Female AIs - More Heads & Bodies
Part 3. Case Studies of Additional Heads & Bodies by Geep 2021
Here we consider "mis-matched" heads and bodies, including legacy and fragmentary AI heads, bodies, textures, and definitions, that are less supported by the standard distribution. You can likely utilize these with some extra work.
Six Case Studies from FM Away 0: Stolen Heart
In this FM, an effort was made to include as many unique female characters as possible.
Short-Necked Wench Head
This head (available in 3 hair styles) is a legacy from first-generation TDM, where it was paired with a wench body with a simpler skeleton than the modern model. The head is low-poly, with ugly low-resolution hair, which limits its current use.
But in Stolen Heart, it was perfect as a mechanical fortune teller. The brunette head was placed on a modern mage body (example left). The player saw this AI through distorting glass, which further hid its deficiencies as a model. Then the body was made to sit, play cards with the usual animation, and (by listing only appropriate but pre-existing phrases) comment on what the presumed tarot cards revealed.
The legacy wench head would fail on the modern wench body (shown right). Of modern necklines, only mage and thief will work. More about short-necked heads later.
Old Noblewoman Head
In the casino is a noblewoman with wrinkled face and gray hair, but with standard body. She has been wired up to play a variation of the usual dice-throw automation, taking turns with a companion.
Although the core distribution mostly supports this head (as atdm:ai_head_noblewoman_old, applying a different skin to female04), it is missing (as of TDM 2.09) the required textures. Just copy the following from Stolen Heart:
<fm>/models/md5/chars/nobles/noblewoman/noblehead_old*.tga <fm>/materials/tdm_ai_nobles.mtr.
The latter overrides the default tdm_ai_nobles.mtr in tdm_ai_humanoid_nobles01.pk4, to change the 2 existing pertinent model definitions to point to the .tga files. With that, these existing core resources will now work unchanged:
entityDef atdm:ai_head_noblewoman_old in tdm_ai_heads.def skin noblewoman/old_head in tdm_ai_noblewoman.skin
The textures are the work of Bob Necro, part of a larger project discussed further below.
Heads on a Nude Female Body
The body comes from Accountant 2, where it used in a shower scene, and includes a custom hair-patting animation. Three characters use this body in Stolen Heart:
- The female lead character, with Female02 head. She appears nude in the NSFW difficulty levels, both in the video cutscene and live play.
- A minor character (shown left), with Female04 head, deep-sleeping in her bathtub. The body & head/neck skin tones differ, but this is hidden by the water (and, when playing safe-for-work, a "soap bubbles" patch).
- Another minor character, with Female01 head, asleep in bed and not expected to be awakened. She is fully under a blanket (i.e., a custom-shaped patch), that is shaped and positioned to accommodate the breathing animation without breakthrough.
Regrettably, skin tone seams are not unusual with TDM female AIs.
Female Plague Doctor
The plague doctor mask "atdm:head_plague_doctor01" is unisex, and in Stolen Heart is placed on a female mage body, with default female vocals.
Female Head on a Male Body
There’s a minor character, with Female03 head, asleep in bed. Ideally, there would have been a slender night-gowned body for her. Instead, as a work-around, a male bare-foot beggar was used. A custom "blanket" patch exposes the feet and legs and is shaped to suggest a more feminine upper torso. The beggar body is larger than ideal relative to the head, making this pairing a bit of a reach.
Headless Female Body as Mannequin
It was desirable to have some women’s clothing for sale in the giftshop. Unfortunately, TDM clothing models are too limited. A workaround was to create a headless mannequin (but with arms and hands).
If you just try to set a body’s "def_head" to "-" or empty, you’ll get a dmap error. Instead, in Stolen Heart, the default head is offset downward and buried within the floor beneath the body’s feet. The body is also encased within a monsterclip cage… it will tremble for a half-minute during worldspawn, then freeze. No one around to see that, though. A small downside is that the backside of the dress, viewed through the neck hole, is unrealistically transparent.
Further Case Studies – Ideas and Examples
Please feel free to add info about non-standard females and their deployment in various FMs.
More about Legacy Short-Necked Heads
You will not find the legacy heads in the "Choose AI Head" pick list. Instead, type into "def_head" value field one of these:
atdm:ai_head_female_shortneck_blonde atdm:ai_head_female_shortneck_brunette atdm:ai_head_female_shortneck_ponytail
As mentioned earlier, these heads can work on modern mage and thief bodies. The pairing shown (lower left), of thief and ponytailed head, has the drawback that the ponytail sometimes melts into the sword hilt.
You can also use these heads with the first-generation wench body (shown right with the brunette head), for which they were designed. But that body, "base/atdm:ai_townfolk_wench_legacy", is "invisible" in DR! Nevertheless, it will show up in-game. The legacy wench was unsurprisingly similar to its modern successor, but motion dynamics were more awkward.
Three Skins from Bob Necro
The old noblewoman deployed above was part of a 2015 project by Bob Necro, who created textures for 3 TDM skins:
- old noblewoman
- old wench
- moor wench
In Stolen Heart, only the head of the old noblewoman was revived. Bob’s full project had old hands and a black dress as well. (During Stolen Heart development, some effort was also made to revive the old wench, but abandoned. The moor wench looked even more difficult. But maybe your FM uses them successfully?)
For more, see these forum threads
here
and here and their links to Google Photos sites. (The latter may not display the textures correctly as individual images, but you can “Download all” as a zip file. Then convert them from .png to .tga).
In TP6: Lich Queen Demise
In this FM, the titular legacy wench has a pox-scarred face, provided by a custom skin.
Gender-Swaps and Unisex Heads
Examples of a female head on a male body, and a unisex head on a female body, were given above.
There are no bodies for female inventors and engineers, but perhaps the male bodies could do in a pinch?
Masked male "thief" heads - particularly the one shown, named as "..._player" and using the "thief_head_01" model - might be considered sufficiently androgynous to be female (or maybe trans).
Monster heads, e.g., zombies, revenants, manbeasts, etc., might work as unisex heads on female bodies in some circumstances. Or vice versa, female heads on skeletal or monster bodies… weird.
Decapitated Female Heads
Some of the horror-themed FMs, like “A Night to Remember”, may have examples.
Next/Previous in this Series
- Previous: Part 2: Female AIs - Frocks & Bodies
- Table of Contents: Female AIs
