9 réponses à ce sujet

[darrenr22]

Ok, so having completed four playthroughs (and innumerable partial playthroughs) I have been looking for ways to freshen up the game and I have been experimenting with the toolset to create custom items to liven up new characters.

I have successfully created a custom axe for my dwarf and I have just created a custom item pack (robe, cowl and staff) for a new mage character. What I would really like to do now is give my items unique appearances, especially the mage robe.

I have been examining this tutorial: http://social.biowar..._existing_items
and kind of understand what is going on (although it is still rather confusing to me). However, I noticed that this makes use of the override folder, which rather puzzles me since I use one or two item mods which grant items with unique appearances (such as the Wings of Velvet mage set) and these do not make any use of the override folder at all as far as I can see.

Could anyone give me some advice or point me to some simple tutorials which would assist me in altering the appearance of custom items I have created? I would be very grateful for any assistance the more knowledgeable people here might be able to offer.

[mikemike37]

firstly, items do not need to be in an "override" folder if they are entirely new. you might find them in a textures or data folder, most likely data.

Secondly, there are several locations for these folders. The folder structure, serves to  present mods in a way that hopefully gives a clue as to when it is used, as follows (replace "..." with override, data, textures or whatever other folder - all locations may have all the folders):

• Program Files\\Dragon Age\\packages\\core\\... - operates all the time with greatest preference (I think). one per installation ("program files packages")
• My Documents\\BioWare\\Dragon Age\\packages\\core\\... - operates for this user only, for all modules. one per user ("my docs packages")
• My Documents\\BioWare\\Dragon Age\\addins\\MODULE\\core\\... - operates while this module exists. one per module ("module core")
• My Documents\\BioWare\\Dragon Age\\addins\\MODULE\\module\\... - operates only when playing this module, or the module which it is configured to extend. one per module ("module only")

For your own stuff, I would suggest either exporting your resources, finding the toolsetexport directory (read the log) and moving them by hand to your my docs packages data (or override if youre overriding an existing item). The "tidier" alternative is to make a new module, set it to extend the single player campaign and export resources as you would normally.

Hope that clears up your confusion.

Modifié par mikemike37, 16 juin 2010 - 05:26 .

[darrenr22]

Thanks mikemike, I think I understand that now.

Now, in this tutorial: http://social.biowar..._existing_items
I have got to the part "Change the colours as desired" and I look at that WTV window and I cannot really understand what I am seeing. None of the colours in that WTV window for the relevant item seem to have anything directly to do with the colours one sees in game.

Say I wanted to make a completely black mage robe. Should I just edit all three channel colours to black? Will that make a black robe in game once the tint is properly applied to the created object?

And I assume when I save the tint file I have to make sure I save it as a separate file and do not overwrite any information in the core/textures section, right?

I think I still have a long way to go before I understand how to do this properly.

[mikemike37]

honestly, ive not tried retinting stuff. I'd be surprised if its not covered in that tutorial, but Im fairly sure similar questions have been asked (and answered) in these forums. I advise searching google:

site:social.bioware.com tint 

[nezroy]

darrenr22 wrote...

Now, in this tutorial: http://social.biowar..._existing_items
I have got to the part "Change the colours as desired" and I look at that WTV window and I cannot really understand what I am seeing. None of the colours in that WTV window for the relevant item seem to have anything directly to do with the colours one sees in game.

Say I wanted to make a completely black mage robe. Should I just edit all three channel colours to black? Will that make a black robe in game once the tint is properly applied to the created object?

And I assume when I save the tint file I have to make sure I save it as a separate file and do not overwrite any information in the core/textures section, right?

I think I still have a long way to go before I understand how to do this properly.

The tint map DDS that you are looking at in WTV at that point is for reference only. The colour you are changing is the colour defined in the tint map OBJECT that you are working with inside the toolset. This tint map object can have four channels -- R G B A -- and each channel gets its own complete colour definition. These four channels correspond to the R G B A channels in the tint map DDS. Think of these four channels as abstract things rather than having any actual colour -- or rather think of them as invidual masks that have a mixing value between 0 (no mixing) and 255 (full mixing).

So anywhere in the tint map DDS that the R channel data is non-zero, the COLOUR defined in your tint map OBJECT for the R channel will be mixed with the colour in the diffuse map at that same point. If the R channel is at 255 in the tint map DDS, the tint map colour you define in the tint map OBJECT will be mixed in at the "maximum" amount. Smaller values mix it in at lesser levels. The same applies to the G B and A channels, so a single tint map DDS and a single tint map OBJECT can cause up to four separate areas of the diffuse map to be mixed with four separate colours.

Since the tint map DDS channels are interpreted by WTV as colour channels, the tint map itself looks like a combination of red, green, and blue data with various alpha levels. But really that colour interpretation has nothing to do with what is going on. Instead you are just looking at it as a reference to understand which parts of the diffuse map are going to be mixed (and by how much) when you define a colour for each of the four possible channels in the tint map object. The fact that the R channel looks red in the tint map DDS doesn't have anything to do with the final colour mixing; it just helps you visualize which area of the diffuse map that channel is going to affect.

[darrenr22]

That explanation really helps, nezroy. Thank you.

[nezroy]

The wiki page on the TNT files (what I was calling the "tint map object") has details on exactly how the values work for the diffuse and specular colours, and also what some of the other options like opacity and intensity do.

Also the tint map DDS channels generally try to follow a basic system so that TNT files can be re-used across different types of items. The R channel usually masks out the primary metal bits. The G channel typically masks out the secondary metal, leather, or cloth bits. The B channel typically masks out small highlights, accessories, buckles, etc. And the A channel is extra special and is almost always used to mask out exposed skin. Very few TNT files choose to affect the A channel because that channel usually gets automatically mixed with the creature's skin tone instead (which is accomlished via the MAO material name/default semantic).

[darrenr22]

What I am trying to do is re-colour the senior enchanter robes (referred to in the toolset as senior mage robes).
I have reached the point where the tint object I create is selectable in the item object insepector and is properly being applied as a tint override, after some (at the time mystifying) problems. One really confusing thing for me was something which others might encounter so I will just mention it here in case it helps someone else struggling to re-colour an item:
At the point in this tutorial marked as "Name and Save the Tint File" I thought (not unreasonably) that the name I gave the tint file would be the name that I would have to refer to in the tint_override.gda. But I could not get things to work so I started having a look around in the module's directories in the AddIns directory and I stumbled across a file called tint_0.tnt. I am not sure whether I did something wrong at a previous stage but there seems to be no relation between the naming procedure  for the matproj file and the name of the tint file that is created after you "Post Selection to Local".

So I created a new tint_override.gda (on a trial and error basis) referring to tint_0.tnt and suddenly everything worked. This file, tint_0.tnt I found by stumbling around in the module's directory, is the one created by the process in the tutorial and the one that needed to be referred to in the tint_override in order for the colours I was messing around with to be applied to the created object.

So the upshot of this is that, thanks to some helpful advice and some trial and error, I have got to the point where I can recolour an object. Hooray for that.

One thing I have tried to do is to recolour the mage robes to black. However, even with the red, blue and green channels set to black, the robes do not turn a deep black but have a rather greyish element to them. I am not really sure why this is but I am wondering if it might be something to do with the other settings of the tint object such as the intensity and opacity settings in the red, blue and green channels.

Edit: Ok, so I took a look at TNT section on the DA Wiki here, and it says that the TINT_MASK_DIFFUSE_OPACITY and TINT_MASK_SPECULAR_OPACITY values for the three channels can range from 0 to 2, with zero being 100% transparent. And then I opened up my custom tint file directly in the toolset. And I notice that these values are set to 1 for three colour channels (and 0 for alpha as it should be). So could it be that the black tints are not showing up as a proper (solid or deep) black because the opacity levels are set to 1 rather than 2? Or am I just talking nonsense?

Modifié par darrenr22, 19 juin 2010 - 08:19 .

[nezroy]

I've never actually played with the fine tuning of tints much so I couldn't say for certain. Definitely try playing with the colour intensities and opacities. Some of it also may be in the specular itself; if there is a specular reflection going on then part of the colour will be from the reflected lighting and may appear gray-ish or non-black. Try loading the robes in different areas of the game (Orzammar in particular has very different lighting) to see if that changes. Or it may just be a limitation of the mixing algorithm, not sure.

[darrenr22]

I played around with the opacity settings and it makes a huge difference. Setting opacity to 2 instead of 1 gave a much deeper colour.