Scerendo

The skin file looks like this:

 

 

 

I guess I am missing something.

I think you need the l_hand and r_hand mesh for a light saber to work properly in single player.

I'm not 100% certain though.

The way I fixed it on Poe, was having to set 'l_hand,*off' and 'r_hand,*off' to 'l_hand,off' and 'r_hand,off', in the skin file. Basically remove the * before 'off' for those two meshes.

In my experience,  the invisible lightsaber bug comes from a typo in r_hand. I have encountered with a Starkiller model, which I fixed by renaming the hand name to the proper "r_hand". Is there a typo in the skin file that could be causing this?

@@Scerendo

Hapslash's Anakin model had the same problem. Circa made a tutorial how to fix that.

Maybe that might be helpful:

 

 

It's not much different from what @@Barricade24 said, but at least you've got a clue what might be the problem. 

Thanks for the help guys, managed to fix it, wasn't a typo exactly.

I removed the * on "l_hand,*off" and "r_hand,*off" in the "torso_a1.skin" file (which is the pilot outfit). So it ended up just being "l_hand,off" and "r_hand,off"

I think in singleplayer the game for some reason needs the l_hand and r_hand meshes to be "on", even if they aren't being used.

I'm pretty much done with Poe, only thing left to fix is that invisible saber blade bug in singleplayer. And Finn just needs lods.

I've checked my hierarchy about a million times, and I have all initial 9 model parts (head, l_arm, torso etc) and with all the bolts linked correctly as far as i can tell, however the saber blade is still invisible when I'm using the pilot outfit - but it works perfectly fine with the resistance outfit. 

Everything is named correctly I believe, but I've linked my hierarchy below incase I've missed anything.

So I'm a little stumped when it comes to that. 

Looks good thus far, very clean. You doing everything in 3ds Max?

Is there a specific reason why you're not combining the armor into one 2048x map? Seems a bit excessive to have all of those texture sheets.

Out of curiosity does JKA have a resolution limit for textures? I've always thought 1024* was the max?

@Scerende when working with PBR you should avoid light information

but JKA models won't look good without a bit of prelighting applied

I'd recomnmend painting further light information, bring out some parts

I did some light baking to try and make some more of the details pop:

still really flat, needs lighting information

 

take the blue channel of your bent normal map, set it to multiply and put it on top of your layer stack

the green channel goes above that set to soft light

 

I recommend 30% and 60% for the opacity values

Went back and added the blue channel, I also got rid of the shadows clamp I was using.

Since I normally work with PBR workflows, my sensibilities keep telling me to avoid lighting information lol, but doing what you said has made it a bit nicer, though I'm wondering if it might a be a bit too dark at the back.

Actually it's a frankenstein and is far from a new one from scratch there are also two models one for the Youtubers and one from TFA Pinball game both will need porting so..

I know which one you mean, but I could of sworn @@lervish was working on a model, will double check though.

Update 13/03/2016:

Just a screenshot of Finn in modview:

That looks excellent man, definitely spot on. Just need some praise the sun animations for jka and you're all set.

Sorry for being out the loop a bit guys, been stupidly busy last couple of weeks.

Tutorial on how you make skin? I still can't paint skin.

I used this tutorial recently (it is for substance painter though, but you could maybe carry the painting techniques across in photoshop:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaifGzi-BZs

I also cheat a little bit, and for things like the eyebrows and lips, I might actually use a projection tool to paint them in from a reference photo of the celebrity.

Although on the offchance you have a digital tutors or a plural account, they have a very good tutorial on texturing characters. Should be called 'Realistic Game Character Texturing in Substance Painter' by Joshua Kinney. If you have a look for that name you might be able to find the video elsewhere.

I'm kinda curious about your workflow. The models in ZBrush all are posed in the JA DaVinci pose, are you using some sort of base mesh that you're importing into ZBrush? Or do you have some sort of template to pose them.

Pretty much. I basically had a basemesh I used for character sculpting and I just did a quick rig on it in Maya to get it to match the DaVinci Pose of the JKA model (I could upload it, if people wanted to use it). From there, I do the rest of the modelling/sculpting in zbrush itself. Once that is done and I'm happy with it/spent too much time on it, I'll export the high poly and use Topogun 2 to do my re topology of the model, then make final changes to the mesh in Max.

@@Scerendo will you consider on making a full Kylo Ren model, after you finish those 2?

Hey, I believe I saw somewhere someone was already making one (both masked and unmasked), and it was already looking fairly decent - so for that reason, I don't think I will be. 

I feel you, man. But the truth is without proper cloth physics Sidious is never going to look the way we'd want him to in-game.

One of the few things I like about Battlefront 2015 is how good Sidious (heroes in general) looks and animates in it.

That being said I think you could be able to get away with something convincing, If the cloth doesn't look too flat and stiff in places., if I recall in Telltales Game of Thrones game, they didn't have any cloth physics on dresses and robes (they did on the cloaks though), but they managed to pull it off.

If the robe hanging fairly close to the body, like it is in that first image, you might be alright. Worth a think though!

Update 02/03/2016:

Work in progress on the textures for the Resistance outfit:

Update 26/02/2016:

Some WIP sculpts on Poe's Resistance Outift:

And Finn:

The shaders not working on your model may have to do with the texture path written into the .glm itself. The game won't use shaders for models with " \ " in the texture path (within the .glm), so make sure you're using " / ".

 

Example:

 

models\players\sbd\body.tga --incorrect

 

models/players/sbd/body.tga --correct

Wow that was it. Didn't even notice that.

This is why I never will be a programmer!

Cheers pal, and thanks everyone for the suggestions.

Heads starting to look a lot more like Oscar Isaac. Only other complaint I have is the outfit is a little bright but other then that looks amazing!

I increased the AO and saturation a tad.

At the moment I'm a bit stuck. My shaders are not working at all on the model, and I am not sure why. Also the lightsaber blade is missing in singleplayer.

There's no error message, in the console. 

The mesh itself is 5.9k triangles which is below that of Aayla and Quinlan, which I did not have any issues with - so I do not think its anything to do with the model's density.

For example a simple shader for the alpha that I have here:

Update 21/02/2016:

Here's some modview screenshots with the baked diffuse texture for JKA (note the hair and helmet visor have alphas, just obviously can't display them properly in modview):

The way I'm going about this is, there will be a lower poly model for vanilla JKA, to avoid any ghoul2 errors, but I will also include a separate pk3 with a higher poly model as a replacement for people who wish to use it in OpenJK/JKA enhanced or whenever rend2 kicks off.

Small update 14/02/2016:

Just made small small adjustments to the helmet and face, and I darkened the material on the straps a bit:

Reduce the strength of the AO , some of the wrinkles are insanely dark - if you have a dirt layer on there that's based on AO turn down the intensity/spread of that dirt

 

also relinking this : https://jkhub.org/topic/6178-aayla-secura/page-4?do=findComment&comment=100818

Hey thanks for relinking that. I did lower the AO a bit, however some of the shadows are coming from marmoset's sky light and won't actually be present in the textures/Jedi academy.

I'll be rigging the pilot outfit shortly to see how it looks in game, so I'll be doing the baking for jedi academy's textures after that.

Edit: Just followed the tutorail to make the pilots torso diffuse for Jedi academy - its a really awesome workflow, really captured the details of the cloth, without blowing it out. Makes me want to go back and redo Aayla and Quinlans textures.

Update 12/01/2016:

Taken a break from his head to texture his pilot body:

Would you guys be interested in me doing a weapon model for his pistol as well? Considering I've made a version of it for his holster.

Update 06/02/2015:

Still working on the head, made some minor adjustments to the face:

Update 04/02/2016:

W.I.P on the head at the moment, messing with the alphas on the hair:

Was pretty challenging sculpting his face, (faces linkness in general) I'm still tweaking the actual mesh proportions to get it closer to the reference.

Face needs work but for a first WIP image, looks EXTREMELY good. Very nice work so far!

Thank you, yeah face is definitely going to be my next port of call - got plenty of references this time around.

Looking nice!

 

Will you be including his Resistance jacket outfit as well?

Thanks, yes definitely will be doing his resistance outfit as well.

Update 02/03/2016:

Work in progress on the textures for the Resistance outfit:

Update 26/02/2016:

Some WIP sculpts on Poe's Resistance Outift:

And Finn:

Update 21/02/2016:

Here's some modview screenshots with the baked diffuse texture for JKA (note the hair and helmet visor have alphas, just obviously can't display them properly in modview):

The way I'm going about this is, there will be a lower poly model for vanilla JKA, to avoid any ghoul2 errors, but I will also include a separate pk3 with a higher poly model as a replacement for people who wish to use it in OpenJK/JKA enhanced or whenever rend2 kicks off.

Update 12/01/2016:

Small update 14/02/2016:

Just made small small adjustments to the helmet and face:

Taken a break from his head to texture his pilot body:

Update 06/02/2015:

Still working on the head, made some minor adjustments to the face:

Update 04/02/2016:

W.I.P on the head at the moment, messing with the alphas on the hair:

Was pretty challenging sculpting his face, (faces linkness in general) I'm still tweaking the actual mesh proportions to get it closer to the reference.

Hey guys, still quite early days on the model, but I'll show you what I've done so far so I can get some feedback and anything I need to fix earlier on.

At the moment just been working on the high poly model in zbrush:

I'm not the greatest at zbrush so I'm aware its not perfect, I'm still fiddling with the cloth folds and creases. 

But I'm going to make a start on retopologisng the head into a lowpoly model, whilst I continue work on the sculpt.

Comments and criticism always welcomed.

This looks great dude, I'm excited to see where you take the mod in the future

What program do you use to export to JKA?

I've been using XSI Softimage at the moment, but I m planning to look at archangel's plugin for 3ds max for the future.

Having a look at your model and for such a high poly model, you really should have LODs. There's also areas that could stand to drop a few tris.

Hey thanks for feedback.

Oh didn't know LODs were a thing in JKA? Is there a guide on them anywhere?

I will indeed keep that in mind for future for Poe.

Thats good to know though, I'm quite used to a higher poly workflow so I'm still learning when it comes to optimizing for JKA.