17 réponses à ce sujet

[Ancalimohtar]

All I want to do is take the existing items in the game that I will be wearing, and making them look like other items in the game (or other custom items I've downloaded). Failing that, I'm down with taking the crappy items that look good and giving them the same stats as the good items. That's it.

Everybody who has uploaded item mods on this social.bioware site, or on dragonagenexus clearly already knows how to do this, yet I can't find instructions anywhere. This (http://social.biowar...p/Item_tutorial) does not help at all.

One example: How do I make the http://dragonage.wik...nter_Mage_Robes look like the Queen Anora robe (which I got from http://www.dragonage...file.php?id=118, it's called Mage Robe in there)?

[DistinctlyMinty]

There's a great tutorial on the toolset wiki called "how to reskin items" or something similar. That should answer your questions.

[Ancalimohtar]

Well, I gave up 10 months ago, but now I'm back.



I'm going to play through the game again, and I want my solo mage to wear the Cara model armor in this mod: http://dragonagenexu...ile.php?id=1055



So I installed it and--no surprise--they're no good for my mage. 18 STR req, custom stats, etc.



Ideally, I would want to either 1) change one or two in-game robes to look like the Cara armor, or 2) give the Cara armor stats equivalent to existing in-game robes. Obviously they're functionally the same, just depends on whichever is easier.



So I opened up the various erf's that came with this addon, extracted the UTI file in question, and opened it. But the UTI file looks very different from the UTI files you can open through the palette window--it doesn't show the model, it doesn't have the properties dialog window, its totally text based. It doesn't even have stuff like Item Variation (only something called ModelVariation, which has a value of "101" ... uh...)



So I'm really stumped. No guides anywhere show this interface.



A few things that have me confused:



1. All the assets in the Palette Window are the ones that are in the module you have currently open in the Toolset, right? Well, since I have this addon installed (my character in the most recent save has these items in her inventory already) how come these items don't show up in any of the folders? I can't get to the "normal" UTIs, only the ghetto UTIs I extracted to my desktop, which have the barebones text interface.



2. This addon has in the override erf some custom mao's and mmh and msh and phy and gda files--this is a more serious override than most of the random reskin item mods. Can I even follow those other item guides?



Help would be greatly appreciated!

[DarthParametric]

You are confusing game content vs toolset content. UTIs are game files in GFF format. The "text based" thing you are seeing is not "ghetto", it's what all UTI files are like. What you see in the toolset's item editor is not a UTI file. You are seeing the information for the item that is stored in the module's database that is later exported as a UTI file for use by the game. Refer to this video and the associated Wiki page for more information on the distinction between game content and toolset content.



In order to be able to edit the item in the item editor, you would require a builder to builder package from the mod's author, which would give you the relevant database entries and files. The mod's author, adriangi, does not provide one, so you would need to create your own item from scratch. That's a fairly straightforward option. All you need are the models and textures for the particular armour you want, then you can follow a tutorial for making custom items on how to set up new model variation GDAs and such.

[Ancalimohtar]

Thanks for the reply, DP.

So since an armor/etc mod necessarily has to provide all the assets (models, textures), I can always create a new item from scratch and point it to those assets, right? I'm never in a position where I download an item mod and I can't recreate it?

Edit: Okay, so as a test step, I'm going for the Reaper's Vestments. I made a duplicate, put it in Core rather than Single Player (right?) and then saw that the Item Variation says "Robe, High Enchanter" which gives it that look. So I need to add a new Variation and set the new Reaper's Vestments to point to that. I went to ItemVariations.xls to add a new line, which requires me to know the MMH of the new Cara armor. So I went to Documents\\\\BioWare\\\\Dragon Age\\\\packages\\\\core\\\\data and opened the ERF file there to find the MMH filename to point to.

At this point I have 2 problems. The ERF has GDAs with "variation" in their names, which the wiki says are just packaged 2DAs. So this mod has created its own ItemVariations already? So should I just use theirs? Or no, because they're packaged and I can't get their 2DA "source" form?

Secondly, the MMHs are named arm_lgt_**--this would mean once they're packaged the game treats them as light armor and assigns them the appropriate armor, fatigue, etc. So do I need to extract these and duplicate them, renaming them as rob_**? And since I'd be creating a new set of MMHs, would I need to copy all the msh and phy and whatnot as well? How would I tell this new set of files to reference each other?

Modifié par Ancalimohtar, 22 janvier 2011 - 09:47 .

[DarthParametric]

Again, you need to do some background reading before diving straight in. Peruse the Wiki - there a number of tutorials and general pages that cover all this.



GDAs are the compiled 2DAs that the game uses. Mods as a general rule only extend GDAs, rather than directly override them. This means the files only provides information about the new content. What you are seeing in the mod files are extended item variation GDAs for the various armours. You will have to do the same thing. You can use one of those files as a basis, but you need a 3rd party editor to easily edit GDAs (called GDApp). The usual (and if you are a beginner, better) approach is to start with the source 2DA files in XLS format (found in the toolset directory), edit as appropriate, then compile into a GDA. This is covered in detail in a number of places.



Filenames are fairly irrelevant, as long as your item variation tells the game what it is. You should follow the existing filename convention to some degree though, if only to make your life easier when specifying them in the variation GDAs.



You are going to run into a problem because you are wanting to use a multi-part model for an item type that uses a single model. All the armours (light, medium, heavy, massive) are split into separate models for the chest, gloves and boots (the exception being Templar, in which chest and boots are part of the same model). Clothing and mage robes are a single body model. What that means is that you cannot use light (or other) armour models as-is as mage robes/clothing. You would first need to combine the individual parts (chest, boots, gloves) into a single model in Max/GMax or other 3D app and then export them as a new model. Then you would specify that model in your mage robes/clothing variation GDA.

[Ancalimohtar]

Ugh. Why did this game make it so hard to do even the most basic visual customization? I mean any game like this, the first thing modders have always wanted to do is make armor and faces look better.



Okay, so basically I won't be able to use that light armor for my mage without downloading Blender or something. Then I'll go with a different robe model. I just can't stand the retardo fur-lined crap + condom hat you're forced to wear in this game.



I'll go and try it out. If I have any problems I can't find the answer to, I'll post them here again.



Thanks for your help, DP. Maybe when I know how this convoluted system works I'll be able to repay you by helping with BGR! The original has been my all-time favorite videogame of all time, after all.

[DarthParametric]

Here’s how to combine multiple part armour models into a single body model.

First, download GMax (the free, cut down version of 3DS Max 4) from here and install it. Then, download Eshme’s Model and Animation Import Export script from here and follow the included instructions to install it for GMax. Once both are installed, run GMax and configure the script as per the instructions. Make sure you also install YAGG, included with Eshme’s script package. Additionally, you may wish to also install the NIFskope plugin mentioned in the script’s instruction manual, which will allow GMax to display DDS files. This is not mandatory, but certainly useful. Be aware though that this plugin usually automatically installs to C: \gmax12, so you will likely need to copy it from that location and paste it into the actual GMax installation directory.

Before we begin, we have to fix a small issue in the script that affects GMax users. With GMax running, do the following (refer to pics):



1. On the top right, click on the Utilities tab.
2. Click on the MAXScript button.
3. Click on the Open Script button.
4. In the pop-up window, browse to the install directory for Eshme’s script and locate the DAOModelExportHelper.ms file. Select it.
5. Click the Open button to load the script file.



6. In the script editor window that pops up, click on the Search menu and select Find (or use the shortcut CTRL+F).
7. In the Find dialogue window, put the following in the “Find what” field:

local UseEditNormals = copy DAOModelEx.UsingEditNormals

and click the Find Next button to search for it.



8. With the line highlighted, replace it with the following:

local UseEditNormals = (if DAOModelEx.UsingEditNormals == true then true else false)

9. Open the File menu and Save (or use the shortcut CTRL+S). Done - you can now close the script.

To start the merge process, we need the chest, boots and gloves models from the desired armour set. For the purposes of this tutorial, I will be using the vanilla variation E of the Human female heavy armour, but the same process applies to any multi-model armour set. Note that you will need all three LODs for each model (e.g. hf_arm_hvye_0, hf_arm_hvye_2, hf_arm_hvye_3 for the chest). Put all the models (MMH, MSH, PHY) and associated files (MAOs and textures) into the directory you have specified in the script setup. The textures aren’t mandatory, but the script will complain if it can’t find them. Note that if you didn’t install the NIFskope DDS plugin, you won’t see any textures regardless.

Once you have gathered all the necessary files, you can begin loading them into GMax. Do the following (refer to pics):



10. Open the menu you made in the script’s initial setup and select Importer.
11. The Importer dialogue will pop up. Click the browse button to the right of the File field to open a file browser. Find one of the armour models, select it and click Open. In this example, I started with the LOD0 chest piece, hf_arm_hvye_0.
12. Click the Import button to start the import process. You will get a progress bar and a confirmation when the process is complete. As mentioned previously, the script will give error messages if it can’t find the texture files specified in the MAO, but you can ignore these.

You should now have the model loaded:



N.B. - By default the scene will likely be zoomed far out from the model. Look for a Max/GMax tutorial for info on interface controls to zoom in and otherwise manipulate the camera.

You can now begin to import the other model parts as follows (refer to pics):



13. As before, open the Importer.
14. In the Importer window, go to the scene objects section on the left and select the GOB.
15. In the import options section directly below, tick the Merge with Selected checkbox.
16. As previously, browse for a model. This time, choose one of the other models of the same LOD. In this example, I have chosen the boots (hf_boo_hvye_0).
17. Click the Import button. The script will pop up a warning message. Click the Yes button.

You should now have something like this:



Repeat the above process for the remaining model (gloves in my example, hf_glv_hvye_0) and you should have the complete armour set:



That’s all that needs to be done – now the model is ready for export, as follows (refer to pics):



18. Once again, open the script menu. This time, choose ModelExport.
19. In the dialogue window that pops up, go the filename section in the middle and enter a custom filename for the MMH. This should be something unique that conforms to the DA model filename conventions. For this example, I have used hf_rob_dparma_0 (Human female robe “dparm”, variation A, LOD0). The script will auto-complete the MSH filename unless you tell it otherwise.
20. Tick the Create MAO checkbox. Strictly speaking, in this case you don’t actually need to do this, as the new model will use all the MAOs from the original models. However, this will ensure that all the appropriate model files get exported to the same directory.



21. At this point you should start YAGG. On the YAGG window, right click and choose Switch to Snoop. YAGG should minimise to the system tray.
22. Click on the Export button.
23. You will get a warning pop-up telling you to run YAGG, which you have just done. Click OK. You will get a status bar that will show you the progress and a message to wait for YAGG to finish. You should see a system notification from YAGG when it is complete.

At this point you should save your file in GMax (File->Save) to spare you some effort later if you need to re-export the model. Once that is done, reset the scene (File->Reset) and start the process over again for the LOD2 models, then repeat again for the LOD3 models. Once all that is done, you can close GMax. Go the export directory you specified in the script’s settings and you should see something like this:



I won’t cover the specifics of actually creating a game-ready item, as that has been detailed a number of times elsewhere, but once you have your models it’s a fairly straightforward process. Here’s a quick and dirty test I did:

[Ancalimohtar]

Holy effing crap dude. Did you have this already written, and just pasted it in here? If not, you are the man. Also, this forum needs to have actually useful stickies, instead of an outdated FAQ answering questions from before the toolset was actually released among other useless threads.



They need to create a thread that can serve as a central hub for anyone new to the Toolset, that links to Wiki articles, threads on here, and any other content so people can go through a semi-structured process to learn how to actually use the program.

[DarthParametric]

No, I did it up specifically for this thread. The actual modding part is quite straight forward - probably only about 10-15 minutes worth of work from start to finish. It's the documenting of each step that takes all the time.



As far as the forum goes, don't expect anything like that. In terms of official support, Origins was dumped by Bioware a long time ago in favour of DA2, and there aren't even any of the volunteer moderators left around it would seem. There's a project pursuing a community-run Wiki as an alternative/replacement for the official one. I gather one of their primary objectives is to make things more accessible for newcomers, so that may be your best hope in that regard.

[Ancalimohtar]

Alright, so at this point, I've got a folder in My Documets\\\\...\\\\packages\\\\core\\\\override with an item mod's MMH, PHY, MSH, DDS, and MAO, all with their original names.

I edited ItemVariation.xls to reference the mod item's MMH file, processed it into clothing_variation.GDA, which I dropped into Program Files\\\\...\\\\packages\\\\core\\\\override, resulting in all items with that ItemVariation in their UTI files to look like the mod item. Great success!

Now I've got a couple questions: 1) how does Material Progression affect cloth items? I started looking at all the XLS files this leads to (a goddamn rabbit hole to be frank, apparently it even affects the sounds you make when you move around) and it looks like for clothing items, the only thing it changes is the TNT file. This makes sense, as in the Toolset, items with the same Variation but different Progression are just tinted differently. Okay. But will this affect my override item? Let's take Reaper's Vestments and Tevinter Mage Robes, they have different tints but the same model. But in the GDA, if both reference the same MMH file, will they have different tints? (Assuming that MMH file has custom PHY, MSH, DDS, and MAO files with it.)

2. Is there a way to not override the GDA and not have custom files in Program Files, but rather override the models themselves and therefore keep all new files in My Documents (partly for easier backup)? Clearly I will have to rename the MMH to hf_rob_enca_0.mmh, but what about the associated files? Since they reference each other, will renaming them be a problem? Will I have to edit them so they now reference their new, intended-as-replacement-for-campaign-item names?

Thanks again.

Modifié par Ancalimohtar, 25 janvier 2011 - 04:27 .

[DarthParametric]

1. The material type for armour (and weapons) determines both the colour (via tints) and the level of adjustment to the item's base stats (e.g. dragonbone heavy armour is better than steel heavy armour). The material progression is the way the game auto-scales items to match the player's level. So in the case of weapons and armour, you start out at level 1 finding only iron items, then as you level up you start finding grey iron, steel, veridium, red steel, silverite, and finally dragonbone. The same goes for wood and leather. For clothing/robes, there doesn't appear to be any stats-scaling material progression as such, which makes sense, seeing as a piece of cloth doesn't work well as armour. Instead it is purely aesthetic, determining the tint.

As far as extended model variations go, yes, items making use of them are subject to material type exactly the same as vanilla items. The only difference will be whether the model in question has a tint map as part of its texture set, which will determine if it can receive tints or not.

You seem to be getting confused over the distinction between models and items. As far as mage robes go, there are 4 models - 2 "apprentice" robes (xx_rob_appa/b) and 2 "enchanter" robes (xx_rob_enca/b) - but only 2 actual meshes - 1 "apprentice" and 1 "enchanter". The reason for separate models is to specify unique textures, although interestingly in the case of Human females the 2 apprentice models both use the variant B texture set, which I gather was an error on Bioware's part (the Dwarf and Elf female apprentice robes both use two different texture sets). I should release a fix for that if nobody else has already (EDIT: Ah, someone has). A mage robe item can use any of the 4 available models, as specified by the variation GDA. The material type that is selected will determine the tint, which will shade the base texture of the model as appropriate. Two items that use the same variation (i.e. same model) and the same material (i.e. tint) will look identical. In this case it will only be the unique properties (and names) of each item that differentiate them from one another.

An additional note on tints. An item can also specify a tint override, which will change the tint colour regardless of the material type.

2. You can override existing models by putting replacements with the same filenames in the Override folder, yes. However, if you want new models with unique filenames, you need to extend the appropriate variation GDA in order for the toolset (and therefore the game) to be able to recognise them. Additionally, you should never be overriding variation GDAs, only extending them.

Modifié par DarthParametric, 25 janvier 2011 - 05:14 .

[Ancalimohtar]

Oh good I caught you online.

This is what I'm trying to do, basically: Make a seamless modification, through folders inside My Documents, to the core game so that a few robes (that already exist in single player) have new models. I want to mod the game so that 1) no non-legit items are present in the campaign, i.e., no new items with new stats, 2) no having to deal with spawning items magically in your bag and then "saving" them until you get the item it's supposed to replace.

So that's why I overrode core GDAs--so that the robe I want to eventually get with this character--the Reaper's Vestments--will have a certain look. But now I realize that if i point the Variation (for Reaper's, this is "Robe, High Enchanter") toward the new MMH + files, NPCs who are wearing robes that also have this Variation will also have this look. Or, more likely (and way worse), they won't all be females, and so they'll just be floating heads because there's no male models.

So the solution I've started on is to add Variations (possibly making an M2DA?), then create new UTIs for each item I want to give the new model to (having them point to the new Variations), and putting all these files in an override folder. Then for the race/sex combos that don't have models (in this case, males, although there are other robes I'm thinking of using that don't even have elf female models), I would have to find the original model/texture/etc files, renaming them to match the itemmod's files.

So for example, First Enchanter Robes would point to a new Variation in the extended/overridden GDA file, which would point to xx_rob_newa. The hf_ files would come from the itemmod. The hm_ files would really just be duplicates of the original hm_rob_appb files. At the end of the day, Irving would look like he always did, but when my human female mage puts on the First Enchanter Robes she looks like she's wearing the items from the mod.

My first questions are, would this be the best way of doing it? Is there some way of doing this I haven't thought of? Are there concerns I don't know about?

If this is the best way of doing it, then the renaming is where I see a new problem: Taking the First Enchanter Robes example above, when I duplicate the original hm_rob_appb MMH, MSH, DDS, etc. files and rename them as hm_rob_newa, will they still reference each other correctly? Or do I need to go in the MMH and manually re-target it to the new MSH file, new DDS files, etc.?

Modifié par Ancalimohtar, 25 janvier 2011 - 10:49 .

[DarthParametric]

An item uses a single variation across all races and sexes, so yes to do what you suggested with Irving's robes would require a new variation so that you could use different models for the different races/sexes without affecting other vanilla items. So to do that you'd need to extend the cloth variation GDA, create the appropriate models for the new variation, and export a modified UTI for Irving's robes that changes the variation it uses.



As far as models go, if you are using a vanilla model that you are merely giving a custom filename to, you only need the MMH and PHY files. The references in the MMH to the MSH and MAO can remain as-is - all you would need to do is change the MMH_NAME field in the MMH and PHY to your new filename. That assumes of course that you wish to have it use the vanilla textures. If you wanted to use different textures then you would need to change the MAO name reference in the MMH and create the new MAO (and textures, if they are custom ones). Also, remember that you will need the LOD0, LOD2, and LOD3 files.

[Ancalimohtar]

So it turns out the two robes I want to change the models for aren't worn by any NPCs in the game (Tevinter Mage Robes and Reaper's Vestments) so I'm not going to bother with duplicating original models/textures and renaming them. Only my female human will ever be wearing them.

But now I've run into the floating-head problem, and I have no idea where I messed up. Here's the logic sequence as I understand it:

game checks gen_im_cth_mag_tvm.UTI (finds it in the override folder), variation is "Sloth Demon"
game checks M2DA_base.GDA (finds it in override), knows to combine all "clothing_"
game combines clothing_variations.GDA (original) with clothing_additions.GDA (override folder)
game looks in the now-combined GDA for "Sloth Demon", MMH is "hsl_sdra"
game checks hf_hsl_sdra_#.mmh (finds it in override), finds references to mao dds phy etc.
displays properly

But, uh, it's not. Floating head and all that. In fact, in the Toolset the UTI previews the correct Sloth Demon model. So the Toolset knows how to go through all the above steps. But the game messes up somewhere. Makes no sense.

Edit: Okay, so I've tried all kinds of different things, and I know these work:

• The game DOES check the UTI in the override folder and follow its variation (if I set the variation to Chantry Robes, they appear in-game)
• The game DOES check the GDA in the override folder (if I set the UTI's variation to High Enchanter and then set High Enchanter in the GDA to rob_appa, they appear)
• The game DOES go from the Sloth Demon Robes MMH to all the other files fine (if I set the UTI's variation to High Enchanter and then set High Enchanter in the GDA to hsl_sdra, they appear)

By process of elimination, I think the problem has to lie with setting the UTI to point to a custom Variation. I thought maybe this was related to the bug with IDs above 255 not working, but I set the new ID to 201, and then also 101, and neither work. Also, whether I override or extend the clothing GDA seems immaterial.

Modifié par Ancalimohtar, 26 janvier 2011 - 06:52 .

[Ancalimohtar]

So it turned out it WAS that bug. After I changed the ID to 201, I never went back in the Toolset and re-exported the UTI files, duh.

Can I just say, that I dont understand the point of ItemVariations? Why can't items just reference MMH files directly? It's more flexible, faster, easier, less confusion--what is even the point of an extra GDA file in the middle that only maps 1-to-1 anyway?

This toolset is a real pain to work with.

Modifié par Ancalimohtar, 18 novembre 2013 - 11:35 .

[DarthParametric]

I'm not sure exactly why you've done it that way. You want a single variation GDA with a custom name - e.g. clothing_variation_ancal.gda (filename should be 26 characters or less). Aside from the two header rows, the GDA must only have rows for new data - in this case one row for the new model with an ID under 255. You shouldn't be touching any other GDAs for this, and certainly not overriding them as you appear to be doing.



If you do the above and it doesn't work, there is likely an issue with your model. You need to provide more information on what model you are using and what you have done to it editing-wise.

[Ancalimohtar]

Yeah I figured out how to extend GDAs. I thought you had to override M2DA_base.GDA in order to change "clothing_variation" to "clothing_" so you could create a "clothing_xxxx" M2DA file. Instead you can just create a "clothing_variationxxxx" M2DA file. I had a brain fart and took the DA builder wiki's example at face value, where it was always "[prefix]_[specific]"

Anyway, like I said in my last post, it WAS the ID > 255 bug. Everything's fixed now.

Thanks for all your help man. I'm probably going to move onto armor or something now.

Modifié par Ancalimohtar, 26 janvier 2011 - 07:55 .