*I wrote this years ago. It might not be accurate or the best way to do things anymore with the updates to frosty*
EDITING THE MESH:
- Open Frosty Editor and type 'type:skinnedmeshasset' into the Filter bar
- Find a mesh you want to edit and export as fbx. Choose the correct skeleton, change the scale to meters and check FlattenHeirarchy.
- In blender import the fbx and an obj of the species/gender you want to edit the armor to fit. I usually use both the nude body and the unequipped skyhold outfit along with the head mesh. Make sure to expand the geometry tab and check split by group when importing your objs. Hide all but the lod0s.
- Select the armature and scale it to roughly fit the body by pressing s. You can also scale across one axis by pressing S and then X, Y or Z.
- You can move the mesh and armature by pressing G and then X, Y, or Z.
- Once it's largely in place select the skeleton or click armature in the outliner tab
- Where it says object mode in the left hand corner, click and change to pose mode
- Select the RightArm bone and press R to rotate and line up the arms with the body. In the menu that pops up copy the number in the angle box (not the negative sign if it is there) then rotate the LeftArm bone and paste the number. If there wasn't a negative sign for the right bone, add it to the number you paste for the left bone. You can also just select the X symmetry option in the upper right hand corner next to 'Pose Options'. This doesn't always work the way you want it with certain bones or fbx files, so make sure it's actually mirroring and not moving both bones to the left instead of one to the left and the other to the right.
- Repeat with the hand, finger, upper leg (etc.) bones. You can also select a bone and scale/move with the same shortcuts mentioned before. Sometimes this can be easier than doing it in edit mode.
- Once you have everything posed go into edit or sculpt to make smaller/more precise changes like making the torso shorter or flattening the chest.
- Once you're done editing the mesh, go into edit mode, select any seams then Mesh>Clean up>Merge by distance. You can always just select the whole mesh to be quicker but this can make dark spots in parts of your mesh that don't even have seams.
- If your mesh already has dark spots, in edit mode with face select choose the dark spots and the surrounding area then Mesh>Normals>Reset Vectors. If that doesn't work, try Smooth Vectors. Turn it up to 1 if you need to and repeat as much as necessary.
- If the mesh you're going to replace is the same as the one you're editing, skip this step. Otherwise, click your edited meshes then alt+p and Clear and Keep Transformation. In the properties tab on the right hand side find the wrench, and apply the armature modifier for all of your edited meshes by hitting ctrl+a. Delete the other lods and the skeleton. Import the fbx of the mesh you intend to replace, copy the lod0 names, delete them, then paste and replace the names of your edited meshes. Select your edited meshes then the skeleton of the newly imported fbx, hit ctrl+p and Armature deform. This should put your meshes under the new skeleton.
- Delete the body and head you were using as a reference
- Export as fbx. Change scale to 0.01 and uncheck add leaf bones
If the armor you are editing has 2 meshes and one of them is skin, make sure the mesh you're importing over also has 2 sub meshes with one being
for skin.
Example: Editing Hawke's mage armor to fit a qunari then importing over the prologue armor- in blender change the name of the skin part of Hawke's armor to the name of the bare hand of the prologue armor. Change the name of the armor to the name from the prologue coat. Make sure your fbx has as many lods as the prologue armor fbx.
From here you can import into Frosty over (almost) any mesh you want. But if you want to replace a mesh that's, for example, only available to humans/doesn't have a qunari version, or you want to replace the unequipped skyhold outfit without changing those meshes as to not mess up other armors, then you need to edit appearance hashes.
EDITING APPEARANCE HASHES:
- In Frosty expand DA3>Equipment>Appearances>Armors
- Find the ItemPartAppearance file of any armor you want. This is the armor you will have to mesh import over
- In the file find the right DelayLoadBundleHash. For multiplayer characters it will be under DefaultRuntimeRef. For Iron Bull's helmet which only has an appearance for him, it would be #7 under Overridesruntime>AppearanceRuntimeRef. Copy the number.
- Open the unequipped_arms/chest/legs files under DA3>Equipment>Appearances>Armors. Or open any armor you want to replace
- In one of the unequipped files find the DelayLoadBundleHash for the species/gender you want the armor to show up for. Replace the number with the one you copied.
- If you want to add more meshes, like Isabela's hat, do the same with one of the last two unequipped files. Repeat with the last file if you want to add another mesh.
- If you don't want to import any other meshes find the DelayLoadBundleHash in the other unequipped files and replace the number with 0. This will make it so those parts don't show up. (This is only for changing the unequipped outfit or inquisitor armors that use a chest/legs/arms slot. If you're replacing an armor that's one piece, like the dalish armors, you only have to edit that ItemPartAppearance file.)
Characters Appearance Hashes:
Companions
- 0 Blackwall
- 1 Cassandra
- 2 Cole
- 3 Dorian
- 4 Vivienne
- 5 Sera
- 6 Solas
- 7 The Iron Bull
- 8 Varric
- 12 - Rogue
- 17 - Warrior
- 15 - Rogue
- 21 - Warrior
- 11 - Rogue
- 18 - Warrior
- 25 - Mage
- 14 - Rogue
- 22 - Warrior
- 28 - Mage
- 9 - Rogue
- 19 - Warrior
- 26 - Mage
- 10 - Rogue
- 23 - Warrior
- 29 - Mage
- 13 - Rogue
- 20 - Warrior
- 27 - Mage
- 16 - Rogue
- 24 - Warrior
- 30 - Mage
Example: So if you want to make Isabela's Longcoat and hat for human men, have it replace Isabela's armor and show up as the Skyhold outfit: Mesh edit the longcoat and hat to fit, in weight paint mode delete the breast bones, rename the meshes to match the original Isabela fbx (since in this example the mesh being edited is the same one being imported over, the mesh names shouldn't have to be renamed and the lod numbers should match up already), import over bdy_hf_isabela01_model_mesh and hat_hf_isabela01_model_mesh, choose the hm skeleton, copy the DelayLoadBundleHash from part_app_mp2_armor_mp_isabela_01/01a/01b/01c (All Isabela's longcoat with a/b/c being different colors), paste over #10 #23 #29 in part_app_unequipped_chest, copy the hash from part_app_mp2_helmet_mp_isabela_01, paste over #10 #23 #29 in part_app_unequipped_arms, replace #10 #23 #29 in part_app_unequipped_legs with 0
QUESTIONS/TROUBLESHOOTING
Part of the mesh is stretched out into the ground
- Too many bones assigned to one sub object. If you look at a vanilla mesh it'll most likely be split up into multiple sub objects because of this. Remove unnecessary bones/bone weights or split your mesh into multiple parts. Make sure you import over a mesh that has the same amount of parts if you do split it up.
Character's shadow is stretched out
- Same as above. Not sure how to fix this one, as it happens even when you export a mesh and reimport it unedited.
Texture is glitched/broken up into a bunch of triangles
- Triangulate faces, even if they're already triangles
Error after trying to import into Frosty
- Check your entire mesh is weighted/attached to a skeleton/the number of lods in your fbx matches that of the mesh you're importing over/you don't have breast bones or the extra male dwarf spine bone when choosing a male skeleton on import
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