My skin textures stay washed out and I have my texture set to non-color (or rather the only option I have is "generic data"). I'm sure there's a setting somewhere that I'm missing. Any advice?
I have the dds importer thing through guide mentions. These are the same texture files I've been using in game and they work fine in there. I get a similar effect on the character in your provided blend file too, which makes me think I have something configured wrong lol.
sorry, saw this and forgot to get back to you. I would try importing your maps a different way, ie converting them into another format outside of blender. I have actually been having some issues with the addon I mentioned in the guide, and had been planing on removing it as a recommendation in future versions
Hey no worries. You're providing this stuff for us and I couldn't be more grateful :)
So, here's another thing that's weird. I updated Blender- didn't realize I was a bit behind. Your blend file was doing the same washed-out thing in Blender 3.6, but it looks correct in 4.1. My skin texture is still washed out in 4.1, but it's not as bad this time.
As an experiment, I reimported a head I already had customize, saved as a .gr2, etc, and the textures stick to that one just fine. Near as I can tell, it's something about the mesh itself. The same textures that look weird on my mesh look correct on the mesh in your blend file. Could the gr2 - dae conversion be the problem somehow?
Different file types don't seem to make much difference either :/
oh that yeah, there where changes made to Blender's principled bsdf shader in 4.0 and the current version of the toolbox was made in and for Blender 4.0+, so I am not surprised that there are backwards compatibility issues. I would try re downloading the toolbox so that you have a version that was never opened or saved in 3.6, and see if your issues still persist there. I will also note that the skin shader in the current toolbox does not create skin that are completely accurate to the ones ingame; this is because when I built it I was going off purely guess work, as a result some colours are more accurate than others. Normal human skin tones tend to be alright, blues are also fairly good but get a little washed out, yellows are there but VERY washed out, and red tones? well there's a reason I didn't include a red tone as a preset. (note: this is something I have fixed in the new version I am working on, which will HOPEFULLY be out soon. Got taken by a fae mood and made the shader for substance painter lmao)
as an aside, I doubt that its your mesh that's causing the issue, your uvmaps appear to be coming in just fine and there's not much else that can really effect the textures/shader on the mesh side of things. Its going to be something with the shader/a setting in blender. My best advice for you is to start a fresh blend file in 4.1 and start again, reimporting everything from scratch (don't append things from the old file, work just with new versions). If you're still having this issue let me know, you might need to send me your blend file so I can have a hands on look through it.
Deleting and reimporting your blend file fresh did the trick. That's such basic troubleshooting that I can't believe didn't try it first lmao. Thanks again for all your efforts in making these tools for us. I went from stumbling and struggling to actually putting something together that I can be happy with.
Hi, just wondering how to put edited heads back into the game? I've tried converting files and searching around, but can't really figure it out. Sorry if it's a stupid question!
there are no stupid questions asked in good faith. Getting heads back into the game is a bit of a processes, but thankfully there are a few templates/guides out there. I recommend either Weeviljester's template or Padme4000 template (Pademe also has a few tools and blender addons for modders, so check those out). I also recommend checking out the BG3 Modding Community Wiki, but it is currently a bit bare bones right now (though it should fill up with time)
ahh thank you so much for the reply!! sorry again but would you happen to know how to choose different heads or import them into this? i find this much easier to edit than with normal blender, but have only practiced with the default female head. i have the bg3 multitool and have tried putting other heads in but have had no luck yet.
You need to make sure that your texture maps are set to non-colour (unless otherwise specified). To change a skin colour from the defualt preset to another provided preset, look for the node group plunged into the skin shader labelled "skin colour", then at the bottom of that node click the checkered circle icon to open a drop down menu to show a list of all available node groups inside the file, select any node group with "skin:" in its name to change to that preset.
I am eternally grateful to you for this beautiful toolbox, it really makes my work much easier.What's wrong here? I can't get the tattoos to fit the face. I'm using the latest version of Toolbox and Blender 3.6.
hey no problem I'm glad you enjoyed it. As for the tattoo, as of version 1.5 the atlas needs to be cut up into individual tiles first, and there are instructions on how to do so inside the provided guide on page 6 I believe. (note to future readers: this may change in later version of the toolbox, always check the provided guide just to make sure)
Additionally, I would recommend updating blender to the latest version if you can as this shader was built in blender version 4.0 and may not work as best on older versions. it should be fine for the most part tho.
hey no problem! and thanks for sharing, funnily enough I've actually been working on the next version of the shader which has support for freckles (as well as Vitiligo) built into it. Hopefully, your suggestion helps a few people while I work on getting the update out (it may be a little while). But here's a preview if you are curious:
Hey Volno, thanks for the mod, it's super useful and im still getting used to it but i wanted to ask you somenthing regarding the textures. Do HMVY are also extracted from .GTP files? Im still new at it but i managed to track down the file textures for male body tieflings and there's none of it in sight, have you encountered somehing similar or is it just me not knowing how to do stuff :p EDIT: no matter its fixed sry
im following along with your PDF and i'm in shaders, and trying to set it up, and i see things like shader:skin, and shader: atlas hub etc. but these arent options when i try to add shader nodes, so when i read these are easy to set up, i said "WHAT"
perhaps? It would depend on how you're trying to set it up. The shaders I have made aren't shader nodes themselves, they're groups, so you'll need to look in the 'groups' menu rather than the 'shader' menu to find them. Additionally, each one of the shaders is present in a relevant material (ie, you'll find the skin shader inside the 'head' material) so it shouldn't be too difficult to find the shaders you're looking for if you are working directly in the blend file I have provided.
This is such an amazing project thank you so much ewosinfioeswfn I have one question though, what shader group would horns use or is that not a thing as of now?
hey, glad you're enjoying the project, and it's not supported as of now; but it is funny that you should ask became I had just made a set-up for it for a personal render not too long ago. I plan to eventually add it to the main toolbox, but in the meantime here's what I've been using:
I hope that helps! And if you're having trouble, feel free to ask.
thank you so much for this! i've been messing around with blender for ages and this feels like a god send lol <3
would you (or anyone) happen to have the basic settings for Astarion's skin? sorry to ask, i have the textures and everything i've just been struggling with tweaking the color >.<
As for Astarion's skin, I also had a bit of trouble tracking it down, the one used in the mod's images is actually just me eyeballing it cause I was lazy lol. To find them, you'll have to go digging around in the game's files.
Amazing work! I have been working on getting standard Diffuse/Spec/Gloss out of those textures since the game released. I ended up with a pretty good result separating the layers from the dds, converting them to grayscale png and then using each as a mask layer within substance, trying to somewhat recreate the pipeline Larian showed off using substance.
Very new to this stuff so it was a huge pain, but I was happy with the result, and this was back in September. Also worked just plugging in different textures for another character. But one thing I struggled with then, and now, is pulling good specular and gloss maps out. I'm looking at your work, and I'm wondering if you have any tips for how I might bake out a good spec and gloss in blender. I'm not seeing results in blender that make me think that data is being exposed. The roughness seems uniform. Maybe Larians renderer is responsible for calculating these at runtime and the data isn't in the texture maps? Anyway, your work definitely makes for an infinitely easier and more easily tweakable result, thank you for sharing it with the community!
hey awesome, glad you've found it helpful! And it's funny that you should ask about the roughness because I found out recently that I appear to have been using the wrong map to calculate the roughness. In this article about Larrian's shaders they mention that they have a shared roughness map that is blended with a head's cavity map to create a unique roughness map for each head in game. Because a lot of heads share a msk map, I had assumed that it was the green channel inside the msk map was that shared roughness map, but just last night as I was helping someone track down where the game gets its freckles, I found a map called "SKIN_Shared_Shading_MSKA", and that maps red channel appears to the correct roughness map. It's something that I plan on fixing the next time I update the toolbox. As for spec/gloss? Yeah, those are something of a mystery right now, I've found references to specular data while poking around in the game's files but without the dev tools and with my limited knowledge base, I can't get a lot of usable information out of them. A bunch of us in a discord I'm in were chatting once about these map's we had found called SMSK maps that we think might have something to do with specularity (purely because of the name) but even though we have a bunch of these maps, we couldn't find many references to them in the game's files so we're probably not correct about that.
And since we're sharing knowledge, I thought'd I'd show you the substance painter setup I have that is based off my setup in blender. the roughness is off, but the colours are pretty good I think
additionally, you don't need to separate out each image into grey scales, you can plug the image into a 'greyscale conversion' generator and pick a channel. You'll still need to separate out the alpha channel, though.
Oh wow thanks for all the info! I also found those smsk and had no idea how to use them. Digging through their files is an exercise in memory and patience, and it seems like you just have to stumble around for a few hours before you start to form a cohesive picture. And I hear they started storing more textures as virtual, which really really blows imo. It took a while to figure out how to locate stuff the virtual stuff, and I'm not looking forward to doing it again. I'm hoping I still have everything from an earlier build before this change. I have pulled a few shared dds files, but I can't remember the shading one, I'll have to track it down and play around with it. Amazing info! I was active in the modding discord a few months ago but not lately. I had never used Substance before doing this so I went at it as best I could figure out, super useful to know about the greyscale conversion generator, I'll check that out. Thanks again for this, and all your amazing work!
Hey, just wanted to let you know, I found the shared_shading map you mentioned, and also a SKIN_Shared_Shading_MSK which doesn't contain an alpha layer, but is for body mesh, where as the one you mentioned is head only. Seems the green layer is the roughness map, from the looks of it. I'm thinking the missing alpha layer might be ambient occlusion (ao). There are also shading maps for the gens.
Forgot to reply to that earlier message, whoops. But yes, they started storing more images as vts in the lead up to the xbox release, so now the majority of textures are stored that way (with the main exception being heads). It's not as bad as it once was, and I think there's been some progress made on a tool we can use to make our own VTs? (can't for the life of me remember who was making that) Plus, there are a few places that host lists of important uuids so you don't have to search for them yourself, like the bg3 modding wiki and I think the bg3 community library on github.
and ye I saw SKIN_Shared_Shading_MSK too, though the missing layer wouldn't be AO as that map is stored inside CLEA maps. But going from the other map (the one for heads) I think it's more likely that it would have been a subsurface scattering map. I say would, because I have found code in the materials about subsurface scattering that leads me to believe that it's generated procedurally in that case.
Lastly, if you are looking for a new modding discord to chat with people about this stuff I can recommend the one I'm pretty active in. it's not specifically modding related, but has a strong modding community. (and its also got decent moderation, unlike the official larian discord)
Hey thanks I'll check out the discord for sure. I was just realizing I didn't see a makeup map in your setup. I see in your guide that it says the blue channel of the CLEA map is makeup, but for everything I've been doing, thats not the case. Makeup I've been using is on a shared atlas file, Skin_Atlas_Head_SHR_Makeup_A_MSK2. Maybe I'm misunderstanding though. Anyway, appreciate you taking the time to respond again! Cheers!
The blue channel is makeup in the CLEA map, and tends to only control lipstick. The Atlas you're looking at is for the eyeshadow options, so it is both makeup, just different kinds.
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I have actually been having some issues with the addon I mentioned in the guide, and had been planing on removing it as a recommendation in future versions
So, here's another thing that's weird. I updated Blender- didn't realize I was a bit behind.
Your blend file was doing the same washed-out thing in Blender 3.6, but it looks correct in 4.1. My skin texture is still washed out in 4.1, but it's not as bad this time.
As an experiment, I reimported a head I already had customize, saved as a .gr2, etc, and the textures stick to that one just fine. Near as I can tell, it's something about the mesh itself. The same textures that look weird on my mesh look correct on the mesh in your blend file. Could the gr2 - dae conversion be the problem somehow?
Different file types don't seem to make much difference either :/
as an aside, I doubt that its your mesh that's causing the issue, your uvmaps appear to be coming in just fine and there's not much else that can really effect the textures/shader on the mesh side of things. Its going to be something with the shader/a setting in blender. My best advice for you is to start a fresh blend file in 4.1 and start again, reimporting everything from scratch (don't append things from the old file, work just with new versions). If you're still having this issue let me know, you might need to send me your blend file so I can have a hands on look through it.
(note to future readers: this may change in later version of the toolbox, always check the provided guide just to make sure)
Additionally, I would recommend updating blender to the latest version if you can as this shader was built in blender version 4.0 and may not work as best on older versions. it should be fine for the most part tho.
If anyone else is like me and looking for how in the world the freckles are applied, you're looking for two additional textures:
Face Freckles:
Green Channel of SKIN_Shared_Shading_MSKA.DDS
Body Freckles
Red Channel of SKIN_Shared_Shading_MSK.DDS
Both of these maps are found in *\UnpackedData\Textures\Generated\Public\Shared\Assets\Characters\_Models\_SharedAssets\SHARED_Skin\Resources.
You can plug these into the Atlas Hub shader like tattoos or makeup.
EDIT: no matter its fixed sry
did i skip over something?
I have one question though, what shader group would horns use or is that not a thing as of now?
would you (or anyone) happen to have the basic settings for Astarion's skin? sorry to ask, i have the textures and everything i've just been struggling with tweaking the color >.<
thank you again x
As for Astarion's skin, I also had a bit of trouble tracking it down, the one used in the mod's images is actually just me eyeballing it cause I was lazy lol. To find them, you'll have to go digging around in the game's files.
Very new to this stuff so it was a huge pain, but I was happy with the result, and this was back in September. Also worked just plugging in different textures for another character. But one thing I struggled with then, and now, is pulling good specular and gloss maps out. I'm looking at your work, and I'm wondering if you have any tips for how I might bake out a good spec and gloss in blender. I'm not seeing results in blender that make me think that data is being exposed. The roughness seems uniform. Maybe Larians renderer is responsible for calculating these at runtime and the data isn't in the texture maps? Anyway, your work definitely makes for an infinitely easier and more easily tweakable result, thank you for sharing it with the community!
As for spec/gloss? Yeah, those are something of a mystery right now, I've found references to specular data while poking around in the game's files but without the dev tools and with my limited knowledge base, I can't get a lot of usable information out of them. A bunch of us in a discord I'm in were chatting once about these map's we had found called SMSK maps that we think might have something to do with specularity (purely because of the name) but even though we have a bunch of these maps, we couldn't find many references to them in the game's files so we're probably not correct about that.
And since we're sharing knowledge, I thought'd I'd show you the substance painter setup I have that is based off my setup in blender. the roughness is off, but the colours are pretty good I think
and ye I saw SKIN_Shared_Shading_MSK too, though the missing layer wouldn't be AO as that map is stored inside CLEA maps. But going from the other map (the one for heads) I think it's more likely that it would have been a subsurface scattering map. I say would, because I have found code in the materials about subsurface scattering that leads me to believe that it's generated procedurally in that case.
Lastly, if you are looking for a new modding discord to chat with people about this stuff I can recommend the one I'm pretty active in. it's not specifically modding related, but has a strong modding community. (and its also got decent moderation, unlike the official larian discord)