adjust the xyz coords individually after that.

There are plenty of tutorials here and on the ol' internets :D

Wow, that quarren looks awesome.