Cerez

Hahaha! They had to replace her head with another person's to hide her identity during the execution of Order 66. So it's still Ahsoka, but with someone else's head... Edit: I have a feeling Dave was trying to bring back Ahsoka into the picture, but the new management had new ideas about how she should look and sound, and her role in the new series. But that's just another wild guess from me...

Let me rave about this... I just saw the new Ahsoka in Rebels. I like the new outfit, but with her head and face... what were they thinking? She doesn't even look like Ahsoka anymore -- more like a strange, distant relative. They changed the patterns on her lekkus and montrals, and even the signature pattern on her face. That doesn't change in Togruta! Not to mention that she's supposed to be 31 years old here, and she sounds like she's 15 at most... I don't get it... Also, at 31 years of age, her montrals should have grown significantly. By their length she looks no more than 20 years old here... (This is one of the ways I know Rebels is not really headed by Dave Filoni and his creative team anymore.)

You've really improved a lot with your texturing skills, @. Keep it up. This is looking really good.

That's true, but it's nothing that a little model tweaking can't fix. The bigger problem is that she's 12-13 at the beginning of the series, and 16 at the end. That's a big difference in realistic growth and development. Making a 12-year-old model for JKA is difficult. Even the 16-year-olds look like 19-year-olds in this game. She would have to look something closer to NeoMarz's younglings, to make it true to life. We were aiming for a 16-17-year-old with this design.

Great suggestion. I have visually compared my model's shoulders to his Leia, and it's doing quite well in comparison. So I guess I did a good job, even if I don't feel the results... I knew Infinity Blade. He was a great guy. He's HapSlash's brother, you know. I really feel for HapSlash, now that IB is not around anymore... They are both honorary members of our greater community. We were honoured to have them, truly.

Meaning her early, season 1-3 look? No, but I don't see why someone interested wouldn't be able to reskin this model to her other outfit. They're quite similar in terms of body shape. Only the buckle is a little different, but that's really a minor detail. Thanks everyone for your support. Stay tuned.

Thanks. Well, I was entertaining the idea that someone could neatly merge the head with the Jedi Human Female body. That way, with a few good reskins, we could create a new, Togruta single-player species. I think that would make a worthy "Frankenstein" project... (But that'll have to wait until after the release. I've simply got too much on my hands now...) Well, this is a model custom made from scratch for JKA. The CWA model was made for a different game, so you can't really compare them directly. This model has a realistic design while the CWA model has the stylistic cartoon design of the show. Imagining and fine-tuning the realistic design was a lot of work. But I'm getting ahead of myself. More in time.

Agreed. Those are really good points. *nods*

She's back from hiding, coming soon to even the score. (And to show everyone how @@AshuraDX's lightsabers are really wielded! Haha!) Teaser screenie now, more info later... I'm still working on finalising the rigging and texturing. And yes, it's a realistic, JK version of her. (I have been listening. ) Edit: I've been working on this model closely with a skilled friend of mine for almost half a year now. It's come a long way since we started on this project together. Now that it's finally nearing release, I thought it may be time for a treat.

Yep, but it's also a problem with the skeleton's design. The JKA skeleton is a standard looking skeleton, but the animations the characters are doing are like almost full 360 arm-swinging, so they really should have implemented a circular joint design, or something that allows for that sort of twist in the shoulder. Then again, I've never really noticed this until I started rigging. I always thought it was just a small bug in the animation when I paused the game awkwardly at certain times. Most of the action is too fast-paced to really notice it. I've made my peace with it, now. I can't change how the game works... I'll figure out some way to cover it up a little with carefully positioned textures. What a lot of good JKA modelers do is cover up the shoulder joints with cloth mesh on top, so that you can't actually see the deforming joints. Also, it's not so obvious if your model has thicker arms (like Kyle).

Hahaha, don't be so dramatic, @@minilogoguy18. Of course Max 5 has a weight painting tool. It has all the basic necessities to get the job done -- all of the core functionality of 3DS Max. It's just missing some of the luxury tools and features that the newer versions have that make the workflow easier. I did have a look at a few helpful video tutorials -- I think yours included -- but I'm not satisfied with how my shoulder weighting attempts are turning out, and now, after getting my weights matching as close to Raven's as possible, I've realised why... Have a look at this beauty! The only consolation these models have is a matching texture on the arms and torso, so that the shoulder mutations are not so obvious. Unfortunately, in my case, I don't have that luxury... It's just bad model design for animation in the original game. The best thing I can do is to carefully fine-tune the weight on each vertex and try and get it looking as close to less mutated as possible... So it comes down to whether it's looking bad or disastrous, and I'm trying to get it as close to bad as possible, hahaha...

Yessss! Here we go! Version 2.68 of Blender has no problem importing GLMs using @@mrwonko's plugin with all weight settings and individual vertex point weight information visible (you can see it on the right side there, in the Properties panel). That's as good a reference as one can get! Now I'm ready and armed to tackle those shoulders properly. B) Thanks everyone.

Update: After installing Blender and setting up @@mrwonko's plugins, I was able to get a good look at the eyelid topology on Jan: As you can see, the model needs to preferably have formed eyelids with eyelashes, which are then weighted gradually to the eye bones, like a regular joint, as @@minilogoguy18 has said. Hopefully this information will help someone else wondering this same question.

It's a long story... but now that I've come more than halfway through the project with version 5, I don't want to switch to something different. It'll throw me off the task at hand. I will update Max after this project. An update: after some tinkering and setting up, I was able to get Raven's GLMs to load with weights in Blender (thanks, @@mrwonko). Version 2.64 of Blender (surprisingly) doesn't support viewing exact weight values on individual vertexes (something that even ancient Max 5 can do), but at least it gives a visual idea of how the weights are distributed across the mesh for the individual bones. Version 2.68 and upward added vertex weight viewing and editing, though I've yet to see if @@mrwonko's GLM import plugin works with a newer version of Blender... Stay tuned.

I'm weighting using vertex selection. I have very few polys to work with for each joint, so it's very finicky to get the balance right. I see that even the Raven team has had problems with deforming the joints on their models properly. It was a poor choice to design the models and assign/control the skeleton this way on their part... If they were planning on arms swinging behind and over the head, they should have elaborated on those shoulder joint designs. Either way, is what it is... gotta work with it. Thanks @@Psyk0Sith, but I can't open this in Max 5. Where are these Raven XSI model source files, @@Archangel35757? I was only able to find animation sources, which are just that: skeleton animations without any mesh and weights.

Great! Thanks @@Ramikad and @@Circa! I'll download Blender then, and see if I can figure this thing out...

Can someone confirm this?

It's just that there are so few polys to work with, and the JKA skeleton is merciless with the arm movements. It's extremely hard to find a balance that works. This is the third time I've started from scratch, and I just can't get the shoulders to behave... :/

How do I import Raven's models (GLMs) with weighting information preserved? My 3DS Max plugin imports the GLMs successfully, but there are no weights showing on the imported model's mesh. I really need to have a look at an original rig from Raven for reference. I'm having a real hard time with getting the shoulders to deform properly...

You're not?! Then what are you doing here?? Out! Out!!!

This popped into my mind today, while working on my model: So who's up for marching up and down the square with me?

That sounds interesting. Would it kill Darth Malak in one shot?

Fair enough. To me Linux is always best for work, anyway. I have Windows 8.1 running on a partition and I'm scared to update it because every time I do, one of my classic games loses something important that it requires to function properly. And the OS management is horrible in Windows. For example, ever noticed how some icons show badly or show as the wrong icon? That's because Windows caches all icons, and it often triggers some sort of bug that mixes the icons up. Now, how do you empty the cache? Take a wild guess. You need to quit Windows Explorer from the Task Manager, and then run a series of commands in the Command Prompt to delete the cache files, then restart your computer. That's real user friendly. Hurray for Windows. XD