Sonicomi - Communication With Sonico (1 Viewer)

[AbeLincoln55]

A quick update on the work for a completely naked Sonico:

This is going to be an insane amount of work, but I'm all in on it. Here's the plan so far:

I'm taking the waist-to-thighs area from the Bondage outfit, since it has the most skin showing. This will require a lot less work, and the shape is nicer anyway. Then, for every one of the vertex clumps that make up the thong and indented body shape, I'm moving those into straight lines and spreading it out a bit. I've spent several hours on it already, and I'm only about 10% done.

Here's how it's looking so far (only the back half of the left side has even been touched yet).

The sides are going to be the easiest part. Figuring out how to blend the inner thigh areas and butt is going to be a little more complicated.

Then, once that's done, I get to move one vertex at a time from the original meshes to these new locations, since I had to merge them together to get the calculations right. Knowing how much the file structures freak out if even a tiny thing changes, I have a feeling this rearranged a ton of info, and it'll either cause the textures to stop lining up like they should, or everything will explode. This part is just copy-and-paste, but it'll be tedious as hell.

Then, since the completely straight lines look weird, I'll have to tweak each new straight line a tiny bit at a time, to get the hips a little more rounded out.

Once that's done, I'm going to see if I can create a new material record that somehow the game can read, that will replace the underwear texture. I'm a little rusty at Photoshop, but if I can get the textures to line up just right, I'm thinking it'll work like I'm expecting. I'll have to start with a weird Barbie-doll-like skin patch, but then I can add some more detail in.

If I can get a floating naked butt (attached to a scarecrow looking thing) to show up in-game, then I can start adding this into other meshes and hope that it doesn't break things. I would just replace the vanilla body_hip mesh, and have it show up everywhere, but I ran into some problems with that. First, the bondage outfit butt is much bigger than the default one, so any time Sonico wears shorts or pants, her butt clips through them. And second, most of the pre-made outfits use their own version of the default underwear, slapped somewhere inside their own mesh. I don't know what these people were thinking when they designed these files.

So, long story short, it's on its way. But it'll likely be at least a couple weeks before I can get it up on here. And that's if everything goes smoothly.

 

[AbeLincoln55]

The left side is before, and the right side is after. I have the sides, front, and bottom completely done - all that's left is the butt. That's been causing me a ton of problems though, so I thought I'd check in to make sure nobody thinks I'm abandoning this. It's just taking a crazy amount of time.

 

[10000TrainedMonkeys]

brilliant work, I bought this game two years ago during the summer sale and thought to my self "I'll play it when it's modded"... having completely forgotten about it, I randomly checked today and wow.

 

[AbeLincoln55]

The main downside to modding this game is that, as far as I can tell (and I've been searching forums everywhere), I'm the only person who's figured out how to edit the actual models in Sonicomi, outside of hex editing and hoping for the best. That really limits the options for the modding future for this game, but I'm doing what I can when I can.

That being said, if anyone at all is interested in learning how to do this, I'm more than happy to share what I've figured out so far. There's a few downsides, though - you'd need about $50 to get a license to the only object converter I've seen that can open up and convert Sonicomi models (the free version removes every fifth vertex. Normally, that would be kind of okay, but this game requires an exact amount of vertices to remain from each object in the mesh), I'd need to send you a custom executable file I made that converts vertex data into something Sonicomi understands (or, if getting .exe files from strangers doesn't sound safe, I could send the source code), and the process is extremely time consuming. Compared to modeling work I've done in the past, this game takes at least 5 times longer since there are so many things you can't do.

I know, I'm really making a hard sell on this. But to be fair, if I can get this information out to other people who could dig deeper and come up with extra creations, this game will have an awesome future. If anyone at all is interested in this, just send me a message and I'll give all the info I have.

 

[Bill_2007]

Thank you for all your work on this mod. It makes this game worth playing despite it's often repetitive nature. I was just wondering if you intended to make the maid and goth maid outfits open chested at some point? I know you have your hands full with what you are already working on, I was just curious if it was in your plans for the future.

 

[AbeLincoln55]

I'm definitely planning on it - it might be a few updates down the road, but those have a lot of potential.

This is my list so far, and I mainly arranged it by how easy it'll be for me:

• Finish nude mod
• Change babydoll from topless to actual outfit with thong
• Swap out one of the other outfits to be a babydoll with nothing underneath
• Make a version of stray cat with no underwear
• Get rid of the 2 separate files, and replace some other outfit with the tailless stray cat
• Change sexy bikini to use thong
• Remove 3 other less-sexy outfits and replace them with nude bodies
  • I'm doing 3 because I've seen several outfits with slightly different boob sizes. I'm going to go with the bodies from the babydoll, sexy bikini, and stray cat. I'm pretty sure stray cat has the biggest ones.
• Blassreiter is halfway through an update, so I'll finish that
• Maid outfits (apparently, there are 3, so I have to figure out what's what)
• Rock outfit hip fix (this got pushed back since I got really frustrated with it)
• Looking into Ouka
• Santa
• Nurse(s)

At this point, hopefully I'll be comfortable enough with this whole thing to start actually making custom outfits from scratch. This is definitely going to keep me busy for a really long time.

And while I'm making these updates, I'm planning on digging into the actual program itself to see if I can get it to read new archives. It would make it way easier for people to pick and choose what they want.

 

[AbeLincoln55]

Whoa. I just found something pretty awesome. In script.npk, under media/script/system, sys_val.nut has all the names/descriptions for outfits. Once I start replacing stuff, that will come in handy.

 

[AbeLincoln55]

So Sonico's butt is FINALLY done. That was terrible. But all the flat lines have been rounded out (except for maybe 2 or 3 sets on the sides), the cheeks were pushed a little closer together, and the mushed disaster that used to be Sonico's tailbone is smooth.

Now, I get to start the amazing time of moving every vertex, one at a time, until they line up with the new model. This will be nothing but copying and pasting, but it's going to take a while. Something between 1000 and 1200 vertices got moved, and there are 3 values for each, so I'm going to be doing this for a few days. And then I can find out if the whole new texture idea is even going to work or not.

Also, I had an idea that might let more people try out this whole Sonicomi modeling thing. I'm not totally sure if it's against TOU or if it's a copyright violation or something, but I could use the license I have for that object converter to make an archive of some .obj conversions, so other people wouldn't need to buy the license. Just a thought.

(I couldn't handle looking at that neon purple anymore)​

 

[aldiele]

wow, Abe doing god's work over here. I thought actual nude mods and more outfits weren't going to happen, because the game is sort of forgotten, but here you are doing so much work. For free too. Do you have a paypal or something that I can donate to? seriously. good work.
We just need to wait a little while longer for the nude mod you're working on and we'll be golden.

 

[AbeLincoln55]

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, I've been really busy and hadn't had a chance to work on this for a couple weeks. I finally finished moving all the original vertices over to the new locations, and I got it up and running in-game. I have a few tweaks I'll have to make to the butt, but I did find out that it's possible to create new material files and have the game read them without breaking. I'm not positive where the spec maps are coming from, but that'll be the next step in figuring this out. Right now, the underwear is skin-colored, but obnoxiously shiny and looks really weird.

Aldiele, thanks a ton for the support! I've actually never set up a Paypal account, and I'm not sure if I ever plan on doing it. I've always done projects like these for free, because I honestly like doing them. If anyone was paying me for what I do, I'd feel rushed and obligated to work on things that I might not necessarily want to do. Simply having people enjoy and get a lot of use out of my work is good enough for me.

 

[AbeLincoln55]

My bad for not including screenshots so people don't think I'm making this stuff up. The shininess looks really bad, but this is just a really rough trial run of new materials. I'll have to get the shading lined up just right, and figure out how to get the rest of the base body texture details copied over. I'm not sure why the body is shaded like she's still wearing underwear, but I'll see if I can get that sorted out, too. It doesn't help that the file structures are a huge mess and don't make any sense.

Back: (I need to move the crack up and forward a bit)

Front:

 

[axellslade]

Mad props to you Abe, figuring it all out like that!

 

[AbeLincoln55]

Well, it's progress:

Getting these textures fixed is going to be awful, since of course they don't line up right. At least the shininess is gone. I just can't believe how hard it's been to get things to this point.

 

[AbeLincoln55]

It's getting closer. Photoshopping the butt texture was rough - it was split in half, and rotated like 48 degrees, with a bunch of transparency issues. But I went pixel by pixel and blended it together in the middle, then had to resize the whole thing to fit right. And it's still not totally there yet. One of these tries, it's going to be right.

The sides are almost perfect on the back half, and the butt is about halfway there. The front is a whole different story though. I'll keep you all posted as I make more progress on this.

On a side note, if anyone wanted an underwear-less bondage outfit, I'm sorry to say it isn't going to happen. I'd have to start this from the very beginning and keep the legs in place, and I don't think I'm going to have the patience to do that.

 

[AbeLincoln55]

So close. This one is already a million times better. The lower back is coming through lighter than I'd like, and in certain lighting, there's a very visible texture seam.

I found out that part of the problem was that the full texture isn't actually mapped. It's only half of it, and it loops over itself in some places. And it's rotated about 2.5 degrees off-center. Seriously, it's like they did this on purpose to make my life difficult.

 

[TheKingOppaiDragon]

So close. This one is already a million times better. The lower back is coming through lighter than I'd like, and in certain lighting, there's a very visible texture seam. View attachment 72586

I found out that part of the problem was that the full texture isn't actually mapped. It's only half of it, and it loops over itself in some places. And it's rotated about 2.5 degrees off-center. Seriously, it's like they did this on purpose to make my life difficult.

the mod how it proceeds?

 

[JonathanGreen]

So close. This one is already a million times better. The lower back is coming through lighter than I'd like, and in certain lighting, there's a very visible texture seam. View attachment 72586

I found out that part of the problem was that the full texture isn't actually mapped. It's only half of it, and it loops over itself in some places. And it's rotated about 2.5 degrees off-center. Seriously, it's like they did this on purpose to make my life difficult.

Wow man. Props to you for your hard work. I'm always impressed by general nude mods that just change texture/color but this is on a whole other level.

 

[n1honomaru]

Well, it's progress:
View attachment 72580
Getting these textures fixed is going to be awful, since of course they don't line up right. At least the shininess is gone. I just can't believe how hard it's been to get things to this point.

i need this

naooooooo

 

[n1honomaru]

so i guess topic dead -_-

 

[fleet]

so i guess topic dead -_-

It seems so; AbeLincoln55 last logged onto Undertow in April 2018.