Tirpider's Hex-Crafting Request Thread

[{TcF}Dr.Penguin]

Hey I would like to make a Phaze II trooper clone trooper with a TIE PILOT chest rig that connects tubes to his helmet, with a jet pack. Is there any conceivable way to do this? I'd extremely appreciate any help you guys cna give me. Thanks!

[tirpider]

I'm working on how to do just that sort of thing via hex editing.

I don't have those models taken apart at the moment, but it should be do-able.

I'm using UV maps to isolate geometry in the models and creating seprate model chunks that can be swapped around (somewhat)

There is no walk through or guide for this (that I know of) and I prefer to work with the stock BF1 and BF2 assets out of respect for the modelers.

To be clear on the parts, is the Tie Pilot piece you want on the stock BF1 guy?
Which jet pack do you want, and I don't know phase 2 from any other clone, if you could point out a specific one, that would be great.

It takes me about a day to gather and piece together like this, but It might take 2 or 3 longer because of schedule stuff.

-edit (tiny bit of research)
A quick trip to Wookieepedia gave me a good example of the Phase II guy.

That would be the bf2 rep_inf_ep3trooper.msh.
There is also one with a jet pack (rep_inf_ep3jettrooper.msh)

Are either of these acceptable? (to apply the pieces to)

[Unit 33]

You can Kit-bash with Hex editing? Good God!

I've been looking for an Imperial Officer Model with a Storm Trooper head, so perhaps that would also be possible with this method.

[Phobos]

that would be amazing tirpider

[{TcF}Dr.Penguin]

Yes, I meant the 501st trooper unit from SWBF2, and Jet pack from SWBF1, sorry for not being more specific.

[tirpider]

Groovy.
I have a Dr. appointment this afternoon, I'll get started hacking up clones when I get back.

re: kitbashing via hex
It's something I was hoping to add to my program, but the more I do it, the more I realize how incredibly impossible thats going to be.

I don't have the process down enough to do a proper write up, but after this clone, I'll start a thread with what I do know, and answer questions as best I can.

re: Stormie Officer
That should be possible. I'll add it to my list.

re: Amazing tirpider
It is amazing. It's also very time consuming and hackish. The down side is that it takes a while to do the cutting and set up. The Up side is that the piece is just as complete as when it came out of XSI and can be used over and over.

-edit
Status report.
Got the Respirator(?) isolated and mapped to a generic skeleton.
There is a bit of wiredness in the model at the moment. It's 1 of 8 possible verticies. (see attached pic.) I'll find and destroy it after supper.

-edit
Wierdness taken care of (the UV's run awfully close on the TiePilot)
New hurdle is an expected gap between the hoses and the clone helmet face. (pic below)
In a modeling prog, I would just budge the points over or create a new section.
My spreadsheet lacks a magic budge button so this is a special problem. (There are always special problems)
I'll go ahead with the pack and come back to this.

-edit
Got all the pieces together for an in-game test run.
1. The Pack appeared at hi feet, but it's because it was hung directly on a bone originally. I'll have to rework some ENVL's and MNDX's to fix that (Not a problem)
2. The Gap is still a special issue.
3. The respirator pack hangs low. (I'll adjust it's TRAN)
4. The hoses pass through the arms. (circled on the left in pic Test_01 below) (I think we will have to live with that.)
5. The hoses stretch in a wierd way.  This may be an enveloping or animation choice issue, and I may have to guess at it or surrender and accept it like #4 above.
Thats my progress for the evening. More tomorrow, perhaps sunlight will illuminate the path on 4 and 5.

[Phobos]

looks like you are making great progress. will it finally be possible to add the long dreads to the swbf2 wookiee models using this method/tool? could this maybe be used to fix master yarael poof's neck problem?

[{TcF}Dr.Penguin]

Yay looks like lots of progress.

[tirpider]

oops.
Grabbed the wrong jetpack.
Fixed.

re:Fixing Yareal and the Wookiee
I haven't looked at the dreads. If they are bent and lay neatly across his back then it would be easy. If they are straight, the dreads would need to be modified in a modeling prog (bent to lay correctly), then put back into a msh before they could be hexed back on. (I'm guessing)

I've been thinking about Yareal. I think his skeleton MNDXs must be shifted at some point and so he ends up mapped to incorrect bones or nulls. They would become shifted after a MODL was added in somewhere without updating the MNDXs.
He is a special problem. Just plain hard to troubleshoot.

re:method/tool
Well, it is a method, and a lot of tools. Spreadsheet, text editor, hex editor, paint.net, 3d Object Converter, the Battlefront MSH Viewer, and my MSH Info, size validator, and chunk2msh tools, along with an autoit script that rebuilds tags with code pasted from the spreadsheet. It only deals with one SEGM at a time.
a quick rundown goes something like this:

• Set up folders to keep it as neat as possible. (Most important part. It's easy to get lost.)
• Gather source files (MSH's and TGA's, it's nice to grab .options as well)
• Cut the source MSH into chunks and tag chunks.
• Get Info from the MSH INFO tool into the spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet is an 11 page workbook. It has pages for POSL,WGHT,NRML,UV0L,NDXL,NDXT, and STRP. A page for working with ENVL, one for identifying UV regions, one to identify what gets kept or deleted and a page to rope it all together to be pasted into the AutoIT script.

• Save the spreadsheet (Do this after every change, really)
• Then open the msh with 3d Object Converter and use the Unwrap UV button to get a 1024*1024 uv map of each segm you'll be working with.
• Next open the uv map, flip it verticly and save it.
• Open the flipped uvmap ith paint (or any editor you can do pixel by pixel work in) and draw a rectangle around each area (even the ones you don't want.) Some regions will require more than one rectangle to surround completely but not overlap other areas.
• save the marked map.
• transfer the upper left and lower right coordinates for each region into the spreadsheet
• close everything but the spreadsheet
• The Spreadsheet is designed to automaticly determine what UV Region a vertex belongs to, but sometimes there are issues like overlapping areas and completely missed areas. All that must be puzzled out before continuing.
• Copy the UV Regions from the UV0L page to a text editor, then copy that and paste it to the far right of the GENERAL page. (this eliminates the formulas from the cells, otherwise you end up pasting formulas and it doesnt work)
• Select the colums for the regions you want to keep and paste them in the keep area of the General page
• Review the STRP for islands of les than three points and strips that don't start with 2 'break' indicators
• Review the STRP again (it's long and can't be skimmed over)
• The first column on the _AutoIT page will have the variable declarations ready to be copied and pasted into the data part of the conv script.
• Run the conv script (This will create new POSL,WGHT,NRML,UV0L,NDXL,NDXT, and STRP tags.)
• Use chunks2msh to create the new modl piece, then validate it with the msh validator
• rename the resulting 'new_msh.msh' to '000 whatever.chunk' (numbering appropriatly)
• put the piece in your build area and use chunk2msh to create your new msh
• validate it
• open with the MSH viewer and 3d Object Converter to quickly identify issues
• Load into a side folder with appropriate textures, munge and test.
• Fix problems, reinvent wheels, rewrite code and/or formulas in the spreadsheet to accomodate any special needs

At any point in the above, inconsistancies can pop up and need to be accomodated, fixed, or ignored.
There are steps missing, things that can only be shown in pictures or video, (how to set up build folders, how batchh files can and cant help, limitations of several of the tools involved, ect.) This has all been in my head till now. It isn't ready for any kind of release or instructable, as I'm still kinda making it up and revising as I go. I appologize for that.


-edit
v1 Jetpack is happily on his back and not on his feet.
Next is to take a swing at the gap, then finding a shadowvolume for him.
I'm thinking I need to make the hoses and respirator panel seperate MODLs so thier translation can be adjusted independantly.
(btw, I am sorry for the long windedness of my posts, I'm hoping that by doing so, some of the process can become clearer for future refference.)

-edit
Ok. The best fix for the gap is going to be to make a new little length of hose to connect with the helmet face.
I imagine this is a 5 min fix in a modeling prog, but well.. yeah.
It might take a bit as I haven't been able to create the triangles needed to form the geometry yet.
The verts and all their data is simple copy paste stuff, and identifying the triangle points is easy, but I get hung up on the clockwise, counter-clockwise sequenceing of the points.
(more talking throught it....)
I'll try isolating one section of the tube, duplicate it and fudge it's location into where I want it, and see how the UV needs to be adjusted afterwards.

-edit
verts are made, got them UV'ed, normaled, and weighted.
Now I need to figure out how to make a triangle strip out of them.
Can't even look at them till I have the edge info to get it in a viewer or the game.
Going to take a break for a few hrs to let the magical intuition thing happen.

[{TcF}Dr.Penguin]

Can't wait..

[tirpider]

Not done yet. (I appologize)

I have the points, and am wrangling triangles.
I don't have a quick build process for this aspect of it (yet.)

I have the UV's correct, the normals are close enough.
But you can see in the pic below, that the triangles are mutilated.

The good news is that when this part is done, I'll either have the STRP mastered, or will be loath to take it on without a modeling program.

-edit
Just a quick note to assure you I'm still on task.
Still at it.
The rest of this process really is easy. Just modl swapping like anyone else has done.
The part thats taking so long is the fabrication of these triangles.

The take home from this is that these sorts of edits (swapping pieces, and isolating pieces based on UV regions,) are completely possible IF they match up naturally. If they don't match up, then you have to invent stuff to fill in the holes.

I opted to extend the hoses because I didn't want to fiddle with finding the center of rotation on them and mess with translating quaternions to get the rotation just right.

Concept Phase II Clone Pilot is on it's way, just taking a little longer than planned.

-edit
HalfWayThere
In the new pic below, the completed triangles are shown for one tube. (top and bottom shown)
I may have to reverse some numbers for the other, but my guess worked out (not skill, not knowledge, I guessed.. :/ )
So it's good news for the trooper and still a questionmark for general knowledge.

-edit
Victory is mine!
The hose is modified.
There is a UV issue with the left hose (something is reversed) but I'm so frustrated at looking at the guts of the hose, I'll tackle that just before saying it's done.

All the parts need to be assembled and I need to line up the end of the hose with the face of the helmet. (I'll push the end just inside the helmet model to be sure it's all sealed.)

Then there is deciding if the respirator panel needs to be shifted.

-edit
TheStorySoFar
He is using the sv_ from the bf2 ep3 jet trooper.
That means no shadow for the hoses.

Again, sorry for the play-by-play updates, I get panic-y when a project goes into overtime.
(I always downplay challenges when I do time estimates.)

-edit
Bending
Moving the tubes into a better-ish position. (Still working on it.)
The angle they were entering the helmet from was awful, I'm trying to soften it a bit.
I hope it doesn't turn into moving the whole hose around, but it it does, I can and will do it.

[{TcF}Dr.Penguin]

Yay! It looks awesome, can't wait for it!

[Snake]

Nice!

[tirpider]

It is bent.
I softened the angle (and worked out a way to move verts with at least 1 less headache )

Next is fixing the squishy uv on that one hose end.

I took a swing at coloring the pack blue instead of green... I believe I completely failed to match the 501 blue.
It is a safe bet that someone else will need to skin this guy.

-edit
UV fixed

Next, reposition the respirator panel. (In-game, the panel rests right on his stomach and folds into his waist in the normal soldier pose and walk anims.)
I'm thinking that it will just go up a bit and the hoses will just have to connect closer to the bottom.
The alternative is to completely re-do the hoses and that is something to avoid.

BTW, if ya'll see anything I'm missing or have suggestions\corrections\flames, please let me know.
It's time consuming, but I assure you that I am enjoying it.

[Led]

You sir, are a craftsman with a hex-knive.