LR scene modding

[Brickulator]

As you may, or may not know, I have doing a lot of modding with the cutscenes over the last couple of days (you can see a few examples on my youtube channel). Up until now I'd mostly only managed to move/remove models or change the camera. I did attempt to put a dancing King Kahuka in the Rocket Racer circuit cutscene (vid) but it didn't work that well, and that was just replacing a model, not inserting a new one.

Today I wanted to try copying a model from one cutscene and inserting it into another, properly, with working textures and animations and everything, and it turns out it's not as straightforward as I would have liked. After a couple of hours of trial and error and constantly editing and re-editing several binary files I finally managed to do this:

So it is possible, and now that I've done it once I should be able to do it again much more easily but it's still a pain to do. If I can work it out I'll write a post about exactly what you need to do to achieve this.

I imagine we could do some pretty interesting stuff by modding the cutscenes. Has anyone else tried anything like this? And do you think it would be possible for someone with more programming knowledge than me (someone with programming knowledge) to write something that could do all the hard work for us? It's just copying files and editing the binaries.

[CaptainGolem]

Good job!

[Jimbob]

You're on fire, Brickulator!

 

Please write/make a tutorial on how you did this, I have several uses for this I'd love to implement.

[Brickulator]

You're on fire, Brickulator!

It's more that I'm procrastinating heavily I should be revising but LEGO Racers is distracting me, oops.

And yeah, I'm going to do a tutorial, but I'm not sure if I should make it just about getting characters into cutscenes, or something more general. Because I just managed to do this:

And I imagine that inserting models into tracks like this, animated or otherwise, will be of interest to more people than just modding the cutscenes. It actually seems pretty easy to copy any model in the game somewhere else. The process is mostly the same as the cutscene stuff anyway, so I might just try to cover it all in one tutorial.

[Aokpisz]

YES YES YES

THIS WILL MAKE THE COLLAB PROJECT AWESOME

BTW, now put more Kahuas on that boat. I want a crowd of them everywhere

[Brickulator]

BTW, now put more Kahuas on that boat. I want a crowd of them everywhere

I can't be bothered to add any more or fix the positions, but there you go, it's possible :)

[Jack Bluebeard]

But about the cutscene car, can we try to swap it with the classic one of the player?

[Aokpisz]

Yay! Thats cool... like really cool. I can't wait till you make a tutorial.

[Brickulator]

But about the cutscene car, can we try to swap it with the classic one of the player?

You mean swap the car for the quickbuild Kahuka car? I'm not sure if that version exists as a separate model, but I think it should be possible to replace the car in the cutscene with whatever car the player currently has selected. The player's car features in a couple of cutscenes so it should be simple enough to copy it into the Kahuka cutscene, and then if you use quick build to get King Kahuka's car, and select it as your car for his circuit, it would hopefully replace his cutscene car with the quickbuild version.

But that wouldn't really be ideal, since it would show whatever car you had selected instead of just King Kahuka's car. I don't know if there's a way around it.

[plakrast]

Doesn't the game compile the player's car into a mesh for use in the game when it is selected? If that mesh isn't deleted then it might be possible. I doubt it would be saved though, and there's also the issue of whether the texture for it is saved or not.

[Aokpisz]

This is making me think... would it be possible to switch out the car mesh in the cut screen with King kahua?

[Brickulator]

Doesn't the game compile the player's car into a mesh for use in the game when it is selected? If that mesh isn't deleted then it might be possible. I doubt it would be saved though, and there's also the issue of whether the texture for it is saved or not.

Hmm, I have no idea how it works, but if it is possible to retrieve and save player cars and characters like that, surely we would be able to insert custom cars and characters anywhere in the game? That would be pretty awesome...

[Jimbob]

I'm loving this topic so much.

[Jack Bluebeard]

If we understand this we also understand how to put the NPC models instead of the player's car. Remember what madness were in the King Kahuka Demo car?

[plakrast]

Doesn't the game compile the player's car into a mesh for use in the game when it is selected? If that mesh isn't deleted then it might be possible. I doubt it would be saved though, and there's also the issue of whether the texture for it is saved or not.

Hmm, I have no idea how it works, but if it is possible to retrieve and save player cars and characters like that, surely we would be able to insert custom cars and characters anywhere in the game? That would be pretty awesome...

 

Yeah, that would be amazing. If that worked, we could switch NPC cars with the player's library of cars, even. However, I'm not sure how that would work if the AI characters aren't programmed to fit into any other car chassis other than the racing one.

[Jack Bluebeard]

Where is the player's library of cars? I want to edit...

[plakrast]

Where is the player's library of cars? I want to edit...

That's the thing; I don't think anyone (except maybe origamiguy) would know where that is.

[alan]

Wow, this topic expanded rapidly!

Please make a tutorial of that, I would really like to know how you did this (btw the other videos of Kahuka dancing behind the warp door are also great!)

 

This is making me think... would it be possible to switch out the car mesh in the cut screen with King kahua?

 

If that would be possible, you could create a dancing vehicle (I would love to see that )

[Brickulator]

Don't you just hate it when someone else turns up with a bigger boat?

I'm thinking maybe I should change the title of this thread, since it's obviously not just about cutscenes any more

And I have started on a tutorial for this stuff but I don't know when I'll be able to finish it. It's pretty easy to do, but it can be a little tedious as you have to edit several files. I'm finding now that the only difficult part it positioning objects correctly. Even using the coordinate viewer it's annoying to do. But I'm getting the hang of it.

[Ben24x7]

Put Captain Redbeard on the blue and white boat and get him to shake his hook at King Kahuka (however his name is spelt) when he jumps from one foot to another in a dance fashion.

[RobExplorien]

You should put Governor Broadside on that boat.

And now I realise that adding and changing coördinates of models is actually going somewhere big. Now change let's say the UFO on ARA into a green semi-transparent Imperial Armada ship and you'd have a neat Flying Dutchman ship.

[alan]

This is a revolutionary week for modding LR! 

[Brickulator]

Now change let's say the UFO on ARA into a green semi-transparent Imperial Armada ship and you'd have a neat Flying Dutchman ship.

I'm not sure how well giving models the animations of other models will work, it's sometimes been a bit messy when I've tried it with characters. But I'll have a look into it.

Jimbob's idea of a ghost version of Pirate Skull Pass would be amazing with Flying Dutchmans flying around the sky :P

[Aokpisz]

You should put Governor Broadside on that boat.

And now I realise that adding and changing coördinates of models is actually going somewhere big. Now change let's say the UFO on ARA into a green semi-transparent Imperial Armada ship and you'd have a neat Flying Dutchman ship.

However, it'd be in the wrong track

Are the animations/movement for the models built into the models themselves(ufo swooping), or is it defined elsewhere? If its defined elsewhere, we could add the movement for the ufo onto the flying dutchman

[RobExplorien]

However, it'd be in the wrong track

Alien pirates. You never heard of those?