Getorex wrote...
Tup3xi: your textures look infinitely better (though the shine is clearly encoded in the material itself). The shine/reflectivity is lower and the colors are better, though somewhat washed out. It is certainly usable. I have to know, how did you determine how to change the camo diff colors and the spec to get the effects right? Trial and error or are you following some rule of thumb? I'll have to edit the helmet textures to color/pattern match but that will not be too hard (for me).
Also, did you create the norm fresh or use an existing one? I don't have DirectX SDK and haven't found a similar tool I can use (without paying an arm and leg for) that can do normals.
Thank you...
Ok, so this is my first post here, so bear with me.
It looks like you guys are having some difficulties with the materials and speculars. I'm a video game programmer (by hobby.) I just started modding mass effect 3 a few days ago and I've been having a blast and wanted to share my knowledge with you guys on materials so you don't have to "pick a less complicated armor" or make weird speculars to compensate for the material properties. This way you can mod any of the armors you like much easier.
So, someone mentioned before that the material's specular's were hardcoded. Good news: they aren't! There just isn't a nice built in tool in me3explorer to modify them. However, more good news: they are still easily editable!
It seems hard at first but it really isn't once you get the hang of it.
Here is how to fix/change the material specular settings for any material:
DISCLAIMER: this involves hex editing, so if you aren't familiar with it, you can stay away, but this is actually (i think) simple enough that anyone could do it.
DISCLAIMER #2: Backup your PCC files!! We will be most likely dealing with BIOG_HMM_ARM_SHP_R and BIOG_HMF_ARM_SHP_R
Figuring Out Which Material Your Mesh Uses:1. Open up Mesh Explorer, open the .pcc file (ex. BIOG_HMM_ARM_SHP_R.pcc, BIOG_HMF_ARM_SHP_R.pcc) and select the mesh that you are having problems with/want to change.
2. Under the section called materials you should see 1-3 entries with a number next to them (the first one is almost always the main one you are looking for--the other two are usually the head gear and visor materials).
3. Once you select the material, in the upper right you should see the name for that material... these are almost always [HMF/HMM]_ARM_FBD[a-h]_MAT ... a few might have _1a on the end of them but they are easily identified by the "_MAT" portion at the end of the name.
4. Now you know what material you are using! Yay! WRITE IT DOWN. Btw... you can also change your mesh's material to use a different one in this menu using the "Set as material" button.
Finding the Material's Spec Color/Other Colors1. Now that you know your material you can close down Meshsplorer and open up Pcc Editor 2.0. Open the same PCC file you just opened and search for your material. Make sure you get the one with _MAT in it.
2. You should now see the Hex of this Material to the right. Almost every material stores it's specular color at address c8 (ill get into that in a bit).
2b (Optional) If you want to verify (or see what else you can modify) you can hit the "Interpret" button at the top and then "Start Scan" to get an idea of whats going on in the hex. In the first tree (VectorParameterValues) you should see 3 or more trees under that. The second one (id: 1) is almost always "Phong_Spec_Color" (see ParameterName)... and under the LinearColor tree are the RGBA values for that specular color. You should notice the first ® value starts at c8. There are two other colors I haven't gotten to mess with yet but one is just labeled as "None" and the other is "cubemap_tint"... Feel free to play with these and let me know what you find.
3. Now that you know where your Specular color is (should start at c8) lets edit!
Changing Your Specular Color:1. If you have the interpreter open, you can close it and just work with the hex itself. Each color is stored as RGBA (Red, Green, Blue, Alpha) and are stored as 4 bytes in a decimal percentage form. If that sounded like japanese to you thats ok... we have tools to do all this for us.
2. Figure out which color you want to change it to! Dont just set it as white (that's boring) but if you want to it's easiest. The colors are stored as a percentage... for instance if you wanted a pure blue color you would be using (0, 0, 1.0, 1.0) or a darker blue/green would be something along the lines of (0,0.4,0.6,1.0). if you know the # / 255 per color you can simply divide by 255 to get the decimal percentage for each value.
3. Lets get it in Hex form!
http://gregstoll.dyn...oll/floattohex/ is a quick tool to get it into hex form... in the 2nd field put in one of your decimal (float) values and hit the button to the right (Convert to Hex). This will give you a hex value however ITS IN THE WRONG ORDER! OH NOES! (Big Endian)... so you can either enter the digits in 2 digits at a time backwards or use this
http://www.darkfader...oolbox/convert/ and paste what you have in the field "Hexadecimal word (little-endian)" and what comes out of "Hexadecimal word (big-endian)" will be the order you want them in.
4. Entering them in: starting at c8 (or whichever address your spec starts at) enter your new hex number starting with r, then g, then b, and alpha should almost always be 00 00 80 3F which is 1.0. So if you just wanted to make your specular color all white starting at c8 (exactly halfway throught the line) enter 00 00 80 3F 00 00 80 3F 00 00 80 3F 00 00 80 3F
5. At the top, click Edit -> Save Hex Changes
6. Click File -> Save and overwrite your existing .pcc file.
7. Run TOCbinUpdater (it's ok if it doesnt find changes, but sometimes it does)
So I know that seems super complicated, but its really just entering in new RGBA values for your material. The Phong_Spec color is almost always at c8 and can be quickly modified on any MAT.
I hope this helps. I'm currently working on adding all new Materials/Meshes/Textures so we dont have to constantly overwrite/replace existing ones and can just ADD to the game. If anyone has any questions about this, I will try my best to help.
Also, I am testing the other colors here and will let you know what i find. Happy Modding!
**EDIT: So the cubemap_tint is also another good one to change (commonly at 150) as this affects the reflection color of REALLY shiny stuff.
Also... ME3 seems to read your spec textures in a different way than i've seen before. Basically it reads each individual color channel individually and uses those to apply the spec. As far as i can tell, Red is your texture mask (where your textures are) Green is your semi-shiny stuff.. i.e. the stuff affected by the Phong_Spec above...blue is lights only and Alpha seems to be your super shiny stuff (cubemap_tint)... If you are using Gimp the easiest way to generate a perfect spec is to Go to Colors -> Components -> Decompose and use RGBA values. This will give you the 4 layers i listed above. When you are done editing each just Go back to Colors -> Components -> Compose and make sure you are on RGBA again. Save as DXT5 and you are good to go!
Modifié par ashley66444, 18 février 2014 - 02:02 .
Retour en haut
I wont be able to release anything until at least tomorrow as I have some real work stuff that just came up. 
