222 replies to this topic

[Captain Arty]

How to Use the Default ME3 Femshep Facial Textures

I successfully managed to get the ME3 default femshep facial texture onto my custom femshep. I'm just compiling information others have shared into one place. Give the credit to the makers of the Gibbed's ME3 editor and a number of users on these forums.

*Depending on which nose shape and facial structure you use in creating your custom femshep, you may notice some minor texture artifacts around the bottom of your femshep's nose. In my opinion, these artifacts are worth how much better the default facial texture looks compared to the presets, and for me, these are unnoticeable in all but a few weird angles.  But if anyone comes up with a solution, please share!

**I'm not responsible if your savefile is corrupted. Make sure to back up your original savegame somewhere.**

If you're doing this on Xbox, you'll need some other things first to transfer your save file to your computer. I use Xplorer and Modio for this, and the method is the same as for Mass Effect 2 savefiles.

1) Download Gibbed's Mass Effect 3 Editor.  The latest build can be found here:
http://svn.gib.me/builds/masseffect3/

2) Open your extracted .xbsav or .pcsav file in the editor. As of this post, the Player and Plot tabs in the editor are unavailable. Click on the raw tab.

3) Click the little arrows to open up the lists under Squad -> Player -> Appearance -> Morph Head

4) Click on Texture parameters and the click on the small button with the ellipsis to the right of where it says Collection.

5) Once in this menu, this is where you'll need to change which textures your savefiles looks for when rendering your character.

Change the values under each key to the following:

Key:  HED_Scalp_Diff
Value:  BIOG_HMF_HED_PROMorph_R.PROShepard.HMF_HED_PROShepard_Scalp_Diff

Key:  HED_Scalp_Norm
Value:  BIOG_HMF_HED_PROMorph_R.PROShepard.HMF_HED_PROShepard_Scalp_Norm

Key:  HED_Diff"
Value:  BIOG_HMF_HED_PROMorph_R.PROShepard.HMF_HED_PROShepard_Face_Diff

Key:  HED_Norm
Value:  BIOG_HMF_HED_PROMorph_R.PROShepard.HMF_HED_PROSheppard_Face_Norm_Stack

Key:  HED_Brow
Value:  BIOG_HMF_HED_PROMorph_R.Base.HMF_HED_PROCustom_Blank_Norm

Click OK and back out to the main Editor panel. Save your savefile. For Xbox, you'll need to Inject your savefile properly with Modio (or another program), making sure to Rehash and Resign, and then use Xplorer (or another program) and your Xbox-formatted jump drive to load the save into your game.

There you go! Your femshep should have the facial structure, eye color, and hair color you've slaved to choose and create, but will have the freckled, eye-shadowed, lip-sticked face of the ME3 default femshep!


How to use the Default Femshep hairstyle, without clipping issues! Courtesy of Dizzig

If you've tried to used the Default hairstyle before, you've noticed a bald spot due to the hair clipping through the custom character forehead. This is because Bioware decided to use a different shape for the default femshep head. To fix it, you'll need to edit the actual vertices that define the head shape, essentially moving them farther back behind the hair so it appears to fit properly.

First, change the hair mesh to:
BIOG_HMF_HIR_PRO.Hair_PROShepard.HMF_HIR_PROShepard_MDL

Then, change the Hair_Diff texture to:
biog_hmf_hir_pro.Global.HAIR_Long_Diff

Now to the tedious part. Until Gibbed figures out a way to import and export Lod0Vertices, we'll have to edit them by hand. Locate the Lod0Vertices section, and change the following. Where you see commas in the following list, such as 5,5, this means 5.5. A comma is a decimal point in these cases. There is a very small clipping issue remaining farther up the scalp near the part. It is barely noticeable.

Index Number = X/Y
250 = 5/2
251 = 6/1
252 = 5/1
253 = 4/2
254 = 3/2
255 = 3/1
256 = 1/1
257 = 1/2
269 = 0,5/5,5
270 = 1/5,5
271 = 1,5/5,5
287 = 3/4
288 = 4/4
289 = 5/3
290 = 4/3
291 = 2/4
292 = 3/3
293 = 1/4
300 = 2,5/5,5
330 = 1,5/4,5
331 = 2,5/4,5
340 = 1/4,5
355 = 5,5/1,5
356 = 6,5/1,5
357 = 3,5/1
358 = 3,5/1,5
362 = pending
363 = pending
364 = pending
365 = pending
366 = pending
369 = 2/4,5
1460 = 6,5/1,5
1461 = 6,5/0,860723436
1462 = 5,5/3,5
1463 = 4,5/4,5
1464 = 6,5/2,5
1465 = 3,5/5,5
1466 = 3,5/5,5

As you can imagine, teasing this out by hand would have been incredibly tedious. A big thanks to Dizzig for a heroic effort in figuring this out.



How to darken makeup to make your femshep look more like ME2

For those of you that just want darker eyeshadow, adjusted skin tone, or the ME2 auburn / red hair color, here are some adjustments in Gibbed's Editor I find to work well. I think this is a closer match to how faces look in ME2. Use these with the default preset complexions.

Changing the face code field in the editor after the game has started will not alter your face, just the code displayed in the squad menu. To change your facial appearance mid-game, you'll need to alter the head morph, or import a new one.

Edit: The following colors here have been pleasantly rendered obsolete by the new versions of Gibbed that include a color picker. I'll keep them here for reference. To use these values in the color picker, multiply them by 255. Of course, they can still be entered into the Raw section as before.

SkinTone -- skin tones look bleached in ME3. this is slightly darker from the old default, looks more like ME2
B: 0.16114029
G: 0.284192272
R: 0.6474706

Edit: 3/31/12 - Hair colors in ME3 are more complicated, using multiple variables adjusting the color can make a difference but the changes may not always be intuitive.

HED_Hair_Color_Vector -- ME2 red/auburn hair color
B: 0.0445526168
G: 0.0846414939
R: 0.215764433

EyeShadow_Tint_Vector -- ME2 darkest eye shadow color
B: 0.019918
G: 0.004559
R: 0.019918

HED_Brow_Tint_Vector -- ME2 darkest eye shadow color
B: 0.009021491
G: 0.00775102666
R: 0.009021491

HED_Brow_Tint_Scalar -- ME2 darkest eye shadow
1.55

HED_Addn_Spec_Lips_Scalar -- slightly more glossy lips
0.2

HED_Lips_Tint_Scalar -- slightly darker lips
0.225

Hair Mesh - slightly different hairstyle, works better with visors, helmets, etc
biog_hmf_hir_pro.Hair_PROCustomSexy.HMF_HIR_PROCustom_Sexy_MDL

Edited by Captain Arty, 03 April 2012 - 04:41 AM.

[Captain Arty]

ELE08 has a useful blogs related to this.

Texmod:
social.bioware.com/project/7987/&v=comments#details

Hair editing:
social.bioware.com/362/blog/211693/

Edited by Captain Arty, 31 March 2012 - 09:49 PM.

[Captain Arty]

Casual IDs (non-armor clothes you wear on the Normandy)

Edit 3/31/12 - Sevac has discovered a way to unlock all the outfits you see femshep wearing in ME2-ME3!

This unlocks the bra and panties, the medical uniform, the dirty uniform, and the burned out armor. It does create a harmless bug in that it creates odd duplicates of the complete armor sets in the armor locker that have hair clipping issues. Simply avoid using those armor sets. Any sets you had, Collector Armor, Terminus Armor, etc, will still be available and will still work properly.

To unlock them:

Raw > Plot > Bool Variables, change 21752 from false to true.

Be careful!!! Backup your save!!!

The list is long and it's easy to make a slip that can corrupt your game.

Edited by Captain Arty, 31 March 2012 - 10:00 PM.

[emurami]

Just wanted to say that this is awesome,just tried out the darker eye shadow and face textures. They work great on xbox. much appreciated.

[Volkrex]

Thanks, just what i was looking for!

[bzSPOOK]

I'm having some trouble with the Skin Tone and HED_Hair_Color_Vector parameters, which both seem to add a distinct blue tinge to my in-game Shepard. The eye shadow/brow vectors and scalars work fine, is there something I'm missing?

Edit: Figured it out (I was reversing the B/G/R values)

Edited by bzSPOOK, 21 March 2012 - 10:23 PM.

[emurami]

Captain Arty wrote...

Here are some Casual ID's in Gibbed that I have confirmed:

0: Default soldier outfit
7: bra
8: burned out armor
9: black leather dress

If you find any other casual ID's let us know please.

[Amaranthy]

I don't see any of the values you listed when I open the collection window.

EDIT: Nvm, working now.

Edited by Amaranthy, 22 March 2012 - 12:06 PM.

[Captain Arty]

emurami wrote...

Captain Arty wrote...

Here are some Casual ID's in Gibbed that I have confirmed:

0: Default soldier outfit
7: bra
8: burned out armor
9: black leather dress

If you find any other casual ID's let us know please.

Every one I've tried at 10 or above has been the default, meaning it's probably a null value for femshep. 1-6 are those accessible in-game though not in the same order as they appear in the slider.

[Captain Arty]

Air Quotes wrote...

Can you port the default ME3 FemShep into ME2?

Not with Gibbed, at least not currently. The default head morphs (head meshes) of femshep and sheploo are not stored in the save files. They're stored in the game installation elsewhere.  Edit: The ME2 head morphs also use a smaller number of polygons in rendering the face, so they would likely be incompatible anyway.

In order to do this, we would need a pc user to extract the head morph from the installation, wherever it is, and Gibbed developers would have to find a way to import an Lod0Vertices head mesh. That's a complicated thing to do.

Alternatively, if someone can figure out a way to export and import Lod0Vertices from customshep save files using Gibbed, other programs, such as MeshLab, could be used to literally sculpt the face in a 3d environment. We would have complete control over facial structure.

Edited by Captain Arty, 22 March 2012 - 03:48 PM.

[Amaranthy]

Don't take my word for it but it seems that the default FemShep face has less facial expressions than a custom one. Quite weird.

[Captain Arty]

If folks on PC want to try playing around with the eye shadow tint and scalar values and post pics, that would be helpful.

[Captain Arty]

bzSPOOK wrote...

I'm having some trouble with the Skin Tone and HED_Hair_Color_Vector parameters, which both seem to add a distinct blue tinge to my in-game Shepard. The eye shadow/brow vectors and scalars work fine, is there something I'm missing?

Edit: Figured it out (I was reversing the B/G/R values)

Reversing the RGB values is really really easy to do, especially since it's opposite the ME2 Gibbed Editor...

[Sevec]

I've discovered that you can give femshep a doctor's uniform by entering 2 in casual appearance. I'm still working on other armors, outfits and hairstyles, but it's something at least.

[Captain Arty]

Sevec wrote...

I've discovered that you can give femshep a doctor's uniform by entering 2 in casual appearance. I'm still working on other armors, outfits and hairstyles, but it's something at least.

Cool, I'll update the list up top.

[merylisk]

I tried changing the hair color and it just... didn't seem to do anything. Should the value for where it says "A" still say "1"?

[Chugster]

Captain Arty wrote...

Key:  HED_Scalp_Diff
Value:  BIOG_HMF_HED_PROMorph_R.PROShepard.HMF_HED_PROShepard_Scalp_Diff

Key:  HED_Scalp_Norm
Value:  BIOG_HMF_HED_PROMorph_R.PROShepard.HMF_HED_PROShepard_Scalp_Norm

Key:  HED_Diff"
Value:  BIOG_HMF_HED_PROMorph_R.PROShepard.HMF_HED_PROShepard_Face_Diff

Key:  HED_Norm
Value:  BIOG_HMF_HED_PROMorph_R.PROShepard.HMF_HED_PROSheppard_Face_Norm_Stack

Key:  HED_Brow
Value:  BIOG_HMF_HED_PROMorph_R.Base.HMF_HED_PROCustom_Blank_Norm

any chance you could say exactly what part of the default shep each of these is....just incase someone doesnt want freckles or something?

oh and what does that 'sexy' hair mesh look liek...is that the default shep hair?

Edited by Chugster, 23 March 2012 - 10:19 PM.

[Captain Arty]

Chugster wrote...

any chance you could say exactly what part of the default shep each of these is....just incase someone doesnt want freckles or something?

Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. The eybrows, freckles and lips are all in the same texture. The different files describe how the surface responds to lighting and such.

[Captain Arty]

merylisk wrote...

I tried changing the hair color and it just... didn't seem to do anything. Should the value for where it says "A" still say "1"?

I assume the "A" channel is alpha or something else. You can ignore it. The RGB values are what matter. You can try altering the values to something wildly different, like bright blue, just to test that it's working. Just save the changes to a save with a different number in the filename. That way your original color is intact in the original save and you can play around with it.

Edited by Captain Arty, 23 March 2012 - 06:58 PM.

[merylisk]

How do you edit the headmorph? I want to make my Shepard's chin narrower.

Edited by merylisk, 23 March 2012 - 10:14 PM.

[merylisk]

Also, is there a way to change eyebrow color? I know eyebrow tint is eyeshadow... so which vector actually changes eyebrow color?

edit: nvm figured it out. It's HED_Addn_Colour_Vector

Edited by merylisk, 23 March 2012 - 07:45 PM.

[Sevec]

Actually I just figured out a way to unlock the medical uniform, the "dirty" uniform worn at the beginning of the game, the bra and panties, and the burned out armor in the armor locker. In Raw > Plot > Bool Variables, change 21752 from false to true.

If you try this, backup your save! Mine got corrupted many times trying to figure this out. Kudos to TheWhiteRanjer for figuring out how to do this. His tutorial can be found at the bottom of the page here: http://social.biowar...ndex/9776690/15

Note: This will also add some duplicate sets of full armor to the locker. I havn't tried using them, but long hair clips throgh the helmets in the appearance screen.

Edited by Sevec, 23 March 2012 - 07:53 PM.

[Chugster]

ok i just tried this and it works but i have black eyebrows and red hair...how do i set my eyebrows back to red?

[merylisk]

Also, RE the OP, does this technique work for Sheploo too? I'd love to use the default Manshep textures on a custom male face!