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Hashlist and filenames updated to PTS 6.0 #11 https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Hashlist and filenames updated to PTS 6.0 #15 https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

@ZeroGravitas I've gotten pretty comfortable using the textures in Blender myself, the image below being my typical Blender setup



As much as it seems really simple, this seems to work well enough for most materials. I use the _m map outside of Blender in photoshop, using the Green and Red channel as masks. If you know of a way to do it within Blender itself, I would really like to know if you've no problem sharing the knowledge. I've found through old posts on this forum that the alpha of the _s or _gloss map is strictly responsible for an objects roughness/shininess. I would usually use a colour ramp to alter it, as out-of-the-box it can produce some ugly results. It can also be used for the metalness of an object, though some fine tuning with the colour ramp would be needed to isolate the parts that actually should be metal. A good example of this is the Huttsbane's jacket, with the circular metal discs on the scarf and jacket.

For objects that have some transparency to them, I use a slightly different node setup that uses the emission and opacity textures. Not all textures come with these though, I know a few character customisation items don't like the headset for the cyborgs. They're a part of the unaltered normal map and need to be removed manually.

If you want to see how these materials look, I have an imgur album here (https://imgur.com/a/ZKhxacX) of the stuff I've been creating with it. I've added my own take on the Fury at the bottom just for you

Those renders of yours are most impressive and inspiring! Myself, I've been so obsessed with the matter of understanding SWTOR's materials system that I haven't tried building a proper scene yet and am just fighting the whole thing to get my player characters to look right. It doesn't help that I'm learning Blender on the fly, but I'm getting to like it a whole lot.

(I'm afraid that, for some reason, your image attachment shows as a broken icon in your message)
EDIT: I can see the attachment now

Separating the maps' channels to be able to use them as masks inside Blender is fairly easy thanks to the 'Separate RGB' converter node. This is the way I'm simulating the use of Dyes on a piece of gear or the color changes that Bioware applies to some items to create new varieties.


(It's a bit simplified, but I'm using the same principle for other properties such as, say, shininess, which means repeating the mixing process for each material's feature. I'm trying to use the Node Groups feature to create a few reusable ones: environment items, gear, skin+face and some others so that, for each model's piece, I just add the relevant node group, plug the texture files, tweak a few values, and get almost there before any node tweaking (I too can use node groups to store, say, common skin tone values for all visible body parts. It's the closest thing to having global variables for nodes).

Thank you for the advice on using a color ramp on the roughness/shininess channel, as I was getting poor results there and that was one of the things I was most frustrated about.

Something I'd like to do in a following post is to summarise what I know and what I don't about all the texture files and their channels (I was going through all the posts these last days to make sure I hadn't missed anything). For example, I haven't the faintest idea about how to use the _h ones, and I have several questions about the face and eye-related textures. It would be great to compare notes.

This is what I've got out of interpreting this post and this one. I should note that, rather than using Noesis to locate specific items and produce their meshes and texture files, I gather everything "manually" out of using jedipedia.net's references: It's just that Noesis, when exporting single models, converts RotationMaps to traditional "blue" normal maps automatically, so what I'm posting here wouldn't quite apply.

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_d DiffuseMap:
RGB: diffuse, ambient, emissive colors.
Alpha: Unused most of times. On ocassion seems to do as… some kind of Reflectivity map?

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_n RotationMap:
R: visibility mask, if in use.
G: normal map's G channel.
B: emissivity, if in use.
Alpha: normal map's inverted R channel.

I'm using this recipe from the thread to turn this "green" normal map into the classic "blue" type: Alpha to R, G to G, fill B with white. This is the kind of thing I'd package as a Node Group in Blender for reuse.
(SWTOR Fan spoke of "bump map" channels instead of "normal map" ones, but I assume they are normals, as they are multichannel and as far as I understand bump maps are greyscale.)

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_s GlossMap:
RGB: specular color.
Alpha: shininess

After googling suggestions on how to use specular workflow-type maps in metalness workflow shaders, the gross rule of thumb seems to be to square and invert the shininess values. johnzero7 at DeviantArt has a XNALara-to-Blender importer Addition, and the node arrangements it produces apply that to the RGB specular color (previously converting it to greyscale) instead.
Reading this article I think I kinda get the reason why. In the end, I guess your method is the most practical one.
The thing is, though, that Blender has a Specular node that might deal with SWTOR's Gloss maps correctly (I just noticed its existence today. Got to test it).

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_m PaletteMaskMap:

If material is of the Uber type (such as furniture, tech items, etc.)
R: Opacity.
G: bump map's R channel.
B: emissivity.
Alpha: bump map's G channel.

(Again, G and Alpha are described in the SWTOR thread as "bump map" channels, but I always understood bump maps to be single channel, greyscale images. Could they be Normal maps instead, or some kind of normal map modifiers? I don't know how I should go about applying them)

If material is of the Garment type (such as armor gear, etc.):
R: Palette1 mask for hue/spec/lightness/contrast override.
G: Palette2 mask for hue/spec/lightness/contrast override.
B: Metalness mask?
Alpha: unused, or a mask for letting skin show in sexy gear like, say, Casual Vandal Jacket.

For now, when applying Dyes to the pieces of armoring through those masks, I'm applying HSV nodes and the like through the masked regions, as it is quicker to judge the results by eye.

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_h PaletteMap: I haven't the faintest idea about its usage.

(When it is associated to a head material, the R channel seems to mask the tongue, eyelashes and upper eyelid. To preserve them from hueing, perhaps?)


I'll write tomorrow another post referring to my troubles with body skin, face and eye materials.

(follow up to this post)

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Regarding characters' skin (I think the Material type is called SkinB): everything looks mostly like in the previous post, keeping consistency while making use of less channels given the simpler demands of the skin material (except the head one, where things get very interesting).

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_d DiffuseMap:
RGB: diffuse, ambient colors.
Alpha: Unused.

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_n RotationMap:
R: visibility mask (fully black, usually).
G: normal map's G channel.
B: emissivity again? (fully black, usually).
Alpha: normal map's inverted R channel.

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_s GlossMap:
RGB: specular color.
Alpha: shininess

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_m PaletteMaskMap:
R: (fully white, usually).
G: (fully black, usually).
B: (fully black, usually).
Alpha: (fully black, usually).

Seems to be there for consistency, mostly. As changing the skin color of a character affects the full bodyparts, I don't see any use for it as a mask (I guess Bioware could take advantage of it in the future).

About the Character Creator's Skin Color selector: the "simplest" way I've found to re-hue the DiffuseMap with the RGB values for each color in the slider that show up in the .XML files is to feed those values to a Mix RGB node set to Color transfer mode (kind of as one could do in Photoshop by painting with the pencil or overlaying a solid color using that transfer mode). I tried two of my characters' settings (pale white and pale red/pinkish) with that method and the result is very close, if not identical to their in-game's looks.


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_h PaletteMap: no idea about its usage.
(its channels seem to contain copies of the diffuse channel at different intensities)

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Something to point out: in the .mat files there are lots of parameters there to modulate everything. Their names are fairly self-explanatory and I can try to approximate the results, although some of them suggest being a bit subtler in their use. I'm most interested in FleshBrightness, as it seems to apply to the Rattataki species' bright white skin, and FlushTone, which I wonder how it works. See:

RimWidth (float)
RimStrength (float)
FlushTone (RGBA)
FleshBrightness (Float)
DirectionMap (associated texture)
ReflectionSpecInfluence (float)
etc.


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Regarding characters' heads: there are a series of additional texture files types:

Age:
looks like a _n style of RotationMap containing normal data to combine with the base normal map in some manner. I have somewhere a Blender nodes recipe to mix normal maps. Got to try and see what happens.

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Complexion:
RGB: Diffuse color.
Alpha: ignored.
Looks like overlaying the RGB by applying some Photoshop-like transfer mode (Multiply seems to work well).

-------------------

FaceHair: The folder contains only a single pair of DiffuseMap and RotationMap with flat values in their channels.
Actually useful in any way?

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FacePaint: (seems specific to certain NPCs such as companion Nadia Grell)
RGB: Diffuse color.
Alpha: Alpha.
Looks like simply overlaying the diffuse color through the alpha.

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Make_Up:
RGB: Diffuse color.
Alpha: Alpha.
Looks like simply overlaying the diffuse color through the alpha.

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Pattern: feline hair color patterns for Cathar only.
RGB: Diffuse color.
Alpha: Alpha.
Looks like simply overlaying the diffuse color through the alpha.

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Scars:
RGBA: unclear.
Looks like a _n style of RotationMap containing normal data to combine with the base normal map in some manner. The R channel is filled with black. I'm noticing that scars have a certain amount of coloration, so I'm wondering if instead of a normal map it is a bump map and perhaps some coloration mask. One can make a bump map out of the most prominent-looking channel to make things simpler, anyway.

(In the old posts people seemed to use the terms "bump map" kind of interchangeable with "normal map", so I don't know if the game uses traditional bump maps at all or actually everywhere)

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Tattoos:
RGB: Diffuse color.
Alpha: Alpha.
Looks like simply overlaying the diffuse color through the alpha (the alpha isn't fully opaque, letting some of the DiffuseMap show through and give the tattoo some of the underlying skin texture).

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Wrinkles:
_wm: unclear: weight maps for face bones?
_w: unclear.


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Regarding characters' eyes (I think the Material type is called Eye):

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_d DiffuseMap:
RGB: diffuse.
Alpha: empty.

-------------------

_n RotationMap:
R: visibility mask (fully black, usually).
G: normal map's G channel.
B: emissivity (actually of use at times: Chiss eyes, plague infectees, etc.).
Alpha: normal map's inverted R channel.

-------------------

_s GlossMap:
RGB: specular color.
Alpha: at times empty, others simply there's no alpha at all, but I've seen it used in a couple of cases.

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_m PaletteMaskMap:
R: Eye color mask.
G: Filled with black mask. It seems to have to do with the reflectivity, which would affect the whole eye, then.
B: Unknown: looks like a copy of the R channel but some species have it and others have it blank. I can't see what's the criteria.
Alpha: Unused in most species. Rattataki even lack the channel.

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_h PaletteMap: as usual, no idea what it does. Some of those channels could have to do with Dark Side glowy eyes' emissivity and Dark Side corruption effects.

-------------------

Eyecubemap.dds seems to be the cubic environment map Bioware is currently using for the eyes' main catchlights, mixed in some manner and to some degree with the environment maps corresponding to each locale in the game. As Blender doesn't seem to understand the way .dds-formatted cubic sky maps work, I'll have to Photoshop it into shape or make my own (cubic sky maps are a general issue for Blender, I believe: it uses its own arrangement of the six views instead of the usual horizontal cross type).
Anyway, the eye's reflections will come naturally from the scene, so… But it would be nice to create some kind of directable eye highlights.


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And that's all, I think. Of course, probably most of all that texture data can be omitted or approximated manually, but I'd still like to know all about those flippin' _h maps and the other subtleties.

Sorry for the (incomplete) info dump. I hope it comes useful somehow.

This is the node setup i use for normal maps ( .dds textures ending with _n). As stated on a post previously, the Red channel is completely black, the green is for vertical height information, and the alpha channel is where the red or horizontal height is.

Thanks. I'll try that instead of that recipe I was following.

(I've just discovered that the alpha in the _m texture files for gear pieces seems to hold the areas that let skin show in sexy chest armor pieces like, say, the Casual Vandal Jacket)

Bit of a n00b question but are you guys able to import the SWTOR GR2 files directly into blender or are you using an intermediary like say converting to .obj using Noesis?

FWIW I've found that alpha in the _m texture only works for displaying skin when the area of the model the alpha corresponds to uses the "defaultMirror" material within the GR2 file. In other words you can't control where skin is visible or not visible purely using the alpha in the _m texture.

n00b here myself . Yes, I'm using Noesis to previously convert the meshes to .obj.

My guess is that when SWTOR characters use armor that shows skin, that skin is the relevant body part's skin texture applied to those "defaultMirror" areas of the armor's mesh, isn't it? The thing is, I'm kinda trying to "dress" my characters instead of replacing body parts, for dubious convenience, and I got some partial success. Not as automatic a process as I'd wish, though. We'll see.

(I need to check all the material types the game uses, to try to better generalize my nodes setups)

By the way, any ideas on what the _h texture files' channels might do ?

Regarding SWTOR's Character Creator: is there any XML file describing the correspondence between the sliders' numbers and what they refer to? For now I'm having to find my characters' heads by eye. Things like eye, hair or skin colors seem to keep the same order in their XMLs as to what the Creator shows, but the heads are a nutty affair:

24 human head meshes shown in Caucasian - Caucasian NPC - African - African NPC - Asian order.
15 Chiss head references (to human ones) in a Caucasian - Asian - African order.
15 Zabrak Sith head references in a Asian - African - Caucasian order.
etc.

Given that, I've been writing a table of heads slider numbers-to-mesh files, but it isn't ideal as I'm having to compare what I see in the game to the meshes by eye. Surely there must be a file where all that is referenced in a rational manner.

Hashlist and filenames updated to PTS 6.0 #21 https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Trying using the _m texture file's alpha mask that skin showing gear seems to use in some manner.

This is the Casual Vandal Jacket. The model comes with a visible shirt part that usually is textured as such for the plain variant, but it can use the character's skin textures too (the UVs match). I was trying to work it differently: I disabled the shirt mesh, and I applied the mask to the character's body to have it visible in that area only (too much artifacting, otherwise).

Sadly, the mask doesn't work too well, as it leaves those visible holes at those angles. I'll have to play by their rules, then, but I'm not sure how to make textures such as those full body tattoos of mine work, as they aren't using the original UVs currently.

ZeroGravitas wrote: ↑Fri Sep 13, 2019 10:05 pm Regarding SWTOR's Character Creator: is there any XML file describing the correspondence between the sliders' numbers and what they refer to? For now I'm having to find my characters' heads by eye. Things like eye, hair or skin colors seem to keep the same order in their XMLs as to what the Creator shows, but the heads are a nutty affair:

24 human head meshes shown in Caucasian - Caucasian NPC - African - African NPC - Asian order.
15 Chiss head references (to human ones) in a Caucasian - Asian - African order.
15 Zabrak Sith head references in a Asian - African - Caucasian order.
etc.

Given that, I've been writing a table of heads slider numbers-to-mesh files, but it isn't ideal as I'm having to compare what I see in the game to the meshes by eye. Surely there must be a file where all that is referenced in a rational manner.

I'm not aware of any XML file but if you use the NodeViewer and look at the entries under pcs > class > gender > species it should be possible to map the different head models to the different sliders for that combo of class/species/gener.

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful!

Thanks . I've never used that tool (I mean, I tried it but didn't see what to take advantage of it for). Let's see what I dig.

EDIT: looks promising. I've got some doubts about how it organises the entries (I suspect it piles up all the heads for the four body types) but I'll give it a try an afternoon and see what I get.

EDIT 2: is there any way to export its texts? One can't copypaste them, and it's a lot of typing getting to check each reference.