FCS // INVISIBLE CLOTHES

[iriemk]

As far as I understood it up to now, no mesh, texture & no material on an armour item means invisible clothing, stats but no visual, right?

Removed all meshes, textures and material from a chainmail to make "invisble armor" for skeles; called it "Skele Armor Plating", slapped the old icon from iron plates on it after making it transparent & resizing.

Alas, after every reload and sometime the middle of the game without prompt, the whole body of the skeles who wear it turns pitch black, kinda like a full-body suit with missing textures would look. Dunno what is going on, shoes & backpacks I "invisibilized" that way work perfectly...

[Shidan]

I'm certain it has to do with how shirts work in the game, most of the time they are textures applied directly to the skin, rather than being separate models applied on top. So by removing the textures, you're applying this blank texture to the skin instead of an invisible item.

Now, it's clearly possible to get around this, as hiver shirts are actual models instead of just textures. But anything more is outside my area of expertise. That's where I'd look for a solution though if it were me.

[iriemk]

Nice. That's a hint worth going after. Thanks very much.

[Cattrina]

You should use alpha texture instead of no texture. See my tutorial video about textures, it applies both to furniture and clothing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BIcww7ipVs&t

[iriemk]

Okido, gonna check that out. Just observed something weird though, when I un-equip/re-equip the invisible shirt on one character, the black texture goes away on all who wear it. Any explanation for that? Gonna re-do the whole shebang after watching the video regardless, but still this is something I would like to understand.

[Cattrina]

Originally posted by iriemk:

Okido, gonna check that out. Just observed something weird though, when I un-equip/re-equip the invisible shirt on one character, the black texture goes away on all who wear it. Any explanation for that? Gonna re-do the whole shebang after watching the video regardless, but still this is something I would like to understand.

It is the game trying to fix the graphics issue, which is the missing texture. The game is designed to use fall backs when it encounters missing mesh or texture. However that does not work in every situation and it just ends up causing burden to the graphics engine. Better just supply vanilla mesh with totally transparent texture.

[iriemk]

Cool, that I understand. Thanks again for educating this ole luddite sod^^. Have a nice weekend.

[Dahaka]

Ooooooookkkkkkkkk, so today i got the same idea as you did, and after some time encauntered the same issue - Black Skellies - Soooooo, did you made the mod or not? If you did I will abandon my work and just use your mod, that would save me watching the video and learning new stuff :D

[Dahaka]

Nevermind... I got it working. Gonna go to sleep now...

[iriemk]

@Dahaka: Sorry for not answering any sooner, when you asked that initial question, I was still messing with CP2077 modding, now I'm back at Kenshi, only just now got around to check all the unread comments that had stacked up in my inactive, offline steam client (to keep CP from auto-updating).

I did make it work indeed, but since the mod I put it in has loads of copyrighted pics for icons and textures, it is never gonna see the light of day on the workshop here.

So, good thing you got it working yourself, that one was a particular doozy that bugged me for a couple days before Cattrina helped me out. Way she described it above wasn't too hard to get done in GIMP, after that it worked just fine.

And nice I ain't the only one who came up with an idea like that, skeles ain't getting much love in terms of clothing from the vanilla game.

[iriemk]

@Dahaka: Just found another thing that looks waaay better than invisible armor plates: Try the Ancient Empire Samurai mod.

The models for the 2 different sets of samurai armor in that mod are simply stunning, but if you wanna get it all, itz gonna take some work, either in-game or in the FCS. And all of it is rather OP^^. So, you either need a huge high-level squad to beat these jerks and loot them or some FCS-Fu to throw in the blueprints and options to craft the stuff yourself.
There's two gadgets in there, called "Crimper Symbiote" & "Crimper Aid". In combo with that armor, these are the best "shirts" for skeles I've seen. Needs FCS to craft the "Aid" version though, cuz it has no blueprint/research.
And it all looks absolutely brilliant, hands down the best-looking armor mod I've seen for Kenshi so far. Just how I'd imagine Ancient Empire gear to have looked like while they were the cheese on Kenshi and ruled the place.

[iriemk]

EDIT: HELP ! ANYONE:::?!?
I don't know what I did, but all the pieces that worked before are now entirely WHITE, not black like on my first try;
I thought I figured this out, but obviously I'm missing a beat here. I rewatched the tutorial again, I can't for the love of god underrstand what's going on. Can somebody give me the bullet points again on what to do in GIMP to make it work? I know this is a simple operation, few clicks and done, just gone completely blank on how I did that the last go around...

[Cattrina]

1) image must be max 1024x1024. If it is larger you must use GGG+R.
2) Open image in Gimp
3) If it needs shininess, turn all the bits that are not shiny transparent. (layers add alpha, then select and hit del or use eraser tool)
4) Export as
5) change the .png to .dds
6) DTX1 for images without alpha DXT5 for images with alpha
7) Mipmaps ON

Images turn white if you are loading an pre-existing save where you had the character spawn with the item with the texture and then either deleted or changed the texture link or you replaced the old texture file with a new file. The game engine cannot find the texture anymore, so it does not know how to shade it (shading information is saved on the platoon and thus is saved to the game save file and now that shader information cannot be used any more). You need to test all textures by always starting a new game.

[iriemk]

Check & check on all of that. That much I remembered, even the compression format I still had somewhere tucked into a dark corner of my mind. Not what I meant. Back then, you said instead of using no textures at all, I should be using alpha channel for "invisble textures". Could not for the heck of it figure it out in GIMP, how to add/edit alpha to make the texture completely transparent.

And I am BLOODY CERTAIN I had this sh*t figured out last go around, that's why I'm biting my desk here - again! Sorry for cursing, just mad at myself I didn't take note of how to do this back then. Seems during my Kenshi hiatus -binging on short-attention-span-FPS Cyberpunk2077- I have forgotten more about modding it than I thought I even knew about to begin with, itz frrikkin embarassing is what it is...sorry for the rant.

For now I just kicked the mesh from the backpacks, works for a quick & dirty fix. But still, I wanna know how this is done properly, darn it.

[Cattrina]

Completely alpha is just an image with nothing on it. I usually just turn all layers off/delete all layers. And in the material file I put that totally invisible texture on the normal map link and set the material as alpha.

It might be easier to make on better image editing software, as Gimp is sometimes too forgiving XD

BUT I have a quick solution for you, I have included a totally invisible texture in this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3375727227

[iriemk]

I just had a brainfart...you said shirt texture gets applied directly onto the skin, right?!? Can I get at the cannibal skin texture and make it a shirt?