Are you MODDER? Tell us it should be on the new Redkit for Cyberpunk 2077

[Bartinga2077]

While more customization slots are always cool, I'm not sure it's worth drastically redesigning the way the actual character models are built. That would very much be toying with Pandora's Box.

A more efficient approach to this would be to create things like hat/mask/eyewear/hair combos that are still applied to the character model as a single item. Thus, one item would be just the hat, another just the eyeglasses, a third just the mask, a fourth both the hat and eyeglasses, a fifth just the hat and mask, a sixth all three, etc.

Adding additional slots to existing character skeletons is not only extremely time consuming (they basically need to be built from the ground up), but also prone to lots and lots and lots of bugs and errors.

You have a point, but I mean for this to be applied to the Redkit.

You see, only guessing ofcourse, but since the beginning, I am actually 100% convinced the rectangular item slot was initially, 2 item slots. One of, the accessory slot.

I came to believe that, because there are hundreds of accessories in the game, that can all be seen on loads of NPCs. Watches, bracelets, chains, rings, earrings, shoulder patches, elbow patches, knee patches, holsters, body holsters, leg holsters, belts, pockets, backpacks, bags, shoulder bags, anything you can think of. It's there.

Modders usually assign them on either the OUTER BODY, or the FACE. That's all they can do. When they assign them on the FACE, it's not visible in 3rd person. When they assign them on the OUTER BODY, you cannot wear a jacket, or dress.

Modders really need to be able to assign all accessories to there own slot. The accessories need their own slot back. That is what I am asking. Have yet to see a modder add, change, or remove an item slot. As they haven't, presumably the slots are hardcoded. If that's correct, then only CDPR can do that.

Am of a thought the accessory slot was removed on accord of the consoles. Maybe it was anticipated it would exert too high stress on them, and therefor it was removed, and the other slot enlarged to a rectangle to camouflage it.

Extra item slots may be troublesome for consoles, but PCs can handle extras just fine.

 

[Hayte]

We don't just assign meshes to the head and face slot. In many cases we have to use deformation cages to fit them to the player base body and in some cases where the body archetype is very different to V, we have to weight paint or re-rig the accessory mesh so it deforms correctly when the player body moves using the appropriate bones or nearest equivalent.

There are entities in the game that load up to 15 meshes per slot so you can wear 5 head/face garment meshes if you want, or a dress, jacket and a shirt. Hell, you can wear all of that at the same time. The problem is clipping. It will look like a mess unless you sculpt and rig them all to fit with one another.

Where the garment/accessory has dangle physics we have to repurpose an entity that loads a rig, animgraph and skinning component/animation control/transform bindings so they you know, actually deform with the correct rig (which has all the required dangle bones) and with the correct animations.

Part of the reason why you don't see meshes in the head/face item slot is that by default, the head, arms and the rest of the body are all separate meshes. In first person perspective (fpp), the player head is hidden to make way for the fpp viewport (otherwise you get visible clipping that obstructs your camera view).

Player heads have face customisation options so the way it works is there is a single base head and all possible eye/nose/jaw/ear shape permutations have offset vertex and bone positions stored alongside the base head mesh as morph targets (this is why the morphtarget is huge compared to its companion mesh). So the added problem of head accessories is that they must all be able to deform with the morph target for whatever face shape you chose in character creater.

We dont have tools to deal with morph offsets right now which is why stuff like npc earrings dont track the shape of the player's ears.

Npc body/head meshes work differently because they dont have character creators (no morphtargets) and they dont need separate fpp meshes. This is one of the reasons why many npc garment meshes have geometry rigged to head/face/neck bones. This is a problem if ported to the player body because due to fpp, there are no bones above the collar in any player base body or player garment mesh.

Head slot items by default hide and replace hair meshes with one that is fitted to the head garment mesh. For example if you equip a bandana, your long hair will be replaced with a short hair mesh fitted to the bandana. This is to avoid clipping.

When you re-purpose npc assets to player wearable assets it is almost impossible to avoid clipping, especially when mixed and matched with other garment meshes in different item slots without altering the geometry of the mesh and its weights for 1 clothing combination (just 1!). Manual weight painting sucks. You can skinwrap or weight transfer wherever possible to avoid time consuming manual painting but there is a limit to how dissimilar your source and target mesh can be before a manual job is the only way. This really becomes a problem with npc body archetypes that are very dissimilar to V. Think Adam Smasher or Placide.

Adding records to tweakdb was a recent addition to wolvenkit (thank rFuzzo and Wopps). So it should be possible to add items now although it requires a lot of work and prerequisite knowledge. You need to understand how to add a record to tweakdb, be reasonably proficient in 2d/3d and be familiar with wolvenkit and hex/noesis workflow.

It takes time to learn all that and then more time to add an item to the game so it has an inventory slot, an icon, flavour text, is fitted to the player body and doesn't clip with absolutely everything. Its work, and there are not enough people to add things faster than people can ask for them.

 

[CEAN0]

I just hoping that it will be an easy to use tool, with an easy to understand interface even for us that never have used Redkit or Wolvenkit before.

 

[SigilFey]

Everything that @Hayte said.

It's better to think of the number of customization slots on a character model as the total number of seats in a car. Each seat can take one passenger. If I want to add more, I can't just stack multiple people in the same seat, I'd need to completely redesign the car to have additional seats.

Thus, as with every aspect of a video game, it's not actually "clothing" that's "on" the character. It's an illusion. It's individual data packages that are assigned to a finite number of slots. A "hat" is not a hat -- it's a 3D texture and mesh that replaces the "upper head" portion of the character model. So, as a simple example, it may not be possible to wear both a hat and sunglasses at the same time...but I could create a single "upper head" model that includes a mesh that covers the eyes like sunglasses, granting the illusion of the character wearing both a hat and sunglasses. But it's not. It's just a single "upper head" model.

 

[KalShenRa]

I'm no modder. I dabbled with modding Armada 2 and Bridge Commander in early 2000s, but that was just some relatively simple text file editing to merge some mods I was using. And I get lost in the Creation Kit every time I open it...

I do mod every game I play that allows it. But only if I can add something new or need to fix something in the game. Just replacing/recolor something is not enough.

The only mod I used for this game was that mini map fix and it's prerequisites, but it became almost obsolete after the 1.31 patch. There are a few other mods that I would like to use but they replace things already in-game. I may like that Lamborghini car mod, but I also like the car it replaces. I just found an interesting car pack, but it has the same problem...

So, it's true what some people said before me. Mod makers and users will be more interested in modding the game if they can add to it. The more and complex they can add to it the better. The more they can mod the game the more they will play it. I know this because I have more than 2000 hours in two versions of Skyrim because I can mod it so much that I can have a different story progression every time I play it. In Cyberpunk, I'm struggling through a third (or fourth ?!) playthrough right now. And I only finished my first one. I don't expect Skyrim level of modding right now, that's not possible. But I'd like the modders would have the tools to get us there by the time the Cyberpunk 2077 Remaster gets out in a decade.

 

[Bartinga2077]

We don't just assign meshes to the head and face slot. In many cases we have to use deformation cages to fit them to the player base body and in some cases where the body archetype is very different to V, we have to weight paint or re-rig the accessory mesh so it deforms correctly when the player body moves using the appropriate bones or nearest equivalent.

There are entities in the game that load up to 15 meshes per slot so you can wear 5 head/face garment meshes if you want, or a dress, jacket and a shirt. Hell, you can wear all of that at the same time. The problem is clipping. It will look like a mess unless you sculpt and rig them all to fit with one another.

Where the garment/accessory has dangle physics we have to repurpose an entity that loads a rig, animgraph and skinning component/animation control/transform bindings so they you know, actually deform with the correct rig (which has all the required dangle bones) and with the correct animations.

Part of the reason why you don't see meshes in the head/face item slot is that by default, the head, arms and the rest of the body are all separate meshes. In first person perspective (fpp), the player head is hidden to make way for the fpp viewport (otherwise you get visible clipping that obstructs your camera view).

Player heads have face customisation options so the way it works is there is a single base head and all possible eye/nose/jaw/ear shape permutations have offset vertex and bone positions stored alongside the base head mesh as morph targets (this is why the morphtarget is huge compared to its companion mesh). So the added problem of head accessories is that they must all be able to deform with the morph target for whatever face shape you chose in character creater.

We dont have tools to deal with morph offsets right now which is why stuff like npc earrings dont track the shape of the player's ears.

Npc body/head meshes work differently because they dont have character creators (no morphtargets) and they dont need separate fpp meshes. This is one of the reasons why many npc garment meshes have geometry rigged to head/face/neck bones. This is a problem if ported to the player body because due to fpp, there are no bones above the collar in any player base body or player garment mesh.

Head slot items by default hide and replace hair meshes with one that is fitted to the head garment mesh. For example if you equip a bandana, your long hair will be replaced with a short hair mesh fitted to the bandana. This is to avoid clipping.

When you re-purpose npc assets to player wearable assets it is almost impossible to avoid clipping, especially when mixed and matched with other garment meshes in different item slots without altering the geometry of the mesh and its weights for 1 clothing combination (just 1!). Manual weight painting sucks. You can skinwrap or weight transfer wherever possible to avoid time consuming manual painting but there is a limit to how dissimilar your source and target mesh can be before a manual job is the only way. This really becomes a problem with npc body archetypes that are very dissimilar to V. Think Adam Smasher or Placide.

Adding records to tweakdb was a recent addition to wolvenkit (thank rFuzzo and Wopps). So it should be possible to add items now although it requires a lot of work and prerequisite knowledge. You need to understand how to add a record to tweakdb, be reasonably proficient in 2d/3d and be familiar with wolvenkit and hex/noesis workflow.

It takes time to learn all that and then more time to add an item to the game so it has an inventory slot, an icon, flavour text, is fitted to the player body and doesn't clip with absolutely everything. Its work, and there are not enough people to add things faster than people can ask for them.

Thank you for the vast detailed explanation.

Would you take a peek at this vid?

I'm showcasing how every HEAD and FACE item is visible in 3rd person perspective on a bike, and actually on/in any vehicle. V's bald on foot wearing a HEAD piece in TPP, the shades don't show on foot in TPP, but on the bike, they both show. Other HEAD and FACE items show too on the bike, and with every combination.

This is what I am asking you guys to ask CDPR to do in Redkit for the 3rd Person mod, so that HEAD and FACE items are both all visible while V's on foot in TPP. The very fact the items are visible on vehicles in Third Person, is proof enough that it isn't an impossibility for them to show on foot.

CDPR evaluated the swimming. Before, V's HEAD piece of her swimming suit didn't show in 3rd person. Now, presumably since 1.3, it does show in 3rd person. And that without the HEAD piece ever clipping through the First Person camera.

At some point in the vid, I'm moving the Z of the First Person driving camera, 100 units back, so you can see the position V takes on the bike, to utilize a clipless First Person drive experience. Observe how seamless V's head, neck, helm and shades disappear and appear, transitioning back and forth between First Person, and Third Person perspective on the bike.

This is what I'm asking for for JB TPP mod.

 

[Hayte]

It's better to think of the number of customization slots on a character model as the total number of seats in a car. Each seat can take one passenger. If I want to add more, I can't just stack multiple people in the same seat, I'd need to completely redesign the car to have additional seats.

Thus, as with every aspect of a video game, it's not actually "clothing" that's "on" the character. It's an illusion. It's individual data packages that are assigned to a finite number of slots. A "hat" is not a hat -- it's a 3D texture and mesh that replaces the "upper head" portion of the character model. So, as a simple example, it may not be possible to wear both a hat and sunglasses at the same time...but I could create a single "upper head" model that includes a mesh that covers the eyes like sunglasses, granting the illusion of the character wearing both a hat and sunglasses. But it's not. It's just a single "upper head" model.

The car seat analogy might give the wrong impression. I'll try to explain. The inventory slot and the mesh (the 3d model and its skeleton) are entirely separate things.

In Cyberpunk, meshes are loaded via entity files (.ent) and there are entities in the game that can load a lot of garment meshes. The NCPD police belt for example can load 15 garment meshes. NCPD garment meshes are categorised like this:

The police belt loads a bunch of ncpd themed accessories like flashlights, sidearm holsters, handcuffs and its all worn around the waist. So I can sort of see an argument for having a hand slot and an item slot for wearable gizmos but when you get into meshes in the "item" category, you quickly find there is not much of a pattern in terms of size and shape of the mesh and where the item is on the body.

There is a valentino necklace entity that can load 9 meshes and a 3ds rig + animgraph (for dangle physics). These are all classed as "items" and they are worn all over the body - necklaces, bracelets, rings. Here is what the valentino necklace entity looks like in 010:

Buuut we can modify it to load 9 custom meshes. Nim had all of this figured out in January/February and what I'm showing you now is a repeat of her original research from 9 months ago. Ordinarily we would say the feet item slot allows you to equip an item in the database record that is associated with a sneaker entity which loads a sneaker mesh.

However we can modify the valentino necklace entity so it points to file paths we create, leading to any mesh we want. We can then rename this entity so it has the same name as a sneaker entity. Now we can load any 9 meshes we want by equipping sneakers in the inventory slot.

Here is the modified entity:

And here is the entity buffer pointing to its associated component bindings, animgraph and 3ds rig:

And heres a picture of Nim's first proof of concept way back in February 2021:

Behold! This is what V looks like when you equip 6 items of clothing on every inventory slot, for a total of 30 garments.

Wearing 30 garment meshes looks like a clipping mess. Imagine making hundreds of garment meshes and hundreds of accessories and then trying to make them all compatible for mixing and matching anywhere on the body? Its really impossible. You have to localize garments to parts of the body and control when and how they overlap.

The meshes we load via custom entities can be anything. If you want them to be sunglasses, bandanas, jackets, accessories, they can be any of those. They don't even need to be garments. You can load face/body cyberware or any decal mesh.

You can wear 15 pairs of glasses at the same time on your trouser inventory slot. Will this look good? Probably not. There is also the problem of use meshes rigged to head bones since they will not deform correctly above the collar bone in FPP. This is because the player head (and all of its associated bones) are displaced by the FPP viewport.

Ok so what does a practical example of this look like? Heres what I did with my V:

I'm using 3x modified player garment entities:

s1_068_pwa_shoe__sneakers.ent (feet slot)
t1_089_pwa_tank__short_torn.ent (inner torso slot)
h1_015_pwa_specs__visor_holo.ent (face slot)

to load all of these meshes:

Doll Chrome Bra
Doll Body Cyberware (lines only)
Alt's Tank Top (Glass)
Blue Moon Face Cyberware
Sandra Dorsett's Face Cyberware
Sandra Dorsett's Body Cyberware
Alt's Necklace (Bullet only)
Alt's Necklace (Samurai only)
River's Necklace
Valentino Bracelet
Valentino Belt
Alt's Cyberdeck and Belt
Short Plaid Skirt
Evelyn stockings
Bovver Boots
Bovver Boot Laces
Citizen Formal Bolero

So I can add a lot more but its already getting difficult to pile more clothing items/accessories on.

The skirt and Alt's Cyberdeck is rigged to the player body. The Valentino Belt is rigged to the Plaid Skirt. I had to edit Blue Moon's face cyberware so it didn't clash with Sandra's face cyberware. Neither of them use a player wearable decal mesh so they do not track head morphs. This means it is sculpted to fit only the basehead with eye 14/nose 12/mouth 18/jaw 3/ear 9 and it will probably clip with any other facegen options.

I had to edit Alt's tank top so the Doll Chrome Bra doesn't clip through it. I had to edit the Formal Bolero so Alt's tank top doesn't clip through it. I had to edit the Bovver Boots to obscure the fact that the stockings have high heels (the heels are inside the bovver boots mesh so you don't see them). High heels are problematic because they would ordinarily make V taller. In reality, V stays the same height, with or without high heels. Her shins just get shorter and her feet will clip through the shoes.

It gets to the point where you want to add another object but its going to clip or interfere with another garment you are wearing, if not in idle pose then in action poses. I check all garment mods in all standard photomode idle and action poses for bad rigging and clipping. If it doesn't have correct anatomical deformation, I must change the shape of the garment, which means changing the way its vertex groups are weighted. It may mean I need to change the shape and weight of every other garment that is fitted and rigged to it.

The player body is split up into 7 or 8 submeshes. The arms are also split up into many subs although I forget how many off the top of my head. In some ways it does leave open the possibility of highly modular cyberware/garment customisation i.e. wearables localised to hands, forearms, upper arms, shoulders, head, upper torso, waist, hips, thighs, knees, shins and feet. Perhaps this was a design goal at an earlier stage in the game? Who knows.

But if you want to tend towards that level of modularity in clothing, you have to get into 3DS Max/Blender anyway. Its going to be a clipping, rigging nightmare. In 3DS Max/Blender you can make 15 garments fit perfectly together on one body provided you have the time and patience.

But in doing so you have created a single perfect "costume" for your character. So why do you need 15 slots for it?

 

[SigilFey]

I do tend to oversimplify quite a bit when trying to explain things. I'm aware that the clothing meshes are not the same as the skeleton itself, and that they often have their own skeletons that morph accordingly (or try to). I'm also not aware of all the terminology that people use for it nowadays. I haven't really done any big modding of my own since the days of Morrowind.

Interesting how much freedom CP2077 offers, though! So there are are technically 9 individual "slots" for each of the various body parts -- that's fun! Although, my guess is that these "slots" were intended to be used as "layers" by the devs, so that they could more quickly and easily create variations on any given piece of clothing by utilizing the various layers -- not to be directly interactable or assignable in the game. (Likely for the very reason you identify with that absolutely brilliant proof of concept photo! Yeah, less is definitely more!) Thus, one person creates a helmet, and now it's very easy for me to create all sorts of variations by creating different goggles, face-masks, adornments, etc. Each of those can be mixed and matched quickly, along with different textures, and I can create all sorts of unique looking helmets.

But in-game, they're meant to take up "the head slot" in one click. I think it was specifically for ease of use. For modding, though, my goodness that's a lot of potential customization going on right there. Sheesh!

Thank you for the vast detailed explanation.

Would you take a peek at this vid?

I'm showcasing how every HEAD and FACE item is visible in 3rd person perspective on a bike, and actually on/in any vehicle. V's bald on foot wearing a HEAD piece in TPP, the shades don't show on foot in TPP, but on the bike, they both show. Other HEAD and FACE items show too on the bike, and with every combination.

This is what I am asking you guys to ask CDPR to do in Redkit for the 3rd Person mod, so that HEAD and FACE items are both all visible while V's on foot in TPP. The very fact the items are visible on vehicles in Third Person, is proof enough that it isn't an impossibility for them to show on foot.

CDPR evaluated the swimming. Before, V's HEAD piece of her swimming suit didn't show in 3rd person. Now, presumably since 1.3, it does show in 3rd person. And that without the HEAD piece ever clipping through the First Person camera.

At some point in the vid, I'm moving the Z of the First Person driving camera, 100 units back, so you can see the position V takes on the bike, to utilize a clipless First Person drive experience. Observe how seamless V's head, neck, helm and shades disappear and appear, transitioning back and forth between First Person, and Third Person perspective on the bike.

This is what I'm asking for for JB TPP mod.

This, I don't think is necessarily anything to do with the slots. I think it's probably an engine instruction to cull the head data. It's clearly capable of drawing everything in, as the character model used on the motorcycle is displaying it without issue, like you say. I'm guessing that wouldn't be too crazy of a tweak to make, if the command line could be found. Although, it's possible that it's simply a function baked into the first-person model, so it may be something that CDPR would need to do on their end.

 

[Hayte]

Not really slots. Many meshes in cyberpunk are divided into submeshes and there are some advantages to this. The way they are split isn't arbitrary. One reason is that you can have a single model with multiple different materials. Another reason is you can have separate animations per sub using the same skeleton.

I'm not saying necessarily that they designed for super ridiculous modularity/flexibility in terms of wearables. I'm thinking specifically of body cyberware decals that are cut from base body submeshes and scaled up slightly so the decal wraps skin tight over the body. Most body and face cyberware is like this. Nevertheless, it is interesting to think that the possibility is sort of there.

With regards to JB's TPP mod. Player character assets in Cyberpunk are rigged and animated for first person only with a few limited exceptions. The player has TPP animations in vehicles, shape keys in photomode and some performance capture stuff for the endgame cinematics. Everything else is designed to look anatomically correct and move naturally in FPP.

So why is there a difference in TPP and FPP in terms of how you rig and animate a character model? Its mainly to do with perspective and geometric optics. A person has approximately 210 degrees of forward facing, binocular vision.

projecting a camera image onto a flat screen, its a very different thing. Firstly, its monocular and the field of view has to be much, much narrower or you get extreme fish eye lens distortion. Cyberpunk FoV goes up to 100 degrees, which is not high enough to see obvious fish eye effect.

So the trick is to do the opposite. Instead of bending the screen into a fish eye to approximate human field of vision, you bend the player character's body in the opposite direction, around the camera. In games like Mirror's Edge and Cyberpunk, if you shift to TPP using a mod, your character appears to have broad shoulders, elongated, spider like limbs and they animate in a very unnatural way.

Ok so now lets talk about the head. Unlike most FPP games, you are not a disembodied viewport with arms floating slightly below and in front of the camera. You have a fully modelled, rigged and animated body. Just like in Mirror's Edge, you can look down and see your own legs. The viewport is mounted on the shoulders where the head should be. Why do this? Because its really good at conveying kinesthesis (so good that the additive camera movements can induce motion sickness in some people). The camera will bob and move around as the rest of your body does when it is in motion. Your body has a physical presence in the game world that you can see. I think the feeling of having a body in motion is very pronounced in games like Cyberpunk and Mirror's Edge.

I'm going to try to show some of the issues you have to deal with when you transition from this type of FPP to TPP. Here are some screenshots of Cyberpunk with JB's TPP mod. Note that in normal gameplay (not in a vehicle and not in photomode), V is rigged and animated for FPP:

Note that the body is distorted. Wide shoulders, long limbs, long neck.

Note the neck seam marked with a green line. The head and body are separate meshes with separate skeletons. Pay particular attention to the bolero jacket. Note that the collar of the jacket is above the neck seam (this is rigged to neck and jaw bones).

In Blender this is what the player base body looks like:

This is the base head + body look like:

In FPP, this is what happens:

Your head is moved to the root bone, hidden and is replaced by the FPP viewport. They do this so there is nothing to obstruct the player's vision. Wooshing hair won't get in your eyes. Note also that the collar of the jacket is being pulled straight into the ground,

So when you see your helmet not appearing in JB TPP, this is the reason why. Anything rigged to the player head (i.e. the helmet) is being pulled to root when it is displaced by the FPP viewport.

Ok so how would you fix this? You don't because Cyberpunk player character assets were never designed for TPP in the first place. Player wearable garment meshes have strict separation between body bones and head bones. You can go through the entire \player_equipment\ folder and look at every torso mesh in Blender. Not a single one of them has head bones, and I really tried to find one to be a target for skeleton transfer for this bolero jacket. This is also why V doesn't have any jackets with high deformable collars like this:

This is an npc garment where I had to load a rig with collar bones and an animgraph to get the collar to bend properly in TPP but it still has some issues in FPP. When swimming for example, the collar is so large is obstructs your camera view.

Unlike V, NPCs are rigged to animate in a way that looks anatomically correct in TPP because thats the only way you ever see them. They have an idle animation cycle, various idle fidgeting variants, walk/jog/sprint/sneak cycle. Draw weapon/reload weapon/holster weapon etc.

Every time you see an NPC moving, someone animated it. If you wanted to do this for the player character, you would have to rig a new full skeleton for the base head and body and build completely new TPP animations for everything. Idling, walking, running, jumping, everything. Any time you see your character move, someone has to animate it. As you can imagine, this is a lot of work. JB is good, but hes not a 1 man pro animation studio.

On vehicles, there is a TPP mesh and skeleton with one idle animation cycle for V sitting on a bike/in a driver seat. So this is why your helmet is still on your head when getting on a bike with JB's TPP mod.

Then there is photomode. V has no TPP animations at all (it is possible to playback npc TPP animation cycles in photomode however and there are already mods that do this). Without mods all you have are shape keys - preset poses that you cycle between.

Note also that the shadow mesh is a low poly variant of the base body and head mesh. It has a different rig but the animations are inherited from FPP because they actually made an FPP walk/jog/sprint/sneak/jump/etc animation for the player character. This is why your shadow has freakishly elongated limbs and contorts into unnatural shapes when swimming.

What further reinforces the idea the game was made to be FPP is that all the story action set pieces are coreographed for FPP. Think of the time you fought Oda. He slides in from the edge of your peripheral vision and before you even know hes there, hes swinging a blade an inch away from your face. This doesn't work in TPP because you will see him climb through the window in your focused vision. This scene no longer has the shock and awe of being suddenly under attack.

 

[SigilFey]

Not really slots. Many meshes in cyberpunk are divided into submeshes and there are some advantages to this. The way they are split isn't arbitrary. One reason is that you can have a single model with multiple different materials. Another reason is you can have separate animations per sub using the same skeleton.

I'm not saying necessarily that they designed for super ridiculous modularity/flexibility in terms of wearables. I'm thinking specifically of body cyberware decals that are cut from base body submeshes and scaled up slightly so the decal wraps skin tight over the body. Most body and face cyberware is like this. Nevertheless, it is interesting to think that the possibility is sort of there.

So the general idea is still "layers", then? For another example, I create a base model of, saaay, a coat. I can then and a separate layer of armor plates to the coat. In another version, I can create armor plates with a belt of ammo. In a third version, I can use an additional layer to add a sheathed knife to front. Etc.

Or, do you mean that the actual, 3D meshes are already built into the base models, and you simply apply a texture to them / toggle them on or off? For example, in Bethesda games, I have a core, "nude" character model that will serve as the base for each character. I can swap the default head for another. I can then assign whatever gear I want to the armor and weapon "slots". (I'm not sure what the actual term for this is. A mesh is simply any 3D object's model with no textures or shading applied...not sure what to actually call the additional meshes you then attach to the base character model to create the appearance of clothing, weapons on a belt, etc.) So, for example, in Skyrim, you have 11 interactive "slots" (I'm going to continue calling these "slots"):
Head
Torso
Legs
Gloves
Boots
Necklace
Right Ring
Left Ring
Belt Weapon
Back Weapon
Shield

Additionally, though it isn't interactive in the game itself, a head model is actually divided up into 4 slots, the head itself, upper hair, lower hair, and beard. As an example, say my character has long hair, and I put on an open-faced helmet. By default, the game will replace the upper hair slot with a helmet mesh and texture. This avoids hair clipping through the helmet model itself, but still allows the head itself, lower part of the hair, and beard to draw in so that it looks like the face and longer hair is still visible underneath the helmet. If I put a hood on for that same model, it will replace the upper hair slot with the hood mesh itself, then cull the lower hair slot and leave the head and beard slot active. If I put on a closed-faced helmet, the game will replace the upper hair with the helmet model, then cull the lower hair, beard, and actual head itself, which avoids things like long noses or pointy ears clipping through the helmet model. This is how most games have always worked that I've made mods for (Beth games, Temple of Elemental Evil, and Mount and Blade, primarily.)

Now, a really aggressive mod like All Geared Up:

Cannot be made using the default game models. There aren't enough articulation points on the vanilla skeletons themselves for the game to account for the additional "slots". So, a different body skeleton needed to be built to replace the vanilla skeleton in the game. However, each of the slots on the character model can only load in one mesh and texture (one object) per slot. In order to, for example, create a helmet with a crown or something over it, I'd need to build a new mesh and texture of a single object that looked like a helmet with a crown on it. But it would be a separate object that occupied only the upper hair slot. Again, I've not ever encountered a game that handled this differently.

By contrast, it seems like CP2077 works the same way with only a slight (but really cool!) difference. Rather than a slot being reserved for one and only one object, it appears that each slot is actually a tree of sub-slots, each of which can contain its own object that will be drawn in simultaneously by the game. I'm guessing that these sub-objects will attach and articulate with the base slot, meaning we can't assign individual physics to a sub-object. If I add a mesh and texture to a helmet, it will articulate with the head, etc. Or, am I wrong?

Again, I'm going to bet the farm that this was never meant for players to interact with in-game, but rather for devs to simply create cool variations of base gear without the need to generate a completely new mesh and texture from the ground up for each one.

So, if I'm getting this, what we've got in CP2077, is a character model that looks more like this:

• Torso Main
  • Torso Sub 1
  • Torso Sub 2
  • Torso Sub 3
  • Torso Sub 4
  • Torso Sub 5
  • Torso Sub 6
  • Torso Sub 7
  • Torso Sub 8
  • Torso Sub 9
• Left Arm Main
  • Left Arm Sub 1
  • Left Arm Sub 2
  • Left Arm Sub 3
  • etc...

That would be 64-bit processing in action.

Now...lols...why am I going into all of this still -- because maybe we can get around the hair vanishing by thinking laterally. Yes, it would be great if CDPR can simply introduce a toggle instruction that tells the engine not to cull the head and hair. My guess there is that it will draw into the camera while in 1st-person mode, but if the goal is to play in 3rd-person, that shouldn't really matter.

Alternatively...if the game normally culls the whole head in 1st-person, the mod has clearly figured out how to get the base head model to draw into the game (or we wouldn't see V's bald head at all). That model should have sub-slots that are active, so the mod can manually assign hair, helmets, or whatever meshes and textures to the sub slots of that model. If that works, the upside is that you'll see the gear in 3rd-person. The downside is that it will be a permanent "default" look for V. If you put something else on the character, it will clip into the default model whenever you use a vehicle, and it will likely obscure the camera in 1st-person mode.

 

[Bartinga2077]

Thank you again for the very vast detailed explanation.
A TPP mesh and skeleton on vehicles... That explains it. CDPR just left it in.
I'll be honest. Wanted to plea for a tool or two to be invented and installed in Redkit to accommodate the JB TPP mod.
That's why I participated in this thread.
Figured, it needs 4 things.

1) New anatomically correct frame animations for V
2) Visible HEAD and FACE items while on foot in TPP
3) The collision registration being moved from the FPP camera to V
4) Sever the connection between the camera and V, and assign collision registration to the TPP camera to prevent it from going through walls

1) New frame animations
Had hoped the anatomically correct animations of NPCs could be used to replace the distorted animations of V. Wielding weapons, reloading, walking, running while wielding weapons, are all correctly executed by NPCs.

Was hoping the way Panam wields her sniper rifle, the way Jackie wields his duel guns, the way Goro and/or Claire wield their machine gun rifle, the way Oda wields his melee weapons, the way sasquatch wields her hammer, the way Smasher wield his launcher weapon, the way enemy NPCs wield their weaponry, could all be incorporated into V, for him/her to anatomically correctly fight in TPP.

2) Visible HEAD and FACE items while on foot in TPP
Was hopeful this could be addressed by CDPR, by simply installing (back) their own accessory item slot.

3) The collision registration being moved from the FPP camera to V
Because the collision registration is still assigned to the camera, anytime you want to access something, be it opening doors, talk to other people, access access points, getting in/on vehicles, you have to zoom-in close with the camera, until the dialog options appears.

To fix this, it's needed for the collision registration to be reassigned to V.
This was actually attempted by the author, by moving the collision registration to the feet. It did work, but in order for the dialog options to appear, you needed to jump and press again on the right moment during the jump. Not very handy or practical, so he removed it. Never attempted anything concerning the collision registration again.

Which could indicate it's up to CDPR to offer a helping hand in this.

4) Sever the connection between the camera and V, and assign collision registration to the TPP camera to prevent it from going through walls
Was thinking in order to best fix this, maybe a port of the TPP of the Witcher 3 could work, as both games are of the same developer's team. Else, a port of the vehicle's TPP?

As you explained it in detail, one now knows what to expect.

 

[Hayte]

I mean you can use npc animations on V in photomode although its very limited the way it currently works. So in concept I suppose yeah, you could pillage npc anims to use as a basis for TPP V but we don't have any animation tools.

What you are asking involves a fundamental redesign of the game. You are asking a lot. I don't really understand why and I don't think this should be an expectation.

 

[SigilFey]

Thank you again for the very vast detailed explanation.
A TPP mesh and skeleton on vehicles... That explains it. CDPR just left it in.
I'll be honest. Wanted to plea for a tool or two to be invented and installed in Redkit to accommodate the JB TPP mod.
That's why I participated in this thread.
Figured, it needs 4 things.

1) New anatomically correct frame animations for V
2) Visible HEAD and FACE items while on foot in TPP
3) The collision registration being moved from the FPP camera to V
4) Sever the connection between the camera and V, and assign collision registration to the TPP camera to prevent it from going through walls

These things would be extraordinarily different from how the game works. It would be rebuilding core functionality. Not impossible to get at least some of these things roughed out with modding, but definitely a very far cry from direction the devs decided to take the game.

Better bet with modding at all times is to try to work with what's there in non-standard ways, rather than trying to shoehorn in systems that don't exist in the game already. Like for visible face and head items in TPP. If there is no command function that could be used to enable/disable that (as it could very well be hard-coded into the source code to ensure there are no bugs or glitches in FPP), then finding a workaround using existing, in-game functionality is the most secure way to ensure something works.

To me, it very much looks as if the FPP body model is baked into the code. The game clearly loads a separate model for the character when operating a vehicle in TPP. The JB mod already does some great things by getting the on-foot player character model as visible as it is without any major issues. Now, it might be necessary to compromise in-game functionality in order to get results. But there's usually a way!

 

[Bartinga2077]

These things would be extraordinarily different from how the game works. It would be rebuilding core functionality. Not impossible to get at least some of these things roughed out with modding, but definitely a very far cry from direction the devs decided to take the game.

Better bet with modding at all times is to try to work with what's there in non-standard ways, rather than trying to shoehorn in systems that don't exist in the game already. Like for visible face and head items in TPP. If there is no command function that could be used to enable/disable that (as it could very well be hard-coded into the source code to ensure there are no bugs or glitches in FPP), then finding a workaround using existing, in-game functionality is the most secure way to ensure something works.

To me, it very much looks as if the FPP body model is baked into the code. The game clearly loads a separate model for the character when operating a vehicle in TPP. The JB mod already does some great things by getting the on-foot player character model as visible as it is without any major issues. Now, it might be necessary to compromise in-game functionality in order to get results. But there's usually a way!

Yeah, I understand what you mean. It's just, was always of the assumption that the animations of NPCs, could serve to replace the malformed ones of V. Thought the author did something like that before, because initially, in TPP, V didn't even had a head.

 

[Hayte]

They are only malformed if looked at from a perspective they were never intended to be seen from. In FPP, they look very natural imo. If not for the shadow meshes, you wouldn't know they were distorted at all. Unfortunately, shadows give the illusion away.

To reverse the roles for a second, here is The Witcher 3 with an FPP mod:

It looks quite good! But you'll note it has to deal with a different set of problems. Geralt is very skinny in FPP. He has a lot of arm movements that obstruct your vision. You need to use extremely low FoV or you get fairly extreme fish eye lens distortion. This is noticeable in the video.

Because TW3 combat is designed for TPP you can't do all those tekken rolls and spin2win stuff. You have to decouple the FPP viewport from Geralt's body in combat because it would just be incredibly disorienting and make you puke all over the place. For things like rolls you need to simulate it with a dodge. TW3 FPP mods end up basically redesigning combat mechanics out of necessity.

 

[SigilFey]

Yeah, I understand what you mean. It's just, was always of the assumption that the animations of NPCs, could serve to replace the malformed ones of V. Thought the author did something like that before, because initially, in TPP, V didn't even had a head.

Exactly -- and it may be possible for a mod to arrange the character model so that it calls for the head that's used when riding in a car or something, instead of the default, on-foot head that's normally not there. The problems arise with what the tools or the game's under-the-hood functions will or won't let you do. These types of things are often baked in to game for the sake of speed and stability. Every moving part of a machine, every variable, is a chance for something to go wrong. If it's possible to hard-code something to only work one way, that's often the best way to go, ensuring there's no loose ends.

I don't know about CP2077, though. I've modded other games, so I can't speak for sure about anything here. (I looked at the toolkit when it was first released for TW3, decided quickly that I wasn't going to dive into that, then never did.) But modding, at its core, is roughly all the same. Can't begin to tell you how many times I was, personally, told by others that, "It's not possible to do what you want to do..." only to have them appear not long afterward asking me, "How the hell did you do that!?" There's always a way to do almost everything, though it may require some really outside-the-box thinking. And tons of trial and error. And lots of patience.

They are only malformed if looked at from a perspective they were never intended to be seen from. In FPP, they look very natural imo. If not for the shadow meshes, you wouldn't know they were distorted at all. Unfortunately, shadows give the illusion away.

To reverse the roles for a second, here is The Witcher 3 with an FPP mod:

It looks quite good! But you'll note it has to deal with a different set of problems. Geralt is very skinny in FPP. He has a lot of arm movements that obstruct your vision. You need to use extremely low FoV or you get fairly extreme fish eye lens distortion. This is noticeable in the video.

Because TW3 combat is designed for TPP you can't do all those tekken rolls and spin2win stuff. You have to decouple the FPP viewport from Geralt's body in combat because it would just be incredibly disorienting and make you puke all over the place. For things like rolls you need to simulate it with a dodge. TW3 FPP mods end up basically redesigning combat mechanics out of necessity.

That's a great (and sooo ironic) example of what to realistically expect from even the "finished" TPP mod. Bottom line is: the game was not designed to be a TPP game. Hence, even if a mod does get it working, there will be certain aspects that never feel totally polished. I mean, nothing is stopping me from turning a Jeep into a paddle-boat rig capable of traveling right over a lake...but my modifications will never replace a vehicle specifically designed, from the ground up, to travel in water. It will always be a hybrid.

 

[Hayte]

Exactly -- and it may be possible for a mod to arrange the character model so that it calls for the head that's used when riding in a car or something, instead of the default, on-foot head that's normally not there.

The main difficulty I see is that all the player garment meshes would need to be remade to have TPP and FPP variants. So you would have to make a new skeleton for the base body (designed to be seen in TPP).

Instead of keeping the player head and body model/skeleton separate, it can be all one piece. In game, you can then switch the entire body (including the head and all of its bones) when transitioning between TPP/FPP. Then you can steal all the necessary bones from the TPP base body skeleton and rig all your player garment models to these bones. Now your helmet is not going to follow your head when it is shunted to origin to make way for the FPP viewport. This sounds like a lot of work.

To some extent it also undermines a lot of the effort that went into designing the entire game around the concept of seeing through V's eyes. The city is designed to be seen at eye level. The setpiece story moments are all choreographed and directed around you being in the scene, not an invisible observer to it.

 

[SigilFey]

The main difficulty I see is that all the player garment meshes would need to be remade to have TPP and FPP variants. So you would have to make a new skeleton for the base body (designed to be seen in TPP).

Honestly, I think this would be the most opportune approach. Likely to get it working more universally, as the mod could have the game "point" to the new, separate skeleton while in TPP mode, and leave the FPP skeleton untouched. Lots of work, yes, but that's what's involved in making such drastic changes to how a game functions.

To some extent it also undermines a lot of the effort that went into designing the entire game around the concept of seeing through V's eyes. The city is designed to be seen at eye level. The setpiece story moments are all choreographed and directed around you being in the scene, not an invisible observer to it.

If someone is into modding, this isn't a concern -- it's the whole point!

I love the concept of modding as it was originally introduced: a set of tools that let people explore, create, and express. That's it. Art for Art's sake. You can customize things about a game to your personal liking...or you can create something totally new and exciting using an existing system.

The only problem with it is a.) if I try to discourage or defame other people's work and b.) if I try to demand that others create things according to my vision instead of their own. (I'm not even going to touch the monetization thing. It's a large reason I stopped.)

But no, I don't think that modding "undermines" others' work at all. Every game is subjective. Not everyone is going to like the developers' vision. No problem there! And if there are tools to let that person enjoy the game their own way, why not? The point is fun! I mean, if people want to run around in Skyrim with lightsabers and anime hairstyles and have glowing angel wings that leave trails of rainbow-colored glitter wherever your character runs...have at it! (Not my cuppa tea, but to each their own.)

 

[Bartinga2077]

They are only malformed if looked at from a perspective they were never intended to be seen from. In FPP, they look very natural imo. If not for the shadow meshes, you wouldn't know they were distorted at all. Unfortunately, shadows give the illusion away.

To reverse the roles for a second, here is The Witcher 3 with an FPP mod:

It looks quite good! But you'll note it has to deal with a different set of problems. Geralt is very skinny in FPP. He has a lot of arm movements that obstruct your vision. You need to use extremely low FoV or you get fairly extreme fish eye lens distortion. This is noticeable in the video.

Because TW3 combat is designed for TPP you can't do all those tekken rolls and spin2win stuff. You have to decouple the FPP viewport from Geralt's body in combat because it would just be incredibly disorienting and make you puke all over the place. For things like rolls you need to simulate it with a dodge. TW3 FPP mods end up basically redesigning combat mechanics out of necessity.

Oh, so that's what you mean with the fish eye lens. Seen it before. Thought because of the same effect, the image of vehicle mirrors, is slightly reduced to compensate, with a text saying, "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear."

At least you don't have that when playing in TPP in a FPP game. So you don't need to worry about that.

 

[TheSlider]

First time I saw the cars (and loved their designs) I expected the side mirrors to be cameras that would feed into your characters brain (like when you hack turrents and surveillance cameras but In a small window). Unfortunately, there isn't enough car action side quests that would make this interesting to have, like, even the races are quite basic AI wise not to mention the rubber banding.

Still, it's a feature i wish to mod but I have no clue yet if a simple script in redkit would do the trick. I mean, you need to define 2 virtual cameras and render them to texture when entering a car and destroy them on exit. Knowing how LOD works, I doubt it would be easy to pull it off while avoiding pop-out from the back.