Mod request about NPC

[Mishikedman]

Mod request about NPC

Is it possible to customize existing NPCs, like adding more head variants, or changing some features of existing heads ?
Or at least making quest, side NPCs more diverse ?

 

[linaswas_001]

Or at least making quest, side NPCs more diverse

I had this idea long time ago, Mr. TudorAdrian made his awesome Geralt's head swap from Witcher 2, so I thought something like swaping heads of common NPCs from Witcher 2 for those which gives you quests in Witcher 3, for example in Velen would be nice tho if you look at the amount of work that needs to be done, I guess it's not worth it?

 

[Mishikedman]

linaswas_001 It does not need to be head swap to models from witcher 2 we can maybe change hair, swap eyes nose and soo on. We can make huge diversity of NPCs with existing models, at least in theory. Look at horizon zero dawn you have very little NPCs look alike...

 

[LukeSparow]

That's actually a really amazing idea. Not sure how feasible it is though since projects that try to swap models seem to be tough, with a lot of bugs that usually need ironing out.

 

[Mishikedman]

linaswas_001 LukeSparow TudorAdrian can it be done, we can work together all of us interested, TudorAdrian can provide uncooked models that he can change and we can edit them to look diferent. But big question hear are NPCs fixed for set location, or are thay feeding from the same pool of data ? I hope you can understand me. English is not my strong suit

 

[MyrddinImreis]

What you are proposing is entirely possible and a really good idea. And since adding new content to the game is possible you can have much more diversity. It is a big project though. Otherwise if you want to use existing assets and "simply" make changes, this can be done easily. I did this myself in the first place for a project of mine, but decided then to change to variante one later on.

 

[LukeSparow]

I'd love to get involved! I can't do anything major in the coming 4 to 5 weeks, but I can test at the least.
After that I could spend some time to get to know the tools a little better and could probably start importing or changing models.

Mishikedman don't worry about your English, you're perfectly understandable
I sadly do not know whether the models are location based or not, though I imagine they aren't since they are reused so much. It would make more sense from a development perspective to have all the models in 1 large pool and just have them being referred to certain location files.
Like I said though, I do not know!

 

[MyrddinImreis]

LukeSparow It is exactly like you said, though there isn't one large pool, but 6 (4 if you exclude the main and secondary npcs) from where the models are used (without Geralt obviously). Every npc in the game is "built" through an entity template containing all the informations needed for the sort of the npc as well as the individual npc.

 

[LukeSparow]

MasterOfTheRings
Oh that's quite fascinating. So in theory you'd have to add new models to the pool(s) and edit the existing entity template for the NPC's you want to change?

 

[MyrddinImreis]

LukeSparow not only in theory. I practice that since roughly 3-4 months. And it works splendid. I did not do it in a huge scale yet, but I am very confident that it works just the same if scaled up. And the best thing: you do not even have to use the existing pools, you can create new ones.

 

[LukeSparow]

Oh wow, that sounds rather simple! Looks like this just might work!
The best would be to make custom faces. Though we would need talented artists and quite a lot of time to get texturing and whatnot up to the quality level of the other NPC's. If they were of lower quality that'd be jarring.

Probably best of doing it how Mishikedman has suggested and scrambling already existing face elements. I wonder if that would end up looking good though. Only 1 way to find out I suppose!

 

[MyrddinImreis]

The basic thing is: the faces are entire meshes, so you can't just use the nose from there and the checks from here. The best bet is reworking the meshes, just apply simple changes like nose shape, chin lenght ... stuff like this (maybe adjust the head textures if needed), then simply save them as new entites. We could e.g. use the male npc heads and multiple them by 5, so instead of (imaginative figure) 30 we would have 150 different heads.

To be honest I have no idea about restrictions of file sizes (mods) or as to how many elements wcc_lite can cook. I can confirm though that the largest file I ever cooked contained 244 assets inculding new meshes and textures as well as entity templates.

And as you said, skilled artist are highly needed, but sadly those have no interest in modding W3. There are some talanted one on other games, that is for sure. But I think the main problem was/is that most people think W3 is not really moddable. And regarding some aspects of the game I totally agree (it's an awefull lot to do with little actual breakthrough), but regarding such things as character assets, nearly everything is possible (I am speaking of meshes of course). This is one of the main reasons I started the Appearance Project.

 

[Mishikedman]

MasterOfTheRings, LukeSparow, linaswas_001, WalteriusMaximus, HalkHoganPL, CAPA14, ramccoid

To bad i will not be home all day, but friends we can do it, and it will be immersion multiply by 100x We can go all crazy with design so many combination, remix fashion of Novigrad and Beauclair, with combination of assets for faces we can produce large quantities of unique NPCs

I have some experience in editing of pictures and working with meshes, but MasterOfTheRings it will be good idea to make tutorial and then all off us willing to participate in this project can make new pools to use.

What do you say ?

 

[LukeSparow]

I dig your enthousiasm! I'm definitely in! Perhaps I can even get some artists at my university on board (studying game design at IGAD University). I'll definitely ask around!

Is the system compatible with practically any art program?

 

[TudorAdrian]

linaswas_001 LukeSparow TudorAdrian can it be done, we can work together all of us interested, TudorAdrian can provide uncooked models that he can change and we can edit them to look diferent. But big question hear are NPCs fixed for set location, or are thay feeding from the same pool of data ? I hope you can understand me. English is not my strong suit

Well the way some NPCs appear in W3 seem to be somewhat "generated". There seems to be some sort of pool of common npc body parts (hair, eyes etc) that are used on the ingame NPCs. For example, old Vimme Vivaldi used assets from this common NPC pool. His model was just an xml file tying together textures and meshes from different items inside these common pools.

 

[Mishikedman]

TudorAdrian If i understood you right, if we add more new body parts, system will randomly take them from pool and make new NPCs from old and new parts, mix and mash ?

 

[TudorAdrian]

TudorAdrian If i understood you right, if we add more new body parts, system will randomly take them from pool and make new NPCs from old and new parts, mix and mash ?

I don't know if you can add new parts in to generate new NPCs. You can add new parts in to replace the existing ones but that won't make the NPCs more varied; just different from what they are now. The variance will stay the same though.

Generating new NPCs, don't know how that's going to work..

 

[LukeSparow]

It'll definitely involve text edits as well.
Looks like we'll just have to see what we can do!

 

[TudorAdrian]

It'll definitely involve text edits as well.
Looks like we'll just have to see what we can do!

Yeap, there's a lot of meat to it. I wouldn't know where to start with this though.

Best of luck to you!

 

[LukeSparow]

Thanks! We'll see how we manage. If it turns out the project isn't viable, than alas that'll be that. But there's no harm in trying