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Adding a New Appearance and MDL Renaming


Jeff

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I was working on a head mod, and I had noticed that the model was using the default texture instead of my custom texture. So I opened up the texture in MDLops, and opened the renamer and renamed all the entries with the default texture with my textures name.

 

So when I tested it out in-game, the model was screwed up. It had 2 random objects coming out of the side of his head. But, this time it used my custom texture. Does anyone see something that I am doing wrong? If all else fails, I can rename my custom texture to the default texture's name, but I would prefer to learn what I am doing wrong.

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I might have forgotten this in my tut but I'm pretty sure I covered it. You want to avoid renaming entries in the mdl file itself as if you change the wrong entries in a head or body model or not enough entries it will foul up the model. The reason is there are some entries that cannot be changed that read the same as the ones that can be changed.

 

What you should do is as i said simply rename your models filename and don't change entries within it. Heads.2da does all of the work for you as you have to define the texture entry in the 2da file. This automatically forces the model to use the texture that you define.

 

A good example of this are the default twilek heads in game there is only a couple of twilek head models for each gender however there are closer to 6 textures available. Now to make this further usefull the game will call any one of those models with any one of those skins. The reason is the developers played nice with the twilek head models and basically did a vertex move for already built models instead of crafting a new model.

 

I hope this is a bit more informative for you but lets recap. Heads.2da handles the texture your head model will use. Renaming entries in a head model -- "BAD IDEA" -- too many chances for problems.

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I agree with Darkkender :thumbsup:

 

ALTHOUGH, I'm notorious for HEXediting the .mdl anywho :p

 

An example of BAD would be:

 

n_kreia say is a file name

 

If you do a search and replace in a hex editor it will do it and never warn you that in addition to say 4 "n_kreia" replacements it also did 2 "n_kreiahh" replacements.

 

In short though stick with the Heads.2da like DK said up there. The end result is what you want AND no messy crossed eyes from manually searching for any lil' missed pieces you will miss in editing the mdl with a hex editor ;)

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Here's what my heads.2da entry looks like.

 

2da2ei.jpg

 

My default head texture is DMHC02, just like in the 2da entry. But it uses the models default texture still, PMHC05. I can't find anything wrong with my heads.2da entry. Do you guys see something that I am not seeing?

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Originally posted by ChAiNz.2da

Have you checked your portraits.2da and appearance.2da files to make sure they're appropriately pointing to your custom skin?

They look correct to me. Appearance.2da points to line 192, which is the line you see in my above post. Portraits.2da points to line 671 in appearance.2da, also correct.

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No other "stray" mods lurking in any subfolder with those .2da names?

 

That sounds like what your problem is although I can't verify your settings as I am at work and imageshack is proxy blocked.

 

If you still can't figure it out I'll take a look at your files when I get home and try to help. ;)

 

:ben:

General Kenobi

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Hee hee hee well it wasn't the appearance.2da at all. ;)

 

It was the opening line of code for the mdl file that fixed it.

 

".....8.......cA..V@.DMHC02.e02.........." this was what it was

".....8.......cA..V@.DMHC02.............." that is what was wrong

 

the "e02" was a holdover in the original file from that name. by replacing it with "..." it voids out that section in the mdl file that was causing the error. ;)

 

Hope that helps a bit,

 

:ben:

General Kenobi

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I'll add a bit more. Most likely that was caused by a "search and replace" just avoid doing that from now on and you should be good to go :thumbsup:

 

I usually do a find for what I want to change then do a find again (F3 in HEXworkshop) to find the next entry I want to change. It will allow you to catch those "oddities" like the one above.

 

:ben:

General Kenobi

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Ahh. Yeah, when I was going through the 2da I didn't see anything change really, so I figured it was something with the mdl. Thank you very much for assisting, you have earned a spot in the mod credits :thumbsup:

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