Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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zepterrian
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

Post by zepterrian »

aman i wanted to ask for something else. thanks for your reply first..
i´ll go to the point: i need to know how to finish the bones transfer. i tried what you said but i´m getting the same awful result.
i reach perfectly to step 33 when catwoman turns blue. then what i exactly do is:
-change to weight paint mode
-go to "tools" tab
-click on weights transfer button (it deployes a menu but i don´t touch anything)
-go back to object mode
-rename "Mesh001_24_..." to "Mesh_055"
-move catwoman to layer 1
... then at the time of testing the results i get an invisible skarlet

i realize i am never transferring the bones. just look at both pictures i uploaded and you will understand what i am saying (look at the "vertex groups" tab. the picture called "blender2" is yours)

please once more tell me step by step exactly what to do after pressing "weight transfer" button. i need to know how to transfer correctly those bones. i kown the mistake is there becuase after pressing that button i do not do anything and then i return to "object mode" without touching anything else and i do not see any change. take in count i do not know anything about blender and this is the first mesh swap i ever did. that´s why i´m asking you this..
please i really want to complete the job :( . i would not like to leave this aside..
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Blender2.png
Blender.png


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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

Post by aman »

hunter92 Just notice you are running Blender 2.75, I am still on 2.73. There was a change in "Weight Transfer" button option after 2.73. in Step 33 after you click on weight transfer button , in the new option panel/menu, change the "Source Layer" option from "Active Layer" to "All Layers" , that should transfer all bone groups to your new mesh. This seems to fix the bone mapping. This is new to me so there may be better solution from the blender forum. Follow the remaining steps to complete your export

http://www.mediafire.com/view/lt4ay7im6 ... ansfer.png
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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I finally did it bro!! :D Thanks for your attention. That tut is great.. i noticed you already update it :lol: .Now it does work for me... you are the best!!
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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.. by the way i wanted to ask; do you know why the new mesh has so much bright? could it be fixed? it has some marks too from skarlet´s original mesh..
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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hunter92 wrote:.. by the way i wanted to ask; do you know why the new mesh has so much bright? could it be fixed? it has some marks too from skarlet´s original mesh..
Your new mesh got marks from skarlet because we only replace the _diff texture for the color map. Need to also replace _Norm and _Pmsk textures to completlye remove Skarlet's marks. Sorry I can not be much help on how varies image map type works. You need to consult with a MK9 skin mod expert.

The too bright color can either due to the effect of the remaining skarlet's texture or due to me did not calculate the Tangent/Bi-normal for new mesh vertices in my Blender export script. I will post a update script to fix tangent. For now , please focus on getting a complete set of diff/norm/pmsk texture for your character.
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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I manage to fix those marks from Skarlet. You were right about _Norm and _Pmsk textures. When i replaced them i managed to solve the problem almost entirely ´cause i could still see a very little details in her body so i took all her other textures and replace them too to make a "cleaner" job, and that did it. Now she looks cool though i´m still having some little problems with her costume map (i think that´s the name for her "Skarlet_Diff" texture). I did not mention it but i´m working with another mesh that it´s not catwoman´s (though it has the same problems with brightness).
One of the problems and the main one as i consider is:
- grey/white lines on every black part of the costume. honestly i don´t know where they come from. i tried some things,just the very basics, with photoshop but i couldn´t fix it. i also thought that those lines could come from another skarlet´s original mesh like weapons or some accessory but neither could i confirm it. Do you have any idea for this?

- the other and little problem is that when i replaced the _Psmk texture her eyes turned white. No idea..
I uploaded images so you see the best i could do. The one called "Original" is from PSvita. The costume was not released for PC nor PS3 or Xbox. You can see the white lines i was telling you about...
Attachments
Alt Skarlet3.png
Alt Skarlet2.png
Alt Skarlet.png
Original.jpg
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

Post by aman »

I can only offer my best guess of what cause the gray/white black color. Did it show up right after you copy psvita pmsk over skarlet's pmsk? it could be the color in pmsk need to be chnaged. According to the last post in this thread http://www.mksecrets.net/forums/eng/vie ... =84&t=6738 the colors in pmsk file are character specific. each character interpret the color differently. the color represent which material to use for that region of skin.

if you notice psvita's pmsk use same color for all gray/strip black parts. May be replace that colror with some other color to can remove the stripes. I suppose the eyes color have the same issue. Just a wild guess.
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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Fixed!!
I left two images for you to check. The one called "Alt" shows the fixed colors and eyes. The other one shows another bug i forgot to tell you about. i was thinking that the solution could be to cut out a part of the cloth i marked in the third picture called "Cut" before exporting the model from XNAlara. I don´t know if that´s possible but if it was, i don´t know how could i do that. I tried to leave it as an optional item (the best i could do) but it is not possible becuase it is glued to the rest of the head. Any idea?
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Alt.png
Alt2.png
Cut.png
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

Post by aman »

Great job. Would you share how you fix the white/gray pattern?

If you know how to edit mesh in Blender, you can edit and delete the head cloth vertices before you export your mesh and it will be gone. this won't take more than 30 seconds. I really appreciate you taking the time to learn and resolve all the issue about mesh replacement. Since your Skarlet is originally a MK character (not some new mesh from unrelated game). It may make more sense to look into character swapping. Tetzrep did amazing job in swapping your alternative Skarlet from vita to xbox360 MK9. the process is not yet automated but he start documenting how that will work for ps3, xbox and pc.

Check out post #8489 in this thread , you may want to read rest of thread to learn how to swap.
http://psx-scene.com/forums/f277/mortal ... ost1180980
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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After seeing that thing.. i want to cry.. :lol: . man that looks AMAZING.. i didn´t read too much yet but how is that i never notice about Tetzrep´s job?
tell me is he really going to put those skin on PC too? becuase i´d like to have them all! :lol:
..well i´ll tell you i got Skarlet´s alt costume files from this web not from vita´s files. they were apparently hidden in some place between all the game files and were published so somebody could use them for bringing Skarlet´s alt. Since i found those files i wanted to make the job so i searched for a tutorial about mesh swap specifically and i´ve been lucky to find yours. I think Tetzrep´s job escapes from my modding capabilities for now (becuase they are very limited indeed) unless i have a tutorial beside me (i´m not saying i can´t learn modding in that way, in fact, i´ll explore something about it). i tell you this because i could read something in those posts you left me and they were talking about values and things like those i did not understand. by the way did he published some kind of tut or something? (sorry about the question i haven´t time to read).

Remember when you told me something about Pmsk files and the chars that interprete colors in different ways?
well here two images about how i fixed those colors . it´s not a great thing but glad i could help!! it was the "try/error" method i used. the two "circles" that are first red and then blue belong to the eyes. the rest just worked..

any new about your script?
Attachments
Original.png
Modified.png
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

Post by aman »

Thanks for sharing your solution for the pmsk. The new mesh still seems too bright, I still need to find a fix for that.

About Tetzrep's Skarlet alt. it is unclear where he get the character, could be a leaked xbox360 DLC or from psvita. you may need to ask him directly. Check out following post , this is his write up about how character swap (re-indexing) works.

http://psx-scene.com/forums/f277/mortal ... ex852.html
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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aman i fixed the cloth issue already. I left an image for you to check (it is not the most elegant fix but works perfectly). but something else i did notice while fixing the cloth. it´s another bug due to the mesh swap. if you can see, in the image called "Hair1", there is a deformation due to skarlet´s hair that moves next to her face. i left one more image to show you the deformation the hair causes to the mask of her new skin. I wanted to ask if a good solution would be deleting the hair mesh right after importing her skeletalmesh, or deleting it´s vertices just like i did with the cloth.. what should i do?
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Fix.png
Hair1.png
Hair2.png
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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sorry.. forget about what i told you before. i found the solution for that deformation i was telling you about. i just deleted some vertices which belong to the hair. i even managed to fix that problem with the cloth. now there is no need to delete a part of it as i did before.. good news for me because i didn´t like that cut :D . now there are some little more datails i have to fix... i´ll upload images as soon as i can, though i think you already know how it looks like.
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

Post by aman »

hunter92, you beated me in finding a solution for deformation. I would do exact same thing, delete the unwanted vertices from the bone weight source mesh so they don't interfere with imported mesh. I assume you can also enter Blender weight paint mode to paint bone influences over the head dress/cloth and make it bounce with Skarlet hair bone. I guess that will just be a bonus changes, may not worth the truoble.

I posted a v0.2 blender addon, it replaces v0.1 and will export per vertex tangent vector, it is needed to support the bumpiness from _norm textures. However it does not fix the bright specular color on your character. I still think specular issue come from one of the texture file. Which image tool you used for texture editing? This mail thread mention if you used Paint.NET to save _diff.dds file the texture could turn too bright in game. http://www.mksecrets.net/forums/eng/vie ... =81&t=6721

On a side note, I found out how to cut the new character mesh into pieces and separate them with some of the fatalities moves, there are no inside bits showing yet but it is a good start. (Kung Lao Hat slice beheads and cut cat woman in 2 halves).
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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well here an image called "Cloths" showing the fix i told you about. Now they can freely move almost without showing bugs though they look a bit rigid.
-About entering in the weight paint mode in Blender, i´m afraid i´m not able to do so. Even i got scared when i read "to paint bone influences"..sorry
-Another issue: i´ve been testing your new script but at the time of checking results i get what you see in the images called "New Texture" and "New Texture2". Although i get better details in her costume it seems the skin is "fragmented" in some places. where could the problem be?
-regarding the brightness issue i´ve been thinkin about what you said concerning the "specular color" in the character and then i remembered the Color Picker. I left you an image called "CP" so you check and see if it is usefull. Here is a link if you need to learn something (i doubt it :D ).http://www.mksecrets.net/forums/eng/vie ... =84&t=7569
i tried to touch some values but at the time of testing.. the game crashed..
by the way i use photoshop CS6 and never it gave me problems like this. I also tried to inject the texture files without modify them in photoshop (except for _NormHQA.dds) and though the skin looked worst the problem was still there.
-and finally; congratulations about your discovery with the dismemberment issue. I did not take it in count!! so i made a test to see what happens and played "test your luck". with the last uppercut the only that remainded from skarlet was her shadow !!???
Attachments
Cloths.png
New Texture.png
New Texture2.png
CP.png
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