Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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kenny undead
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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hunter92
Hey man please link dowload


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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

Post by aman »

hunter92 , look like the new exporter script have some tangent vector exported backward and create breaks in skin. Use the old v0.1 for now if that works better for you. I am out of idea about the bright specular color problem. We need help from other modder.

About dismemberment, I cannot spare time to create a complete guide for now. Some quick hints here, someone may get it working sooner:
- you need to divide new character mesh into several meshes.
- At Step 30 of original guide you have your new character in layer 3.
in blender right click on mesh to select it, <tab> key enter edit mode,
tap <A> key twice to un-select all vertex,
tap <B> key and use mouse to drag a box over an area of mesh( i.e. head) to select group of vertices
tap <p> key and select "selected" in popup windows to seperate vertices into a new mesh,
hit <tab> key to return to object mode
now you got 2 mesh for your character, the head now in a new separated mesh
- repeat above steps to divide head mesh into two meshes , left half and right half
- repeat above steps to separate upper body (from waist up) to a new mesh
- repeat above steps to divide upper body into two meshes, left half and right half
- repeat above steps to divide lower body into two meshes , left left and right leg

- now you should have 6 meshes for you character (head left, head right, left upper, right upper, left leg, right leg).
- Following Step 31 to 34 in original guide to transfer bone to all 6 body parts. ( you have to select source and target mesh and transfer bone weight 6 times, one per parts).
- the reason you need to divide character in 6 parts is to prevent any one mesh got influences from more than 34 bones. If any mesh got bone weight from more than 34 bones , it will mess up the character in game and also crashes MK9 on exit. I have a tool that read a skeletalmesh file and reprots how many bones being used by each mesh, will shared it later
- In blender outliner windows select and delete following meshes
mesh_054 - skarlet's left leg
mesh_058 - right arm
mesh_059 - left arm
mesh_067 - right jaw
mesh_068 - left jaw
one of your new mesh should already named mesh_055, don't delete mesh_055

- In outliner window, select the parts of you new mesh (right click on it ) one at a time and rename them
right leg mesh - > rename to mesh_055
leg leg mesh -> rename to mesh_054
right upper body -> rename to mesh_058
right upper body -> rename to mesh_059
head right half -> mesh_067
head left half -> mesh_068
- shift-<right click> on all 6 meshes, make sure all of them are highlighted(selected),
hit <m> key and move them all to layer 1.
- go to layer one, ( click on layer 1 button )
- hit <A> key twice and make sure all meshes in view are highlighted, select left tool shelf->misc tab -> "export skeletalmesh" button, select original skarlet.skeletalmesh, click export button.
- inject skarlet.skectalmesh.new to xxx file as before.

If you get these steps right you can try Kung Lao' fatality training and perform fatalitilty on your new Skarlet. Skarlet will got slice up as expected.

Here is my cat woman blender project file for replacing Steam MK9 Skarlet.http://www.mediafire.com/download/z4hkg ... catw.blend She is already cut into 6 parts and each mesh named properly for the corresponding limb. Every meshes iin layer 1 are selected, just need to be exported over Skarlet.SkeletalMesh.
Last edited by aman on Mon Sep 07, 2015 10:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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zepterrian
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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i tested your catwoman´s dismemberment and it works fine. i tried to do it with my skarlet but she has an enormous bug. Just check the pic i left.. what did i do wrong?. I tried several times.
Ignore the textures cause i didn´t inject the new.
I get a little confused in the steps you left for me when i have to transfer bones. What i do is
-devide the mesh into six parts
-select skarlet with right click and select one part of the devided mesh with shift+right click
-switch to weight paint mode
-press transfer weights and change to "all layers"
-return to object mode
I do the same for the resting parts.. What i do not know if deleting the parts and renaming after weights transfer causes something to go wrong. Take in count we delete mesh_055 before pressing "to select mesh"..

another issue:i´ve been thinking about Tetzrep's re-indexing project. i´ve been trying something... but i wanted to ask a question. do you understand the final steps in his tutorial?. if you do could you explain it to me? becuase i get confused at the time of injecting the new mesh. Here the link:http://psx-scene.com/forums/f277/mortal ... ex852.html. I get lost at steps 7th and 8th. how do I find and replace those values?
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Img.png
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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I should not write 'delete mesh_055' after step 30, because at that point new mesh already take the name mesh_055. You do need to make sure mesh_055 is the right leg of your character. One possible cause of mess up mesh is it use more than 33 bones. download this tool
http://www.mediafire.com/download/3sk7a ... k9info.zip
run it with your modified skeletalmesh:

mk9info Skarlet.Skeletalmesh.new
...snip...
mesh 147 uses [ 3] bones [ 1 137 138 ]
mesh 148 uses [ 5] bones [ 1 147 148 2 137 ]
mesh 149 uses [ 3] bones [ 1 147 148 ]

if you find meshes use more than 33 bones. those are the meshes that cause problem. When you separate upper and lower body into 2 meshes, it is very likely you assigned too many vertices to the upper body and it endedd up using more than 33 bones. I had to include vertices around the abs(right below the chest ) to the lower body to avoid problem. If you really cannot make every mesh use less than 34 bones. you may have no choice and have to cut your character into more parts, and need to replace more meshes in Skarlet with these new parts. This is trial and error.

xxx file contains a file offset table in it. umodel export that table as ExportList.txt which contains file size and starting offset of every file inside that xxx file. After you append a new skeletalmesh to the end of xxx file , you need to modify the offset table for that skeletalmesh. Search in xxx file for the "old-filesize old-offset" (search skelectalmesh name in ExporList.txt give you filesize and offset) and replace them with new file size and the old xxx file size( which is now the starting offset of the appended skeletalmesh)
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zepterrian
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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well i´ve been trying in many ways to replace correctly those values (i´m talking about the skeletal mesh insertion) but maybe i´m not understanding the procedure. I know it is not hard enough but i´ll tell you what i do:
- i search the original skeletalmesh offset in the Export List.
export list.png
export list.png (9.19 KiB) Viewed 16569 times
- i go to "search" option and write that value so i find it in my .xxx package.
search values.png
- i search the last offset value in the .xxx package and replace the old one with it (i do almost the same for the size value).
Last offset.png
Last offset.png (6.46 KiB) Viewed 16569 times
By the way i found the same size value twice !???
- i save that modified package. Now i want to see if it worked so i use umodel and extract the export list but the old values are still there.
Am i doing the right steps?
i opened one of Tetzrep´s mods package in my HxD and notice he did not touched the values i changed. However, when i extracted the export list from his package he had the offset and size values changed
modified.png
modified.png (10.88 KiB) Viewed 16569 times
. may be i´m not doing the right things.. These are the final steps to finish the insertion procedure. I have a few ideas to test but first i need to know how to finish this so i can test them correctly cause the game crashes everytime i try it due to this matter...
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aman
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

Post by aman »

I assume your are working with PS3/xbox360 skelectalmesh( big-endian format).
You should search xxx file for both file size and offset together. File size come first follow by the offset. (just search by offset alone could give you wrong result)
Take your example, you should search for "00 19 81 ce 00 b2 2e f6" for a match , 001981ce is the size, 00b22ef6 is the offset. Replace them with your new values.
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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i was using PC files so i needed little endian format.. thanks i managed to change them.
i found that one of skarlet meshes is using 33 bones.. i´m gonna try to devide the mesh into more parts.
Last edited by zepterrian on Thu Sep 10, 2015 10:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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i´m trying that re-indexing method of Tetzrep´s but i have a problem with some sources. I don´t know what they are specifically and because of that i don´t know what to replace them with. Do you have any idea about what they could be? i uploaded two images. the first shows what to replace (they are parts of the body and i think they belong to somewhere in the legs). The other one shows two name tables. The first one contains the sources i have to replace (they are marked in red) and the second has the new sources that are going to replace those marked in red. I have to replace each one (those marked in red) with those that represent the same part of the body, i think, but i don´t know what to choose. The first name table belongs to RetroNinja_Male_MK1 and the second to RetroNinja_Male_Mk2.
Sources to replace.png
Indices.png
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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If you cannot find a matching name for some bone, you can use the index number of NameTable entry "None" of the character your are replacing. It works for me. See Tetzrep's note

Missing Names
you'll find that some names wont match, it's usually the cloth bones.
I have gotten away with replacing them with the NameTable index "None".
http://www.mediafire.com/convkey/3962/u ... ?size_id=8
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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thanks aman. you´ve been helping me a lot. i really appreciate that. i´ll see what i can do as soon as i can. just let me ask (excuse me about my ignorance). did you see the pdf file tetzrep uploaded right? do the red and yellow sources have to be re-indexed without modifying something else? i mean without touching data, bone count or something like that? because that´s the only thing i´ve been doing.. maybe i should ask this before starting...

by the way ... nice work!! may i ask for a download link??
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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No problem. You don't touch bone count , only need to convert the red/orange indices to the index of the replaced character based on name matching. Of course there are some "name" you cannot find exact match, i.e. MKClothSet_8 , in that case I pick the index of highest MKClothSet_num in the target ExportList.txt. Tetzrep's notes tell you a lot about how to handle missing name.

Download link for Jade is inside the first post here.
http://www.mksecrets.net/forums/eng/vie ... =84&t=8685
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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thank´s aman. I think i made a mistake somewhere in the re-indexing project and could not make it work (i´m talking about my first try with manual process). then i tested your tool (with the same files you used) and in just a half of a second i had it all done.
another thing; i read something from Tetzrep a time ago about some parts of the swapped costume that are rigid but i don´t remember what he said about a fix for that issue. Do you think it has a solution? Obviously i don´t expect everything to works at 100% right now because all this is in development yet.. just a question
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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i could not wait for testing your tool so i tried a few things but i got into some issues.. the first comes with MK1. after swapping i checked the reindex.log file in case of an error and everything seemed to be fine but at the time of testing the game crashed. i tried the process twice and also made sure the skeletalmesh size was corrected inside .xxx package along with the offset.
the second goes with MK2 costume. there was something strange with the reindex.log file.. check the image.
reindex.log.png
i tried the swap using first smoke´s exportlist and name table and then noob´s. also see what happened in the game
Rain.png
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zepterrian
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

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i could not wait for testing your tool so i tried a few things but i got into some issues.. the first comes with MK1. after swapping i checked the reindex.log file in case of an error and everything seemed to be fine but at the time of testing the game crashed. i tried the process twice and also made sure the skeletalmesh size was corrected inside .xxx package along with the offset.
the second goes with MK2 costume. there was something strange with the reindex.log file.. check the image.
reindex.log.png
i tried the swap using first smoke´s exportlist and name table and then noob´s. also see what happened in the game
Rain.png
the only thing i could make work for now was the same you did with skarlet. i´ll be trying more
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Re: Tutorial: Character mesh mod

Post by zepterrian »

sorry for double reply
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