Kualan

Clearly Kyle thinks size matters.

Yeah, some characters (like Obi-Wan, Anakin, Dooku and even Ki-Adi-Mundi) already have such perfect renditions tailor-made to suit JKA's engine that I don't see much point in making ported versions of them. The ports always look too bland unless the diffuse/normal textures are appropriately blended anyway.

The unweighted vertex error comes up during export because every vertex needs to be weighed to something. So for example, in that second Blender pic where the torso is only partially weighed to the thoracic bone, if you click on other bones in Vertex Group you'll see the rest of the vertices in that mesh are weighed to at least one of them. Use vanilla models as a guide for how best to distribute the weights across the different bones.

As for removing weights, you can just select the relevant vertex in Edit Mode then click 'Remove' under Vertex Groups to remove any weights attached to it.

What about the Pike syndicate?

 That would be pretty sweet - damned if I can figure out where to start with such a unique-looking alien though.

these guards is pretty dope, would be cool to have them

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/a/a4/Senate_Guards.png/revision/latest?cb=20131112161948

 

or a remake of the Royal guards

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/d/dc/EmperorsRoyalGuardCSWE.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130702064257

Have a look through this thread, I have WIPs of them that I think I released in a WIP Mega Pack.

Woow amazing work.

Kualan, maybe can you do a more detailed chewie like from tfa or from ep3 ?

Unlikely. Jedi Academy is pretty limited in what it can do with hair/fur, etc. Would be a lot of work for a result that wouldn't be that much different to the vanilla Chewbacca.

What I ended up doing this morning:

First up is an updated Admiral Ackbar. I used the original JK2 model by Moooa as a base, but gave him an updated head from TFU and did some remodelling in Blender to give the admiral a more screen-accurate "humped" back. The original head model had a gaping-wide open mouth so I also make some adjustments to that:

Second on today's projects is a cheap and easy kitbash. Another addition to the roster of galactic senators, Representative Binks:

And lastly, the former Supreme Chancellor himself:

Is there a way to turn off an NPC using the acrobatic animations? If not, there will be a lot of baseposing in-game.

I suppose you could give him something like CLASS_SABER_DROID as a template for the NPC file? They're immune to knockdown and, IIRC, don't use any acrobatics.

That's presuming classes only dictate behaviour within any animation set and don't need to be tied to a particular animation list.

Mandalorian Police?

Mandalorian Police?

I did start Satine's guards a long while ago but gave up pretty quickly. The police might be a bit easier...

Anybody got any Clone Wars requests? Rewatched the movie tonight and fancy doing something from that era again.

One suggestion - try blending some of the normal map (texture ending in _n) with the main diffuse texture to create a more detailed result in JKA. Using just the diffuse texture by itself results in a lighter, less detailed-looking texture in a game like JKA.

You could also just cut out the main 'body' part of the AT-ACT and kitbash that to the existing AT-AT model instead, which would save you all the hassle of re-weighing the legs, etc. I imagine the 'body' is weighed to just one or two bones so would be pretty quick to do.

Since your knowledge of modeling is far above mine, what's your opinion on the model? Is it possible to place the textures correctly, convert it to glm and make it usable in ModView and ingame? Because some models are more or less impossible to get them to work.

It should be possible, since the really difficult part (making the custom animations) already exists in the form of the current AT-AT model available for JKA. 

Once imported, in theory you would just need to delete any existing weights/rigging in the .FBX file and re-do them (this time aligning the weights to bones that exist in the original JKA AT-AT's skeleton). The proportions between the old and the new model is what will determine the success of this (scale doesn't matter, just the proportions of the model's individual parts in relation to each other and how these have been modelled with the intended animations in mind).

For textures, importing the .FBX file should retain its UV mapping so you won't need to re-map the UV for .glm.

But on the other hand, I would say this is a particularly involved choice to do for your first Blender .glm edit. A lot of it is very specific and different to standard humanoid skeleton editing, you may want to familiarize yourself with those processes first as at the moment you're sort of trying to achieve the 'exception' without first learning the 'typical' if that makes sense?

If you barely know what you're doing, learn to use Blender first. There are plenty of tutorials on that. You need to learn about basic navigation, modelling, uv mapping and skeletal animation at least, I reckon.

 

I believe Blender can retarget animations from one skeleton to a different one, which you could use if the model doesn't quite fit the AT-AT's skeleton. I don't know how exactly to do that though.

Can not reiterate this enough. When I was starting out I tried to focus on just learning how to do the very specific process I wanted to achieve, figuring I could just follow some step-by-step tutorial for that and not worry about the other stuff. But the truth is it's practically impossible without first learning the basics of Blender.

It might seem inconvenient if you're just trying to do one thing, but just invest a couple of hours in following a basic Blender tutorial series (of which there are loads on YouTube) and it will make life SO much simpler for you when you then try to learn how to do things with specific formats or plugins like .GLMs. Trust me, it will pay off.

Very nice!

So what did people get?

Guess who's learning how to animate just to make his NPCs drink beer.

 

 

Also, is it cool if I use your Mas Amedda model, as seen in this video, @@Kualan?

Sure, it looks good.

Back home now, so here's a screenshot of the updated Krennic WIP:

There will also be a hat version, and a lower-ranked 'younger' version from his days as a lieutenant commander. If anyone wants to make a soundpack, go for it.

The eyes and hair are not weighed in sync with the rest of the head, results in some very odd-looking moments during any animations where he turns his head!

I was going to do a Battlefront-version of my Krennic kitbash too, but there's probably not much point now. No sense duplicating efforts.

Eh, not a great critique in my opinion. His main point seems to be that the film should 'tell' more and 'show' less, which is arguably exactly what you should try to avoid when writing.

There are things that Rogue One didn't get right, sure. But I think this reviewer has missed the mark a bit.

awesome! unless not that much has changed, which is of no worry - slow and steady is better than quick and rushed - could you please post some screenshots of Krennic?

I'm away from home for the holidays at the moment, but there isn't much more to show at this stage - his hair colour has been tweaked with some brown and some age detailing has been added to the face to make him look a little more weathered.

When you mirrored the objects, it is possible you flipped the vertex normals as well which might cause issues.

When you have the meshes open in Blender, are the mirrored sides noticeably lighter/darker than the non-mirrored ones when in 'Solid' view mode?

Did a little more work on Krennic today, and am hoping to get the next issue of my comic finished in the next couple of weeks too. Probably won't have time to do any more than that but I'm always happy to hear ideas.

I really liked Krennic. It's not often in Star Wars where the villain is just as much of an underdog as the heroes yet still manages to pose a threat.

Great post, interesting read! Keep up the good work.