First off, thank you Budong for sharing this! It is invaluable.
Now, I am trying to figure out how to change beard mesh to fit a custom head mesh for Geralt, but all attempts have so far failed. As soon as I export the FBX, shader detail is lost on the beard. Can't figure it out. If you or anyone have any advice, please let me know!
Hey maybe someone can help me here. I sculpted face and ingame everything works fine as long as geralt doesnt have a beard or HoS mark, when he does the shading breaks and entire head goes dark(like in cave or smth). Im new at modding so ill just write what i did
--> i scuplted the head exported it to fbx following the steps of the mod author, then in Modded/.../model folder I put fbx h_00_mg__geralt + rest of the heads and one xml file named h_00_mg__geralt and cooked it using mod kitchen.
Ill be glad if someone knows how to fix it
EDIT: I fixed it, before I was using vanilla xml for heads and now I used xml from this mods and everything works.
Hi, any ideas why the head could get black, specially the neck and chin parts? https://i79.fastpic.ru/big/2018/1019/77/09e51fd02f230dcb32eab87a0c297a77.jpg Redid bunch of times in blender, used quick modding tool, since for some reason my modkit doesn't even launch. Tried with & without xml materials in download section.
That almost looks like a NormalMap problem... If you've made a custom normal map in Blender, you have to do a little tweaking to it afterwards, as the green channel is backwards... Try this: open your normal map texture in GIMP, go Colours>Components>Decompose and pick RGB+DecomposeToLayers. A new image with three layers named red/green/blue will appear in a second tab... select the "green" layer and invert it (Colours>ValueInvert), then go Colours>Components>Recompose (which will reassemble the the separated colour channels from the second tab back into your original texture which is now in the first tab.) Export the updated image from the first tab as your texture, and test in-game. Hope this helps.... :)
Thank you very much, will definitely try this : ) edit: did the trick and textures are not bugged, but only if I use them alone, without the .fbx sculpt head converted to w2mesh. The preview of .fbx also doesn't work, just empty screen, unlike other fbx files I tried. Maybe I did something wrong while exporting, but strange since I did it a bunch of times already, heavily relying on the readme you made, step by step. Investigating further where did I mess, If I find out, I will write here for anyone who could get in same situation.
Hello again, tried to export to fbx your unmodified version, and same it doesn't appear, looks like it's really an export issue. I can't find "item: arm+mesh", no item menu in my blender export tab, maybe bcz of that.
Hello again, found a semi solution for my problem, if I use a mod that deletes characters lightning (in cut scenes also) - the head isn't dark and everything ok until I enter interior, there it again becomes almost black. As a novice user of blender, could there be something I have to do with lightning while exporting your edited head?
The only two things I've encountered that cause shading/shadow errors like that are bad normal maps and bad mesh normals... you could try re-calculating your mesh normals to see if that might help, but I've never seen auto-smooth mess up normals that badly, so it's probably not that... :)
Tip for ModKit : it's a command-line application, so it doesn't "launch"... there's no GUI... you open a command prompt and type MS-DOS/Bash style commands to it... (see the "Modkit Batch Files" I added to the files page... each line in those is a command for ModKit to run... put all of them together and it's all the steps to import/cook/pack a mod.)
Question: If I replace only the files you've mentioned with the modified mesh, will it work with both DLCs (not just HoS)? Or would I need to find and replace any additional files? Also, which program did you use to import the .fbx back into .w2mesh?
Yup, just replace all the heads listed in the file description, and you're good to go with the vanilla game and all DLCs... And just so you know, the mesh is identical in all of them, they only differ by material (shaved/scruffy, tattooed/not, or HoS-branded/not.)
You import them back into w2mesh format using modkit. :) Hint: When I did this, I first extracted/converted all the heads I wanted to change with modkit so I had their meshes and original materials (saved as .fbx for geometry and .xml for materials), then I exported the new head I created in Blender multiple times overwriting the original .fbx files, and finally converted the new .fbx files back to .w2mesh via modkit (which joins up the geometry in the .fbx with the material in the .xml to create the .w2mesh again.)
Hmmm... I think I might add another archive to the files section with all of the materials for the various heads ready-to-use... :) That'll save everyone a few steps. Examples of the modkit commands for importing them back might be handy too... ;D
This is a nice resource, especially since I wanted to start making different head meshes for characters! Would you ever consider uploading Yennefer and Ciri?
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Now, I am trying to figure out how to change beard mesh to fit a custom head mesh for Geralt, but all attempts have so far failed. As soon as I export the FBX, shader detail is lost on the beard. Can't figure it out.
If you or anyone have any advice, please let me know!
when he does the shading breaks and entire head goes dark(like in cave or smth). Im new at modding so ill just write what i did
--> i scuplted the head exported it to fbx following the steps of the mod author, then in Modded/.../model folder I put fbx h_00_mg__geralt + rest of the heads and one xml file named h_00_mg__geralt and cooked it using mod kitchen.
Ill be glad if someone knows how to fix it
EDIT:
I fixed it, before I was using vanilla xml for heads and now I used xml from this mods and everything works.
That almost looks like a NormalMap problem... If you've made a custom normal map in Blender, you have to do a little tweaking to it afterwards, as the green channel is backwards... Try this: open your normal map texture in GIMP, go Colours>Components>Decompose and pick RGB+DecomposeToLayers. A new image with three layers named red/green/blue will appear in a second tab... select the "green" layer and invert it (Colours>ValueInvert), then go Colours>Components>Recompose (which will reassemble the the separated colour channels from the second tab back into your original texture which is now in the first tab.) Export the updated image from the first tab as your texture, and test in-game. Hope this helps.... :)
edit: did the trick and textures are not bugged, but only if I use them alone, without the .fbx sculpt head converted to w2mesh. The preview of .fbx also doesn't work, just empty screen, unlike other fbx files I tried. Maybe I did something wrong while exporting, but strange since I did it a bunch of times already, heavily relying on the readme you made, step by step. Investigating further where did I mess, If I find out, I will write here for anyone who could get in same situation.
Tip for ModKit : it's a command-line application, so it doesn't "launch"... there's no GUI... you open a command prompt and type MS-DOS/Bash style commands to it... (see the "Modkit Batch Files" I added to the files page... each line in those is a command for ModKit to run... put all of them together and it's all the steps to import/cook/pack a mod.)
Also, which program did you use to import the .fbx back into .w2mesh?
You import them back into w2mesh format using modkit. :) Hint: When I did this, I first extracted/converted all the heads I wanted to change with modkit so I had their meshes and original materials (saved as .fbx for geometry and .xml for materials), then I exported the new head I created in Blender multiple times overwriting the original .fbx files, and finally converted the new .fbx files back to .w2mesh via modkit (which joins up the geometry in the .fbx with the material in the .xml to create the .w2mesh again.)
Hmmm... I think I might add another archive to the files section with all of the materials for the various heads ready-to-use... :) That'll save everyone a few steps. Examples of the modkit commands for importing them back might be handy too... ;D
Can we also use head models from other games or is there a preset for their heads?
I'm thinking of:
-Solid Snake, MGS 3 or 5
-Nathan Drake
-PES or Fifa heads
-Dante and Virgil from DMC
-Chris Redfield
-Joel from The Last of Us
and many more