14 réponses à ce sujet

[Mr_Murder_Machine]

Is it even possible to make your own [i.e. custom drawn/scanned/created] facial tattoos?

I don't know, but I intend to find out [probably the hard way] and will keep this thread open for advice/suggestions and updates on my personal progress into this question.

[DarthParametric]

Yes it's possible. The question is do you want to replace some of the defaults or create additional ones? Do you want to use them in the toolset's head morph editor or in the game's character creater?

Modifié par DarthParametric, 08 janvier 2010 - 12:35 .

[Mr_Murder_Machine]

Would like to add them. Preferably in the character creator... Unfortunately, my PC needs a hard drive wipe... The toolset will not open or install properly [among the relevant issues] and I can't even peek at how to accomplish my goal. :-(

[DarthParametric]

The starting point is to make your tattoo design. I will be assuming you are using Photoshop and have the nVidia DDS plugin installed, and that you know how to use both. First find a face texture. Any will do as it's just a guide. Like uh_hed_masa_0d for example. Open it and change the res to 1024x1024. Grab this UV map:



Fortunately all head meshes share a common UV map, so a single tattoo mask will work universally on all heads, although there may be some stretching on certain head shapes.

Set the UV map as your background layer. Put the face texture on a layer above it and set it to around 65% opacity. Now you can see where you need to paint your tattoo. Create a new layer and paint your design. If you want a symmetrical design then just paint half and use the UV map as a guide on where to mirror it.

Because tattoos are essentially just an alpha mask, your final design needs to be in white. I would suggest however working in black and then inverting the layer when finished. Add a layer underneath filled with solid black, then flatten the image. Now switch to channels. Tattoos use each channel as a separate mask, thus giving up to 4 tattoos per image (RGB + Alpha). Leave the red channel as is, but make the green, blue and alpha channels solid black. You can add separate designs to these channels later if you wish. Now your mask is ready for the game. Save it as a DXT5 DDS file. Name it whatever you like, but you’ll probably want to use the preface uh_tat_ so that you can easily find it in the morph tool. You should also end it with _0t. For this example we’ll call it “uh_tat_mmm01_0t.dds”.

Now you can create an MAO. Create a text file and paste in the following:

EDIT: See below.

Name your MAO “uh_tat_mmm01_0t.mao”. You’ll also need to make two lower res scaled LOD versions, one at 512x512 and one at 256x256. Save these as “uh_tat_mmm01_0tl2.dds” and “uh_tat_mmm01_0tl3.dds”. These will also need their own MAO files, as follows:

EDIT: See below.

Save this as “uh_tat_mmm01_0t_l2.mao”. Make a copy but change the MaterialObject name to “uh_tat_mmm01_0t_l3”, the DefaultSemantic to “LOD3”, the TattooMask to “uh_tat_mmm01_0tl3.dds” and of course the file name to “uh_tat_mmm01_0t_l3.mao”.

Now place both the MAO and DDS files in My Documents\\BioWare\\Dragon Age\\packages\\core\\override\\ I would advise making a new folder within the Override folder to put them in, to keep things organised. At this point, you should be able to load up the toolset and test out the tattoo in the head morph tool. Here’s a quick test I whipped up as an example:



Use this to make any adjustments to positioning and the like.

At this point you could create a custom head preset which will use your tattoo. However, to get the tattoo to be available in the game’s character generator for facegen heads, we run into a problem. At this time I am unaware of any way to add additional tattoos to the character creator beyond the default ones. That means you are going to have to override one of those. To do so, rename your file to one of the following, depending on which race/background you want it for:

uh_pct_dc1_0t.dds (Dwarf Commoner)
uh_pmt_001_0t.dds (Dwarf Commoner)
uh_pct_dn1_0t.dds (Dwarf Noble)
uh_pct_h01_0t.dds (Human, Elf City/Mage)
uh_pct_h02_0t.dds (Human, Elf City/Mage)
uh_tat_ed1_0t.dds (Elf Dalish)
uh_tat_ed2_0t.dds (Elf Dalish)
uh_tat_ed3_0t.dds (Elf Dalish)
uh_tat_ed4_0t.dds (Elf Dalish)

Now load up the game and go into the character creation screen. Choose the appropriate race/background and you should see your tattoo show up like this:



EDIT: Urgh, Bioware your forum script is utter crap. Grab the MAOs here - DP_Tattoo_MAOs.zip (2 KB)

Modifié par DarthParametric, 31 janvier 2010 - 01:08 .

[LucifersAngelLHC]

Sry for the dumb question... my english is slighty burning out, while reading you tutorial.

Ive downloaded the ZIP file of Yours, could tell me (sry for my misunderstanding9 what i have to do, to use the mao´s in the toolset ?



I guess im just to dumb and dont know what to do... Dx normally the files are simply dds files, that i download.

[DarthParametric]

As this is a tutorial on how on make your own tattoos, there are no DDS files to download - you have to make them yourself. The MAO files are merely provided as guides to use with your own custom textures.



I'm not sure there is much more of a general explanation that I can provide, but if you have specific questions post them and I'll see if I can help.

[Odangou]

This is an awesome tutorial! Thanks!



Just one really stupid question...where do I grab the facial texture? Where is the folder? (I know this is noob...sorry><)

[DarthParametric]

The same place as the scalp texture, as described above - <install directory>\packages\core\textures\high\texturepack.erf

[TypoWolf]

Edit:  Never mind, I found the short between the seat and the keyboard and repaired it.  I figured out my problem and got everything working. 

Darth, could I ask you what version of Photoshop (or which graphic program) you're using? 

The only reason I ask is that I'm not having trouble with your directions.  Yet, I'm definitely doing something wrong.  The obvious place I hit a snag was turning the Alpha Channel black.  CS 2 has the Channels Red / Blue / Green / RBG but looks like I'll need some more research (or an upgrade) if that's where my problem is at.  If it isn't, I'll need to look at other places where I may have messed up.
Or I may just not know what the heck I'm doing... this is a distinct possibility too, because I'm a raw noob. 

Modifié par TypoWolf, 31 juillet 2010 - 03:42 .

[mikemike37]

i keep forgetting how to get the alpha channel myself. i tend to just start by loading up an existing DDS with an alpha channel. of course, you'll need the dds plugin for that. but youll need that anyway i guess.

[TypoWolf]

In C2 it turned out to be really easy to do.  It was harder to find the instructions via a book and Google than it was to actually do it.    You just make a selection with Magic Wand (hold down Shift + Magic Wand for more areas), then Select then Save Selection.  That makes an Alpha channel, and once I got THAT right everything went fine.

Thanks for taking the time to share all this info, Darth!

Modifié par TypoWolf, 31 juillet 2010 - 03:34 .

[DarthParametric]

As I've said in other posts, I generally don't provide specifics on whatever tools are required such as PS or 3D apps for the sake of brevity. There are plenty of other sites for that sort of thing. Concerning channels though, PS should function pretty much the same regardless of version. Just click the Add Channel button (same place as the Add Layer button) to create an alpha (if you don't already have one) and it automatically fills with whatever your background colour is set to (usually white by default). To make it black, just select black as your foreground colour and fill it using the paint bucket. For just filling specific areas, marquee selections remain intact regardless of the layer/channel, so just select the appropriate areas on the main image using the magic wand tool (or manually using polygonal lasso tool) and then switch to the appropriate channel and use the paint bucket or pencil/brush.

Modifié par DarthParametric, 31 juillet 2010 - 04:32 .

[TypoWolf]

I was also saving it incorrectly, which didn't help. I got it, though. No worries, Darth, if you held all our hands through every problem and put up tutorials on every single graphics program out there... you'd have no time left to live! I haven't dealt with PS enough that I'd ever used channels much at all, and thought I might just have an older version which didn't do what I needed it to since they update constantly. It turned out it did, always had, and probably always will... I just needed to find the right instructions for it.

Edit: Speaking of instructions...  There's a tutorial up in my blog on how to do this using the free GIMP program.  I'd never used it before but had less trouble with it than C2.  I actually put the tutorials up so *I* don't forget how to do things, but if someone else wants to see my process via Darth's instructions, feel free to drop in. 

The Whuff Blog

Modifié par TypoWolf, 01 août 2010 - 05:38 .

[Edrahil477]

Very helpful.