The worlds of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic

Started by Kexikus, March 17, 2018, 04:37:47 PM

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Kexikus

Well, it's been a while since I registered here and I figured that it's finally time to post some of my Terragen work. But before I do that, let me do a little introduction.

I first discovered in the end of 2014 when I was researching ways to make skyboxes. The reason for doing that was my desire to give the game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic new skyboxes as the original ones are of very low quality. While doing so, I learned that these original skyboxes were actually created with Terragen, so the first thing I downloaded was the classic Terragen, but it didn't take me long until I got the free version of TG3 instead. And with that and over the course of almost one year, I made new skyboxes for the entire game. I first released them in October 2015 and at that time I was also pretty exhausted from making them. Part of that was certainly due to the fact that I wanted the skyboxes to be in 2048x2048 but the biggest square render I could do was 900x900 and so I had to do 4 renders per texture and then stitch them together in Photoshop. That was really tedious and obviously far from ideal, but the result was still pretty good if I may say so. Fast forward to 2016, when the announcement and release of TG4 rekindled my interest in making skyboxes. After all, I had never made skyboxes for Knights of the Old Republic II and there were some of my skyboxes that I was never really happy with, not to mention the fact that they were all stitched together. So I got myself a license of TG4 and in May 2017, I restarted the project, with the goal to make all the KotOR II skyboxes and to improve or at least rerender all the KotOR skyboxes.

Today, allmost one year later, there has been a lot of progress and I figured that I might as well share my work here. So I decided to do some additional renders of my finished skybox terrains and share them as wallpapers or something. Let's get to it. Here's the first one:

Telos

Telos is a world that has been devastated by the Jedi Civil War and is now being rebuilt by the Galactic Republic. As a result, most of it's landscape is still inhospitable, but inside the restoration zones, life has returned to its prior state.

The first render shows the beauty of the restored landscape, while the second one shows a storm coming from outside of the restoration zone.

[attach=1 width=250]

[attach=2 width=250]

Edit: Completely forgot to give credit, sorry about that. The spires/mountains are based on mhazes Meerkat rocks and the grass is dandelO's grass shader.

Keep in mind that everything I'm going to post in this topic was originally created for skyboxes, so there won't be any foreground. I intend to post a render of every skybox that I finish and I'll go through the already finished ones as well and make a render for those as well.

Dune

Great to read about your work and I'm glad you're willing to share some of your wonderful skies. They are beautiful. Looking forward to more of this calibre! I like your spires too, but a tiny piece of criticism goes to the few trees scattered around. But I know it's about the skies.

Oshyan

These look great! Would love to see them in the game engine some time.

- Oshyan

Kexikus

Quote from: Dune on March 18, 2018, 02:09:02 AM
Great to read about your work and I'm glad you're willing to share some of your wonderful skies. They are beautiful. Looking forward to more of this calibre! I like your spires too, but a tiny piece of criticism goes to the few trees scattered around. But I know it's about the skies.

Thanks for the kind words and I do agree about the trees actually. I just didn't do anything else with them as they aren't visible ingame. Might have looked better for the render to disable them, but I guess it's too late for that.

Quote from: Oshyan on March 18, 2018, 02:27:32 AM
These look great! Would love to see them in the game engine some time.

- Oshyan

Well, you can have a look at the original skyboxes I made here: http://deadlystream.com/forum/files/file/723-high-quality-skyboxes/
None of the new ones have been rendered in full quality, so there's not much to see yet.

Kexikus

Time to start rendering through my backlog. Here are two skyboxes that remained almost unchanged from the first skybox release.

Tatooine

Probably the best known Star Wars planet, home to Luke and Anakin Skywalker, Tatooine is one big desert. And at the time the game takes place, there's even less to see here with only a small mining outpost sitting in the middle of the desert.

[attach=1 width=250]

Tatooine was the second skybox I worked on back when I first made them and while it went through multiple iterations, it's now the oldest terrain/sky that's still in use. The only changes that happened later were the addition of the clouds (for the first release) and some minor terrain and colour tweaks for version 2. (And as a note: The colours look way better ingame^^)

Manaan

Another planet from the first KotOR game, Manaan is a water world, covered by one big ocean. To accomodate visitors, the native Selkath have built floating cities like Ahto City. Seen here is the view from the hangar bay that's housed in a large circular opening in the center of the city.

[attach=2 width=250]

Manaan was really the first skybox I did, mainly because it has no terrain at all. It's also a skybox that I didn't really like in the end, so it was replaced after I had finished all other skyboxes for the first release. What you see now is that second iteration with some minor tweaks. I should also note that I cheated a little for this render. The city structures aren't actually part of the skybox but their own texture. However, those textures had to be replaced as well, so I modeled the structure and rendered it with 3ds Max for use ingame. And to enhance the render here, I quickly added it to the TG scene as well. Makes things more interesting than just water.

Kexikus

And the next one is finished (admittedly, it was almost done when I started this thread).

Dantooine

Dantooine is a peaceful and calm world. There aren't many settlements on this planet, but it is home to a Jedi enclave and academy that the player visits in the game.

[attach=1 width=250]

[attach=2 width=250]

I'm using dandelO's grass shader in a combination with Mischa Winklers 3d grass models ( http://mwvizwork.com/ ), trees from http://www.terragen.org/index.php?action=tpmod;dl=item603 (site is currently down) and moon textures from https://www.solarsystemscope.com/textures.

And since Oshyan asked for it, here's a screenshot of this skybox ingame. Note however, that this is only a testrender, i.e. the skybox was rendered at 1024x1024 instead of 2048x2048 and with lower AA. It's also not quite the final version, but very close.

Oshyan

Thanks for indulging me, looks great in game!

- Oshyan

Dune


Kexikus

It's been a while but I finished another skybox:

Korriban

Korriban is the homeworld of the Sith, a barren place full of ancient tombs and other places strong in the dark side of the force.

[attach=3 width=250]

Certainly not a great render but it does look good ingame.

N-drju

Good job Kexikus. I love and respect renders with a backstory.

I also recall that "Manaan" is one of the clans (kiiths) in the Homeworld saga. Have you played it too?
"This year - a factory of semiconductors. Next year - a factory of whole conductors!"

Oshyan


pclavett


Kexikus

Well, it's been a while. Part of that is due to me just not working on these skyboxes as much as I used to and part of it is also due to the fact that I kinda forgot to post my progress over here. Sorry  ;D

Anyway, here are three more finished skyboxes:

Onderon

Onderon is an independant planet whose rulers have often been corrupted by the Dark Side of the Force. In the game you visit its capital city Iziz.

[attach=1 width=300]
[attach=2 width=300]

The look of the city is based on what can be seen ingame and its depiction in the "Tales of the Jedi" comicbooks. And since you visit different parts of the city, I have actually created three skyboxes for Onderon. One from within the city, one in front of the royal palace and a third one outside of the city.

Korriban

I've shown Korriban before but this one is for the second game.
At that time even the Sith have abandoned Korriban and all that's left is a wasteland and ancient ruins.

[attach=3 width=300]

I had to cheat quite a bit to get a terrain color that matches the color of the ingame terrain, so those mountains are now actually a bright purple in daylight  ;D

Coruscant

The sprawling captial of the Galactic Republic and home for the Jedi Order, Coruscant is one big city that some of you might know from the Star Wars Prequels.

[attach=4 width=300]

The atmosphere in this skybox was inspired by one of the matte paintings used in Episode III. It's way less complex but that's simply due to the fact that you only visit Coruscant for a few minutes in this game and you can hardly see any sky.

And that's it for now. Hopefully I'll keep you updated more often in the future...

Oshyan

Looking good. I love the density and design of Onderon!

- Oshyan

WAS

These are still just fantastic. Are you releasing the HD skybox pack? Would definitely be fun to play with.