Hi. Do you have any idea how to add the emissive property to eyes so they glow? I've been thinking about making a mod that adds separate heads with a separate set of eyes that glow for psi classes. I've fiddled around with material properties but the Unreal Engine workflow is confusing. :P

Originally posted by Phnx:

Hi. Do you have any idea how to add the emissive property to eyes so they glow? I've been thinking about making a mod that adds separate heads with a separate set of eyes that glow for psi classes. I've fiddled around with material properties but the Unreal Engine workflow is confusing. :P

There's just one problem. The Eyes material is hardcoded into XComHumanPawn.uc, which is impossible to override.

You could get around this by making separate heads for different eye colors. Then open up the Material Master and link the emissive texture2d to the emissive node in the center output node (the node in the center).

Originally posted by E3245:

Originally posted by Phnx:

Hi. Do you have any idea how to add the emissive property to eyes so they glow? I've been thinking about making a mod that adds separate heads with a separate set of eyes that glow for psi classes. I've fiddled around with material properties but the Unreal Engine workflow is confusing. :P

There's just one problem. The Eyes material is hardcoded into XComHumanPawn.uc, which is impossible to override.

You could get around this by making separate heads for different eye colors. Then open up the Material Master and link the emissive texture2d to the emissive node in the center output node (the node in the center).

Thanks. Good to know 'cause I didn't know that. :)

Okay, so I tried to fiddle with it but Unreal Ed is just too complicated for me. Could I ask you for a favour? Could you help me out a little with an example mod, so to speak. Could you make one new head with one new pair of eyes for one eye colour so I can look and see what you did and learn and try to go from there? That would be extremely helpful! I'd only need the upk. :)

Man, all those material parameters are still effing with my head. It's just so confusing. :(

Originally posted by Phnx:

Man, all those material parameters are still effing with my head. It's just so confusing. :(

This should help:
https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsAndTexturesHome.html

Tutorial:
https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsTutorial.html

Compendium:
https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsCompendium.html

For the glowing eyes part, I've took about 2-3 months to figure out if it's remotely possible to make eyes that glow. Two things:

1. Overriding the actual EyesCustomizable_TC material is possible, but I'm not sure about Material Instance Constants, or the actual MIC that's used by the default head.

2. The hard part would be to get the game to recognize the difference between non-glowy and glowy eyes, which would require a highlander mod to accomplish.

I'm not saying that's impossible, but a lot of scripting and overriding, depending on how complex you want it.

Originally posted by E3245:

Originally posted by Phnx:

Man, all those material parameters are still effing with my head. It's just so confusing. :(

This should help:
https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsAndTexturesHome.html

Tutorial:
https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsTutorial.html

Compendium:
https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsCompendium.html

For the glowing eyes part, I've took about 2-3 months to figure out if it's remotely possible to make eyes that glow. Two things:

1. Overriding the actual EyesCustomizable_TC material is possible, but I'm not sure about Material Instance Constants, or the actual MIC that's used by the default head.

2. The hard part would be to get the game to recognize the difference between non-glowy and glowy eyes, which would require a highlander mod to accomplish.

I'm not saying that's impossible, but a lot of scripting and overriding, depending on how complex you want it.

Hey, thanks a lot for answering and the links!
So, it would be possible at all to make the game use two completely different set of eyes, glowing and non-glowing?
I'd still stick to my original idea and make a couple of new heads that use the glowing eyes, if that's possible.
I've no experience with highlander mods, I even had to look that up. And I'm not a very good scripter.
It seems I have a lot of work in front of me. Making the heads I've already done. Making new eyes for them I've done as well. The hard part for me would be achieving glow and all the scripting. I would be really grateful if you could help me out with the part I'm unable to do. :)

Originally posted by Phnx:

Originally posted by E3245:

This should help:
https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsAndTexturesHome.html

Tutorial:
https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsTutorial.html

Compendium:
https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsCompendium.html

For the glowing eyes part, I've took about 2-3 months to figure out if it's remotely possible to make eyes that glow. Two things:

1. Overriding the actual EyesCustomizable_TC material is possible, but I'm not sure about Material Instance Constants, or the actual MIC that's used by the default head.

2. The hard part would be to get the game to recognize the difference between non-glowy and glowy eyes, which would require a highlander mod to accomplish.

I'm not saying that's impossible, but a lot of scripting and overriding, depending on how complex you want it.

Hey, thanks a lot for answering and the links!
So, it would be possible at all to make the game use two completely different set of eyes, glowing and non-glowing?
I'd still stick to my original idea and make a couple of new heads that use the glowing eyes, if that's possible.
I've no experience with highlander mods, I even had to look that up. And I'm not a very good scripter.
It seems I have a lot of work in front of me. Making the heads I've already done. Making new eyes for them I've done as well. The hard part for me would be achieving glow and all the scripting. I would be really grateful if you could help me out with the part I'm unable to do. :)

I'm not really a scripter, so I can't help you there. I'm not sure the others out there will have the time to help you (robojumer, RealityMachina, etc), but you can try to ask them.

So... I'm done. I've actually managed to get the glowing eyes part done and in-game, sorta. I got it in-game as a prop. There seems to be no way of using a custom head mesh. Any time I even look at the skeletal head mesh defined in the head archetype the game CTDs.

Originally posted by Phnx:

So... I'm done. I've actually managed to get the glowing eyes part done and in-game, sorta. I got it in-game as a prop. There seems to be no way of using a custom head mesh. Any time I even look at the skeletal head mesh defined in the head archetype the game CTDs.

Set the PartType to FacePropsLower or Helmets.

Originally posted by E3245:

Originally posted by Phnx:

So... I'm done. I've actually managed to get the glowing eyes part done and in-game, sorta. I got it in-game as a prop. There seems to be no way of using a custom head mesh. Any time I even look at the skeletal head mesh defined in the head archetype the game CTDs.

Set the PartType to FacePropsLower or Helmets.

I've already been there. ;) The problem is AFAIK that way there is no way to use a head mesh with a face morph. So you're restricted to the actual mesh as is. You cannot use "Additive Anim" defined in the head archetype that gives the skeletal head mesh any of the preset faces. :(

Originally posted by Phnx:

Originally posted by E3245:

Set the PartType to FacePropsLower or Helmets.

I've already been there. ;) The problem is AFAIK that way there is no way to use a head mesh with a face morph. So you're restricted to the actual mesh as is. You cannot use "Additive Anim" defined in the head archetype that gives the skeletal head mesh any of the preset faces. :(

Forgot about that. You'll have to use XComHelmetContent or XComBodyPartContent archetypes instead of XComHeadContent.

Originally posted by E3245:

Originally posted by Phnx:

I've already been there. ;) The problem is AFAIK that way there is no way to use a head mesh with a face morph. So you're restricted to the actual mesh as is. You cannot use "Additive Anim" defined in the head archetype that gives the skeletal head mesh any of the preset faces. :(

Forgot about that. You'll have to use XComHelmetContent or XComBodyPartContent archetypes instead of XComHeadContent.

Yup, that's what I did. The only way I could see this working is by either somehow override the default head mesh or do what this guy did:

"2. Copy the SM_Head



You talked about making a copy of the SM_Head and just replacing the mesh. The problem with that is that all the references will break. That is why you crash when using your "new" custom SM_Head.



I did get it running with a duplicate (Same name and same references) so it is possible I should think. Ill keep trying for now!"

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/57070-lewd-mods-and-xcom-2/?p=1631761

Though he wasn't really specific on what exactly he did so I don't know how he did it. I've sent him a PM but haven't gotten a reply yet.

There's actually an eyes only skeletal mesh. That's what I'm currently using as a prop. But there's no way to hide the eyes on the head mesh, only the face, so I get terrible z-fighting. :P

I think I may have tracked down why it crashes. Every upk that contains data for the different heads/faces/races has its own SM_Head in it. So that may be the issue why it can't be overridden by a mod. Do you know of any way to edit the cooked upk files? I could only snoop around in them.

I'm currently running the game uncooked. I can do whatever I want I cannot change the path to the skeletal mesh in the head archetype. It's deeply hard-coded. Choose any other path and the game CTDs. I even can't change the XComHeadContent.uc. The contents of that are also hard-coded. This is really depressing. :( The only option would be to give everyone glowing eyes. If only I could assign an MIC to the head mesh's eyes via a scripted condition or something. :P

HOLY MACARONI!!! I MADE IT!!! I finally found a way to add glowing eyes as upper face prop without z-fighting. I exported the eyes-only skeletal mesh found in the SDK resources, edited them in Blender to be a tad bigger than normal, not really noticeable, and then imported them back into the game. Et voilà, no more z-fighting. Thanks again for your assistance. You helped me along the way! ;D