Eyes and Rodian frills - suggestions? Large pic warning

Rinzler

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Hey, I decided to pick up my old work and this is what I've got so far.
Rodian frills

Added a .cn normal map, not sure I like the effect.

Original vs New

I shortened the frills to help them look more like the movies/cartoons.

Eyes and eyelashes

New teeth too. Are the eyes too sharp? I used a real eye photo, tried to make it a bit more cartoony.

Original vs New



I feel like I should make unique eyes for each race and gender. No eyelashes for Zabrak females, larger iris for both Twi'leks, ect.

I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions for improvements?

Btw, when released these will only be temporary until someone with real talent takes a crack at it. I just wanted to show how easy it is to work with.

Thanks for looking. :)
 

DavinFelth

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I don't know enough about texturing (or rodians) to know what the difference is with the frills but I can certainly see the change in the eyes, they look really nice! And although I can't see the teeth in the screenshot, I'm assuming the difference is just as noticeable there too :)

Suggestions? Keep on doing what you're doing! :D
 

Kayliaah

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That's pretty awesome Rinzler, especially the teeth replacement, you got them lined up almost perfectly (watch out for that black space on the left where the middle teeth are, since it's basically a mirror, you could end up with a black vertical line in the middle ingame).

And those eyes, oh those eyes, I wonder what SOE thought, they tried to use one texture for the facial features probably to save space, but seriously, why make an oval eye texture and then tell it to stretch horizontally ingame so it fits, another thing to add to SOE's nonsensical list of nightmares.

My my, after being away from SWG for a while, seeing that human female hairline makes me cringe, this game really needs an overall, even if it's not really needed, but when eyecandy is actually a plus and not a compromise (like in most recent games), the benefit is immense.

So yeah, keep going, and since you're using the "new" toon shader/textures, the overall result shouldn't be too bad.
 

Rinzler

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Sorry for not replying sooner, I've been busy.

DavinFelth said:
I don't know enough about texturing (or rodians) to know what the difference is with the frills but I can certainly see the change in the eyes, they look really nice! And although I can't see the teeth in the screenshot, I'm assuming the difference is just as noticeable there too :)
Here's a frill comparison for reference

Not perfect yet, but I don't know if I can do much better.

The males seem to have more animations that show off the teeth. :huh:
But here's one.


Also some eye improvements, more neutral shot here.


The 'glow' effect is pretty subtle; in some lighting situations it's not visible.
Tell me if you guys think it's too bright/cartoony.

And, thanks. :)

Kayliaah said:
(watch out for that black space on the left where the middle teeth are, since it's basically a mirror, you could end up with a black vertical line in the middle ingame).
Ah, I don't know how I missed that.

... this shot does reveal another mistake by SOE. The teeth are too high. Something for the MtG modelers to fix, hopefully.

Kayliaah said:
So yeah, keep going, and since you're using the "new" toon shader/textures, the overall result shouldn't be too bad.
I have to thank you for those, the skin looks very flat without them. :)
 

DavinFelth

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Ah yeah those new frills look a lot better, that picture of the eyes look super nice, looks like it's from a more recent game, only thing letting it down is the eyebrows, maybe you could do some eyebrows? :D
 

Kayliaah

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Oh yeah that's pretty cool, those eyes make the whole facial expression a bit more believable and less dead, and the new eyelashes are the icing on the cake. :p

If you want to test the teeth ingame without having to put the camera inside your mouth, then make a female Twi'lek character, the teeth show up by default, the lower teeth at least, and the mouth looks better overall.

Like in this picture for example.
http://img810.imageshack.us/img810/7815/headerua.png


Overall, these changes are refreshing, until we can get proper models in the game.
 

Timbab

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Nice teeth. :p

I played around with it a bit ages ago, but never really did anything with it.

If you want a more 'multicolor', as in slight light grey, or brownish strains in the eye but keep the color picker working, you can slap a layer on the pupil, do your coloring, copy that layer and throw it into _mouth_hue.dds, but make sure that layer is in grayscale. I didn't test it yet, but I'm pretty certain, the whiter it is, the more you'll see of the original eye texture (the parts where you did your coloring).

Maybe do something similar with the dark edges, so they're not as strong, but still visible, like here:



I wish the skin wasn't stretched to oblivion, I kinda stopped trying things with the player models because of it, still waiting for those MGN tool.
 

Rinzler

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Timbab said:
If you want a more 'multicolor', as in slight light grey, or brownish strains in the eye but keep the color picker working, you can slap a layer on the pupil, do your coloring, copy that layer and throw it into _mouth_hue.dds, but make sure that layer is in grayscale. I didn't test it yet, but I'm pretty certain, the whiter it is, the more you'll see of the original eye texture (the parts where you did your coloring).
I haven't tried this yet, but I will. Just need a bit more time.
As per your request, I've lightened the dark ring around the iris.

I think it looks better now, thanks for the input.:)
Also, slightly higher res lekku markings.

I know what you mean about that stretching, almost made me /ragequit while I was working on the third eyebrow.

Kayliaah said:
... then make a female Twi'lek character, the teeth show up by default, the lower teeth at least, and the mouth looks better overall.
The whole Twi'lek face seems better designed, it doesn't have the eyebrow stretching that the human female does, the face is just... 'newer'?.
Will have to make an in game assistant.



DavinFelth said:
... only thing letting it down is the eyebrows, maybe you could do some eyebrows? :D
That's the real trick, isn't it? :)
For some reason, the devs had the face textures blurred for Humans, Sullustan females, Twi'leks and Zabraks. I think the source of the blur is from the texturerenderer .trt files.

Here's a shot of a human female with Thane's face texture to help illustrate my meaning.

preNGE .trt vs NGE .trt vs my .trt.

Also, new eyebrows.

But my fix isn't perfect, as is demonstrated by my less than beautiful assistant.

Clearly the letters on the face are more blurred than the ones on the head.

(let me know if the pics are too big. I wanted to preserve the detail, but that's not required, while being neat kinda is. ty)
 

Timbab

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Lookin' good man, lookin' good!

Reducing the edge strength worked wonders.

That's really interesting with the .trt files, damn you, you're creating urges in me to get back at it again, even though I don't have the time right now, lol.

Happy to see more people trying things out.
 

Kayliaah

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I do like what I'm seeing, and LOL at the Thane Krios skin WTF.
But that's awesome what you found out about the texture renderer files blurring the whole thing, I never even tried digging into those files, but why would they even do that, that makes no sense! Stupid SOE, DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL.
 
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