4 réponses à ce sujet

[Dar'Nara]

Greetings all!

 

So, taking a little break from ME1 and ME2 modding i've had a little go at some ME3 modding. Its gone...somewhat well. So my goal is to change how shepard looks and it seems the only way i can do that effectively (no simple armor mods) was to grab ME3 Explorer and go digging.

 

[CLEANUP TIME! The original post content is at the bottom of this one in a spoiler tag, i suggest reading that if the replies from Getorex and anyone else dont make sense ]

 

Basically what i've been doing is trying out different meshes and seeing what works. Please be aware that any "Success" entries probably still have texture problems and i would appreciate it if anyone could fix them up or even create their own, either with the FBDa slot in mind, or another. All armor slots i believe have a 110 bone count even some of the leg and torso ones so theres choices which slot you'd wanna create the textures for. For me at the moment Photoshop just isnt working, and i tried GIMP but for some reason it doesnt load files properly or show layers correctly so i cant do this myself just yet. (Many thanks to Ottemis for help with that in doing some texture files for me)

 

The reason you cant just grab textures done by others is because they may not be specificly designed with the armor slot the mesh is used in. So for example so far i've only been using the FBDa (N7 Defender) armor slot for any mesh modifications now, if i grab somebodies...say...Quarian textures and apply them to the FBDa ones they will go in ok but when you load the game you may see the colors are off or some areas are brighter or darker than others/etc. Im told this is due to how the game uses that specific slot. The same applies for all the armor slots. With the help of Ottemis we discovered when i was using the Reckoning armor slot that the blue channel in the _SPEC file was causing an excessive glow/shine,  he blacked it out but the problem was only half gone. There was still a shine/sheen over the mesh.

 

My total progress in changing Commander Shepard:

 

Quarian Mesh: Success (Multiplayer Quarian mesh only unless i can fix using Getorex's info. Non MP Quarian mesh itself works however due to how visor is textured, stuck with checkerboard problem)

Used in the: FBDa armor slot (Also tried with Reckoning) - Textures look of low quality

 

Turian Mesh: Success (Multiplayer Turian (helmet'd) mesh only. Turians from games own files are seperate meshes (body and head). May experiment with those at another time)

Used in the; FBDa armor slot - Textures look of low quality

 

Geth Trooper Mesh: Partial Failure - Due to differing bone count even a simple 'skin wrap' in 3DS max didnt work fully despite the Geth and Quarian being similar. Causes stretching at the back and arms when holding a weapon. Looks nice when not holding any weapons though.

Used in the: FBDa armor slot - Textures looked fine (Default ones from game)

 

Krogan Mesh: Success (Multiplayer Krogan (helmet'd) mesh only. Krogans from games non MP files are seperate meshes. May experiment with those at another time)

Used in the: FBDa armor slot - Textures too bright, textures from middle of body downwards look really low quality.

 

Video of turian mesh in action (More to follow)

Spoiler

 

As you'll see, like the Quarian if you try that one as well the textures are purely basic

 

All files can be added to the game with ME3 Explorer with minimal fuss however as always, BACKUP YOUR FILES!

 

Files: (Contains Quarian, Turian and Krogan meshes and textures): [Click!] (Mega.nz)

(Files contain BASIC instructions only at the moment, more in depth ones to follow but the basic ones will get the job done)

 

As i said If anyone is willing to fix these up or even make your own i'd encourage you to do so. The textures are all the actual Multiplayer textures from the game)

(With the exception of the Quarian SPEC file, credit to Ottemis for that)

 

If you havent unlocked the defender armor and also to stop the N7 helmet appearing whilst you use the turian or quarian mesh, grab the ME3 coalesced editor, change the defender armor (FBDa) to have a plot flag of -1 and change the first two helmetappearances (under the id=0 one) to the following:

(Mesh(Male="BIOG_HMF_HIR_PRO.Hat_HairClip.HMF_HAT_Hcp_MDL",Female="BIOG_HMF_HIR_PRO.Hat_HairClip.HMF_HAT_Hcp_MDL",bHideHead=True,bHideHair=True,bHasBreather=True),Id=1,Name=134217768,Description=134217769,PlotFlag=-1,Type=CustomizableType_Helmet)

 

(Make sure when you copy that into the second spot to change the id=1 to id=2)

 

This stops the game using both of the default N7 helmets and instead uses a hairclip, when using the turian mesh, or even the quarian the hair clip is not visible at all.

 

The rest of the original post:

Spoiler

I found a Quarian mesh and that matched perfectly to the human male armors (110 bones/etc). However, as you've probably already guessed it this only partially works. Sure, i can add the mesh to replace the human one but then the textures and such are all messed up. But no! this didnt stop me... I managed to replace the textures (Thanks to WarrantyVoider over at the ME3 Explorer forums for starting me off) for casual clothing for now and the quarian looks stunning...except for the visor. I cant find a way to get it to load so in its place are 4 horrible squares

 

This also works when using as armor but applying the textures to those is hard. Each full body armor set has its own way of handling its textures. The Quarian texture set is simply 5 files for the male Quarian, those being QRN_VIS_MED_Norm_Stack , QRN_ARM_MEDa_Diff , QRN_ARM_MEDa_Emis , QRN_ARM_MEDa_Norm and QRN_ARM_MEDa_Tint

 

Whereas the full body armors may use many more files.  If anyone has any ideas on how to make this work as a full body armor with being able to load the visor properly i'd love to hear it or if you'd like to try your hand at modifying an armors textures in such a way that it would fit a Quarian go right ahead!

 

Im also experimenting with using other meshes, but they have to be similar to human or the game just wont work.

 

Heres what i have so far for casual at least!

 

http://imgur.com/oGeZ5RL

 

http://imgur.com/xgNvYPS

 

Edit: More progress!: Had to change the mesh used to the Quarian Infiltrator as i noticed its visor is a bit different and viola! Now to see if i can get it to work on normal armors rather than just casual...

 

Images:

 

http://imgur.com/pMtxjWi

 

http://imgur.com/vbzsRVR

(See below, having the casual mesh changed results in issues)

 

Edit: Moooore Progressss! Managed to change the Reckoning armor however got a nasty blue glow. Investigating...

 

Images:

 

http://imgur.com/Rzeg9Y0

 

http://imgur.com/uWYNQvf

 

Also, if anyone would know how to make a Geth Trooper work i'd love to know. Unfortunately they have 65 bones vs the 110 required, but if its possible somehow? Please let us now!

 

And yes, i have queried about this stuff over at the ME3 Explorer Forums as well. I think i may as well branch out and get as much info as possible from any suitable avenues

[Getorex]

The blue/white checkerboard pattern you originally got with the visor is what happens if you don't have the mesh for that component set to the right "section" in ME3.  Usually, it is because it isn't set to any section or creates a section that doesn't actually exist in the original mesh, so there's no texture to go with it and it defaults to that checkerboard. You got past it so it's no longer an issue unless you want to go back and try and make that original uniform work.  The trick is to take close note of what each mesh component in the working mesh is assigned to which section in ME3explorer and duplicate that assignment, if possible, with the original mesh.

 

The glow issue is always a spec map issue. You will very likely need to edit the spec map for the glowing texture to match with the materials (you can't really change those unfortunately) assigned to that particular character.  Easiest way is to check the spec map for any of the other Quarian uniforms that DIDN'T glow when you tried them and base your edited spec off of that.  There may also be an alpha layer involved that is missing on your new texture for the new mesh.  If you are lucky, the uniform mapping layout will be the same and you could just substitute one spec for another and see how that works out.

 

It's been a long time since I last did any modding so I am very out of practice and rusty.  RL has gotten in the way AND I got stymied in a recent attempt to update my mods when ME3explorer lost its ability to create new mods.  I haven't checked back in a while for numerous reasons...is ME3explorer fixed again so it can create new mods rather than just installing mods?

 

As for a Geth trooper, you could make it work but it is a bit of extra work.  I got rather good at that sort of thing before I quit.  It involves deleting the skeleton for the Geth in Blender or 3ds Max, saving the mesh (it is easier in Blender if you save the mesh alone as a wavefront obj file because it is easier to import and manipulate the obj mesh with a psk than dinking around with trying to mix/match two psks), opening up the Shepard mesh (or whomever's) with all it's bones, importing your Geth mesh and making sure they overlap as much as possible, deleting the Shepard mesh only and parenting the bones to the Geth mesh.  You then could try doing a weight transfer from Shepard to the Geth but because the meshes are so different you WILL have to do a lot of weight painting and correcting because they will be all wrong.  The way I did that sort of thing was to open up two instances of Blender (better for this than 3ds Max because it has a low memory footprint and is very fast).  In one Blender I would have my mesh with the weights I wanted to duplicate, and in the second instance I would have my new mesh that I needed to weight paint.  Both windows need to be in weight paint mode.  You then go bone-by-bone on the original/first Blender character, look at how the weights are colored, their extent, etc, and then try and duplicate that as much as possible on you new character mesh.  When you finish you do a quick set of tests in Blender: go into pose mode, select various bones, and move the character.  You watch to see if there are any odd vertices spiking and moving incorrectly when you move a bone, go back to weight paint mode, fix/adjust it, go back into pose mode, and repeat.  Once you get to a seemingly finished state where the character in Blender seems to move correctly with no spiking vertices or stray vertices moving when they shouldn't, then you test it in the game.  It is almost guaranteed at that point that you will find some problems in the game that you couldn't see in Blender (or 3ds Max) and you will need to go back and try and adjust those vertices, etc.

 

This is how I got Adam Jensen's mesh to (mostly) work in ME3 (in place of Vega as an initial test). 

[Dar'Nara]

Thanks for the info! Thats going to help, i've been talking with Ottemis (Click here for Ottemis's blog) on this as well and basically it was mentioned what you did about essentially trying to swap the geth mesh with the quarian one as they are at least somewhat similar. We'll see what happens and i'll report back!

 

I also got the quarian to work properly, Ottemis very kindly fixed up the spec file for me and i replaced the N7 defender armor and it works a treat, no glow whatsoever and Ottemis also investigated that the reckoning armor was doing something with the diffuse and thats most likely what was contributing to the glow as well as the spec. 

 

Also, not sure if ME3 Explorer is fixed in terms of creating mod jobs (I think thats what your referring to?) as i havent tried yet, been doing it all manually.

 

My excitement with using a geth mesh was short lived so its moved to a spoiler tag for now. Upon getting the geth texture added (even though it looked wrong as the spec texture needs edited, i saw that anytime a weapon was used there was a serious amount of stretching/deforming of the arms and back of the geth. Ahh well... Unless anyone knows a way to fix this. I did kinda go the easy way and just did a skin wrap in 3DS max. As you said Getorex, alot more work will need done

 

 

 

Spoiler

Mini Update: [Typed out as i was doing each bit]

Mwahahahaha, the Geth mesh, its got the right amount of bones now so its imported as a mesh in ME3 Explorer I'll deal with the texture later i just wanna see if it loads...

 

*Jumps up and down* ...IT WORKS!

 

Video:

 

Next to do: Apply proper textures and delete helmet references if i can (tested this in the...reckoning armor slot...ohhh **** and i had already forgot what a pain that one was...BUT THE MESH WORKED! HOORAY!)

 

Ok...Texture applied but blah....blue glow again because reckoning armor slot but now i know the mesh works i can try it on another armor slot! Also... lol Shepards head still loaded... that might actually be a side effect of the geth being like the quarian, a whole mesh. Hmm not sure if i could edit Legion since his head mesh IS seperate. In 3DS for Legion would i do the same as the quarian and geth trooper? Just do a skin wrap over the Quarian skeleton even though theres no head? I assume thats possible because the seperate armor piece meshes (Torso and legs mainly) all have a 110 bone count) i suppose i'd also have to do a wrap on the helmet and head meshes so legions head also matches up.

 

The Geth Reckoner

 

http://imgur.com/IdjWT5R

 

Terminus armor slot is no good,  like the reckoner there is a glow. Only this time its red

 

http://imgur.com/XfKe2eL

 

Still...PROGRESS!

 

Hmm, so far Legion isnt working. Cant get the bone count down to 110 without ActorX Exporter yelling at me... This worked with the geth trooper though and the only differences between that and Legion are the trooper is a whole mesh and doesnt have the moving iris/shutter that legion does

 

Update: So it seems i should have checked things a bit better, the casual wear PCC file is also linked into the crew on the normandy so whilst i was rocking a Quarian look, the crew had the quarian texture and then 2s later the game crashed when i went to talk to somebody. Nice.

A workaround might be to add the armor slot entry into the casualappearances part in coalesced file...

 

[Edit: Did a little cleaning, the rest of this post is now at the top]

[Getorex]

The stretching of the arm mesh in the Geth should be fixable, not necessarly simply but doable.  I would absolutely do it in Blender because of the way Blender does skin weight painting and posing.  

 

Here's how I fix skin issues (too much stretching or wrong parts of the body responding to movement):

 

Get the skeletal mesh into blender, go into pose mode, move the limb or part that seems to be associated with the problem.  As you move an arm, or bend it, etc, you can watch in blender what vertices move incorrectly.  Now the trick: move a limb until you see the deformation clearly and right-click.  The pose will stay in that position.  Now switch to weight painting mode, set the view to wireframe so you can see all vertices and see if the area that is a problem is lit up with colors (indicating the particular bone you moved affects that part of the skin), if it is then use the weight painting (I like spray paint mode) and select subtract, set the brush size to some moderate size to cover part of the area, and set the strength fairly low, then start painting over the area that is distorted.  In wireframe mode you can specifically see/paint over exact vertices to get things precise.  The skin will start to move, either getting worse or moving in the correct direction.  If it gets worse than switch from subtraction to addition and start painting again.  keep painting until the distorted skin is positioned where it should be or looks correct.  

 

You can then go to pose mode again, select another bone in the area (shoulder or elbow, etc) and move it a little and see if there's any distortion and correct it as described.  

 

I do this on the fly all the time.  Move the character in pose mode in various ways (legs, arm, back, etc) and see how the skin looks as it moves, set the pose to stay in the moved position where the distortion is clearly visible, paint it away.  When you are done with a limb/bone you need to reset the pose to default.  There is a setting in one of the bottom directories (don't have blender handy to get it exactly) that says "clear transform".  You click on that each time you finish painting away distortions so movements you've imposed on the mesh will reset to the rest pose.  It must be in the correct rest pose when you export and import it back into the game or it will screw things up in the game.

[Dar'Nara]

Hey Getorex! Unfortunately i've abandoned trying to use Blender for anything for now, it just doesnt seem to want to work for me which is also why i havent got back to you via PM either   Weight painting just doesnt seem to work and im left in a situation not unlike the one i mentioned in PM before.

 

If i ever get it working properly, i'll post an update