Hi all,
Please consider this more of a curiousity question than a request for CC. I have plenty of things that I would need done before this would be done. So I would appreciate if someone would just let me know the possibilities here. And I promise I won't try to con you into making them. I am just curious if and how this would/could be done.
http://nwvault.ign.c...l.Detail&id=461
These are the trollocs. They are humanoids with 4 body types and 14 head types that are interchangeable. This was something that was talked about in another thread - humans with animal heads.
So this got me thinking of how this could be expanded. For starters, I am not entirely sure about how you can switch creature heads on a body. But if this has been done, could the same happen for a four legged beast. For instance, the body of a lion and the head of an eagle or the head of a bull.
How about having body type, tail type (snakes etc.) and head type all interchangeable to make a custom mythological creature?
Bits and Pieces of Different Critters
Débuté par
Banshe
, oct. 05 2010 06:54
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#2
Posté 05 octobre 2010 - 11:01
BigfootNZ
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As far as i understand it, you have various 'types' of models that NWN2 uses, each type has a certain setup. Player models (they dont have to be player models) have the full set of animations (although from what I see in the NWN2_Anim 2da you can make your own animations very easily, it even has a fall back column for when a certain animation is missing). Then you have monster models which have a more limited animation set along with no changable parts (beyond accessories)...
Now all that isnt strickly true... if you look at the appearance.2da entries you'll see the BodyType and ModelType columns.
The body type column reflects weather its a single body mesh or a multi mesh model with changable parts (head, hair, body) 1 is multi part, 0 is a single mesh. The ModelType column is like the old NWN1 one and it refrences id assume the animation sets, P is for player characters and other humaniods (they have all the animations open to them like emotes etc), S is for the simple animation set of idle/walk/run basic combat and death, F is like the NWN1 where its like S but with the added weapon based combat animations from P.
1 Body types make use of the ModelHead, ModelHair and Accessory columns, 0 Body types only every make use of the accessory column. Accessories are attached to specificly named points and have no animations (although Belts, and i think Hip models are animated, as are boots, gloves but im not sure about their naming convention).
You could do what your asking very easily in NWN2, it would just take more planning than a simple model would (hiding seams between the various parts, cohesion between pieces, making more models etc). Its something ive been working out on paper myself for models i want to do since it allows for a huge boost to variation. Do a creature as a body type 1 and instead of hair, use the hair and head models for animated extras like sets of various horns or tentacles. Throw in 3-4 different accessories and tinting and boom instant multitude of variants for only a little more work. In theory you could get very creative with how you split a model up and get all sorts of useful variations, just takes a bit of forward planning and creativity.
As an example take a Devourer, you could give it 3 head models, use the 'hair' model to give its internal prison 3 variants (empty, full and something else), you could also say break its lower arms off and turn them into glove accessories say 3 variants with different claw or color choices, throw in a few other static accessories and you have enough to give a user well over 81 different conbinations, you could even throw in another body variant as a cloth armor piece which wold double your combinations to then 162... little more work but worth it when you think about it.
Im surprised people dont do it more often. One thing I dont know is what sort of impact it would have on performance, then again you dont have to have every creature split up into lots of pieces.
Heck one idea ive had doing weapon models and revamping the weapon vfx lately is sacrificing one of the 'parts' (in weapons, part A) as a set of vertex clouds that is used to control particle mesh distribution sef's (currently it uses all the verts of part A which in some models is vertex starved and as such partical vfx's look ugly when stuck to them... eg the Rapier model
bleeeeerg ) ie this top 'part' is invisible but still a set of verts that particle mesh and other vfx's can be attached to. You could apply this to a creature model using say the hair model of a lion as the vert cloud so that any particle mesh vfxs would sit on the mane and reduce in number and density down the back of the spine (rather than all over the model where ever a vert is).
Im not sure it works yet since I dont know about exporting or even skinning a mesh that has no polys and only verts. Expotron might not like it... but it should work in theory.
Now all that isnt strickly true... if you look at the appearance.2da entries you'll see the BodyType and ModelType columns.
The body type column reflects weather its a single body mesh or a multi mesh model with changable parts (head, hair, body) 1 is multi part, 0 is a single mesh. The ModelType column is like the old NWN1 one and it refrences id assume the animation sets, P is for player characters and other humaniods (they have all the animations open to them like emotes etc), S is for the simple animation set of idle/walk/run basic combat and death, F is like the NWN1 where its like S but with the added weapon based combat animations from P.
1 Body types make use of the ModelHead, ModelHair and Accessory columns, 0 Body types only every make use of the accessory column. Accessories are attached to specificly named points and have no animations (although Belts, and i think Hip models are animated, as are boots, gloves but im not sure about their naming convention).
You could do what your asking very easily in NWN2, it would just take more planning than a simple model would (hiding seams between the various parts, cohesion between pieces, making more models etc). Its something ive been working out on paper myself for models i want to do since it allows for a huge boost to variation. Do a creature as a body type 1 and instead of hair, use the hair and head models for animated extras like sets of various horns or tentacles. Throw in 3-4 different accessories and tinting and boom instant multitude of variants for only a little more work. In theory you could get very creative with how you split a model up and get all sorts of useful variations, just takes a bit of forward planning and creativity.
As an example take a Devourer, you could give it 3 head models, use the 'hair' model to give its internal prison 3 variants (empty, full and something else), you could also say break its lower arms off and turn them into glove accessories say 3 variants with different claw or color choices, throw in a few other static accessories and you have enough to give a user well over 81 different conbinations, you could even throw in another body variant as a cloth armor piece which wold double your combinations to then 162... little more work but worth it when you think about it.
Im surprised people dont do it more often. One thing I dont know is what sort of impact it would have on performance, then again you dont have to have every creature split up into lots of pieces.
Heck one idea ive had doing weapon models and revamping the weapon vfx lately is sacrificing one of the 'parts' (in weapons, part A) as a set of vertex clouds that is used to control particle mesh distribution sef's (currently it uses all the verts of part A which in some models is vertex starved and as such partical vfx's look ugly when stuck to them... eg the Rapier model
bleeeeerg ) ie this top 'part' is invisible but still a set of verts that particle mesh and other vfx's can be attached to. You could apply this to a creature model using say the hair model of a lion as the vert cloud so that any particle mesh vfxs would sit on the mane and reduce in number and density down the back of the spine (rather than all over the model where ever a vert is). Im not sure it works yet since I dont know about exporting or even skinning a mesh that has no polys and only verts. Expotron might not like it... but it should work in theory.
Modifié par BigfootNZ, 05 octobre 2010 - 11:04 .
#3
Posté 06 octobre 2010 - 08:07
Banshe
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Cool! Thank you for giving such a detailed evaluation of this idea (which it seems you had already been pondering).
Just a couple of questions:
1. I assume that you could swap out the variants (heads etc.) in the toolset if it is Type 1, right?
2. Is the body part the static base element here? In other words, you would choose the body type (lion, cow, chicken) and then add the variants to it. Or would the body part be a variant as well. Or is this irrelevant as it only means that you would simply choose the body part you want first then the variants?
Just a couple of questions:
1. I assume that you could swap out the variants (heads etc.) in the toolset if it is Type 1, right?
2. Is the body part the static base element here? In other words, you would choose the body type (lion, cow, chicken) and then add the variants to it. Or would the body part be a variant as well. Or is this irrelevant as it only means that you would simply choose the body part you want first then the variants?
#4
Posté 06 octobre 2010 - 02:43
painofdungeoneternal
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Well glad you mentioned this, i had put in trollocs thinking they were purgatorio content, never knew about the heads or that they had their own vault page. ( need to update my credits as well )
Taking this idea, well yeah we can swap heads. I took the devil and dog leg skeletons which these heads use, found other creatures which use the same skeletons and made new appearances for sahuagin, balor, kobold, gnoll, balor, pit fiend, and lizard man that have kooky animal heads. These heads don't go on these bodies so there are gaps, but if special effects are used these are hard to see. This is just appearance edits so while not perfect, it's still better than what we had.
Examples are below - each can have 4-6 different heads. Seems to bug out if you flip bodies when the head is not number 0 when you change appearances, but after you change you can select any of the heads and they seem to work.
sahuagin
Balor
Taking this idea, well yeah we can swap heads. I took the devil and dog leg skeletons which these heads use, found other creatures which use the same skeletons and made new appearances for sahuagin, balor, kobold, gnoll, balor, pit fiend, and lizard man that have kooky animal heads. These heads don't go on these bodies so there are gaps, but if special effects are used these are hard to see. This is just appearance edits so while not perfect, it's still better than what we had.
Examples are below - each can have 4-6 different heads. Seems to bug out if you flip bodies when the head is not number 0 when you change appearances, but after you change you can select any of the heads and they seem to work.
sahuagin
Balor
Modifié par painofdungeoneternal, 06 octobre 2010 - 02:44 .
#5
Posté 06 octobre 2010 - 06:43
Banshe
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That is very cool, Pain. Definitely worth an afternoon of toolset monkeying somewhere down the road. As for the Trollocs find, I can't take the credit. Kamal read my posts about animal heads in another thread and sent me the link for them.
#6
Posté 06 octobre 2010 - 11:48
BigfootNZ
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Banshe wrote...
Cool! Thank you for giving such a detailed evaluation of this idea (which it seems you had already been pondering).
Just a couple of questions:
1. I assume that you could swap out the variants (heads etc.) in the toolset if it is Type 1, right?
2. Is the body part the static base element here? In other words, you would choose the body type (lion, cow, chicken) and then add the variants to it. Or would the body part be a variant as well. Or is this irrelevant as it only means that you would simply choose the body part you want first then the variants?
1. yep, if the appearance 2da line for your model has BodyType set to 1 then the game engine will look for all the parts required based on the values listed in the other columns nwn2_model_head, nwn2_model_body , nwn2_model_helm , nwn2_model_hair, nwn2_accessory
if its set to 0 it'll look for just the nwn2_model_body and helm (why all the type 0's have the body value in the helm value i dont know. Not sure what would happen if you gave a type 0 an entry in the nwn2_model_head column... more than likely it would just ignore it).
Also dont forget your head models for a body must all have the same skeleton set up the body has or you'll end up with verts in the heads skin mesh not being weighted properly ie when you export a head or rigged mesh theres a field in the Expotron utility that takes the skeletons file name, this has to be the same for all the parts making up the completed model. If you make a custom lizard man with multiple heads and bodies they all have to use, and be weighted to a single shared skeleton file... any difference will cause all sorts of issues with missing bones and unweighted verts.
2. yep as far as im aware the naked body (although it doesnt HAVE to be the 'body' persay) is the base mesh. Armor which would be your other body variants is handled like accessories i think... im not sure about it, but more or less it'll look for a file with all the right prefixes etc to swap with the body, although I think you can only do that with a body type 1 model and I dont know if theres anything special you need to do for it, ie just what the complete prefix requirments are.
With a player model like the human you have P_HH? + _XX + ZZ where P_HH is the start of the body mesh, ? is the gender M/F, followed by the armor type prefix then the armor meshs number, 00 being I think the base naked meshs number. im not at my main PC with NWN2 on to delve into the data zips to check
so i might have things wrong but thats in the right direction.
#7
Posté 07 octobre 2010 - 08:07
Banshe
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So armor is handled like accessories and only body type 1 can use them... Interesting.
Can armor be animated so that a special tail (a cow with a tail made of snakes) can be equipped/unequipped. I understand that weapons cannot be animated so I assume it is the same for armor.
Can armor be animated so that a special tail (a cow with a tail made of snakes) can be equipped/unequipped. I understand that weapons cannot be animated so I assume it is the same for armor.
