JarlFrank on 22/2/2016 at 22:22
So, I have a few questions on making custom AIs.
For the current mission I'm working on, I want to make a handful of customized AIs, mostly just changing the textures and keeping normal human models intact, although I might try slightly changing the models too (but not by much). Related to this, I have a couple of questions on how this all works. For my novice contest mission, I slightly modified two AIs from packs I downloaded: one from CoSaS noble pack, where I took a noblewoman and copypasted the barefoot texture of another skin to hers, so she would be barefoot. And a wizard from either Dromed Deluxe or Sensut's AI pack (don't exactly remember which one), whose clothes I re-colored to be purple as he is the "Purple Wizard".
That was very easy to do: I took existing model + texture, made some small changes to the texture, and saved it. Of course, that means these two models would always have the changed texture in my mission, as it seems that the texture a model has is determined in the mesh file itself, right? As in, the model knows which texture belongs to it. Luckily, with the two AIs I used, mesh and texture had similar names so they were easy to combine.
But it is not always that simple: sometimes, a mesh's skin is made up of multiple texture files, or sometimes the creator made a pack where it is not so easy to see on first glance which texture belongs to which model. So, how do I see this? Do I have to open the mesh with a 3D editing program?
I'd also like to ask at this point how to convert Thief meshes for editing with a 3D program like Blender or Anim8or, and if there are any good tutorials for it around. Any hints from those who have created models before would be appreciated.
Now, what if I want to modify an existing Thief model? What do I have to extract for that? The files are all in mesh.crf in the Thief RES folder, right? So, say I want to do a couple of things:
- I want to have a barefoot version of the servant girl in the green dress, for a sleeping servant, because seriously, who sleeps with shoes on?
- I want to have another version of that girl with a different hair color, and one more version with a different dress color, to bring more variety to the servants
- that would be three alternate textures in total: barefoot, different hair, different dress; BUT at the same time I also want to keep the original texture!
Creating these variations would be easy, just edit the texture with photoshop. That's no problem at all. The question I have is with how to make them all work alongside one another:
Am I correct when I assume that I would have to create completely new models for each of the variations? How do I do that? Open the original model in a 3D editor, then save it as a new one that is somehow pointing to a different texture file as its skin?
Any tutorials on modeling and skinning of AIs you have, or personal tips you can give, would be appreciated. And of course, a short description on how the mesh files work - how they know which texture to take as a skin, etc :D
EDIT: Oh, and what I forgot to ask are things like weapons. How do I, say, add a sword to a civilian model? I'd like to make some soldiers based on retextured civilian models, but of course none of them have a sword. Do I have to add weapons directly to the model, or are they some kind of attachment?
LarryG on 23/2/2016 at 00:28
Most of what you are asking is already documented in this forum. So I won't go into any detail in my answers. You can look them up easily enough yourself. Check out (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144469) Important Resources for Mission Authors (which is stickied at the top of this forum) and the search engine.
1. AIs are different from non-AI meshes in that they have special geometry to define joints and attachment points.
2. In converting a .3ds AI mesh to .bin so that it can be used by the Thief engine, the information to recreate this special geometry is lost, so the conversion of .3ds to .bin is one way only for AIs. (For non-AI objects, conversion is 2 way.) This means that in order to modify an existing AI you either need the original .3ds model with all the special geometry or you will have to recreate it yourself.
3. If all you are interested in is re-skinning an exiting AI, then all you need to do is open up the .bin file for that AI in a hex editor and look for the texture reference(s). You can then edit the indicated textures in your paint program, and save them with a new name. Then replace the names referenced in the original AI's .bin file with the new texture names, save the modified .bin with a new name, and test it out in DromEd. Just overwrite the old texture names in the .bin with the new names. It is easiest if your new names are the same length as the old, but if the old name has nulls (00) immediately following the name, you can have names which are longer than the originals. If you want names that are shorter, just pad the end with nulls in the .bin file.
4. If you want to modify the AI itself, then you will need some software utilities. Look for Shadowspawn's (
http://www.angelfire.com/games4/shadowspawn/Tools.html) Free the Objects and while you're there get the rest of his AI tools. Among other things, this will give you a tool to convert the AI models found in the mesh.crf file on your Thief CD to 3ds files. There are a number of websites which have the .3ds files for most of the OM AIs already converted for you to dowload. Again check out the (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144469) Important Resources for Mission Authors postings. NV's 3dstoBin front end is included (IIRC) with the DromEd toolkit. If you don't already have that, find it and download it. It makes life easier in using these dos based tools.
5. Once you have a .3ds file with all the special geometry, you can start remodeling your AI. There are tutorials (see (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144469) Important Resources for Mission Authors) explaining all about the special geometry and how it works, but for now, just leave it alone. If you want an AI with a sword, start with an AI model which has a sword. You can easily change a sword into a mace, but adding a sword or mace to an AI that doesn't have one already is more difficult, so don't try that. Changing the feet to be barefoot instead of shod should be a simple matter of cutting off the feet and pasting in new feet in their place. As you look at the textures you will figure out the texture mappings to the AI. It isn't hard. You can also import the .3ds into graphics programs that will generate a texture map for you. I use UVMapper Pro, but there are lots out there for you to choose from.
6. So, do your homework, read the tutorials, collect your tools, experiment, and when you get stuck, post your specific questions.
Tannar on 23/2/2016 at 00:45
Also, in regard to having multiple skins for the same AI mesh, the answer is to use the Renderer > Mesh Textures property. As an example, lets say you use the same servant girl model for several servants, but want them to be different from each other in some way (one is barefoot, one has a different color dress, one has different color hair, etc.). So you make four different versions of the texture and put them all in mesh/txt16. It doesn't really matter what you name them, but it's best to name them something that makes sense and can keep you organized (e.g. servgirl1, servgirl2, servgirl3, etc.) Now you need to know the name of the texture that the model uses by default. As in Larry's #3 above, using a hex editor program, open up the .bin file for that model and find the texture name that it uses. Let's say the name happens to be servant1.gif.
Then, in Dromed, create four servant girls using that model. Each of them will be using the same texture (servant1.gif) by default. Now select one of them, go to the properties and Add > Renderer > Mesh Textures. In the top line which says "Texture in model", put in the name of the texture that the model uses by default (servant1.gif). In the second line which says "Replace with", put in the name of one of your four custom textures. Repeat this for each of the serving girl characters you created, each time using a different custom texture in the second line.
That's how you get multiple versions of the same AI, each with a different texture.
john9818a on 23/2/2016 at 04:27
If you don't plan on editing the bin files in a hex editor even notepad will open them so that you can see which texture files are used.
Editing with a hex editor is probably easiest but I still used old school debug. :o
Purgator on 23/2/2016 at 13:27
Quote Posted by JarlFrank
And a wizard from either Dromed Deluxe or Sensut's AI pack (don't exactly remember which one)...
Actually, he's from a pack Firemage and I worked on.:)
Sensut made a demo mission to showcase that pack as well as some of his own excellent Dracula skins. I believe there's some of NecroBob's fine work in there too.
I really enjoyed your mission BTW!
voodoo47 on 23/2/2016 at 18:29
about detailattachments - you can attach pretty much anything to your AIs as long as it's only decorative, but additional trickery will be required if you want the AI to actually use it as a working weapon, I'd guess.
