Tier 7 Tint Override

[Modslave]

Could someone make a new DA:O armor tier tints mod which changes the Dragonbone material tint from the ugly red as rust color that it is?

 

I've always found it really annoying, especially using Winter Forge (2.2 version, not the 4.2 version which is stupidly over-complex and I'd really rather not have to search all over the world to make ONE weapon look like I want it to look using the material I want to use..thanks) when I can start using Tier 7 gear, I like to make fairly balanced sets of Heavy Dragonbone armor because I tend to run DW Warriors and Heavy is better on fatigue than massive, and I like to add some helpful stats with the WF 2.2 mod that allows me to play the game a bit more to my taste (no god items really, just some focus on +stamina and in combat stamina regen so I can use my abilities more).

 

Problem is the Dragonbone tint is freaking AWFUL. Silverite looks great, Even Verindium and Steel and what not are tolerable for their material class but for The Tier 7 tint to look that awful...I just can't stand it.

 

I've been attempting to work out how to change this myself but the resource base for DA:O is pretty complex and it would take me a long time to even work out where these tint files are, when theres probably someone out there that could make the tier 7 tint at least like...I dunno, gunmetal blue, gold...anything but that stupid rust red that saps all the detail out of everything its applied to would be really...really awesome.

[Modslave]

Or....if someones kind enough you could point me at the appropriate resources in the core resources and I'll give this a go myself I'm hardly Photoshop incompetent as I do texture art as part of my real life work just DA's resource structure is foreign territory for me,

 

Even a vague hint of where to start looking would be helpful, I've checked some of the modding tutorials in the builders section and not found anything I'd say fits the information I'm looking for.

[Modslave]

I'll just keep talking to myself here.

 

Anyways I went through and beat myself to death on the toolset and started to get an idea of how complex this request is. Its not terribly complex the issue mostly lies with creating the new tint file then applying it to every object using stock resource Dragonbone material then basically creating a Dragonbone override mod....which is a substantial investment of time.

 

I'm also a little stuck on the GDA creation for the tint_override.GDA as it did accept my tint_override name, but the matproject name used as the saved tint, that name didn't actually change the tints of the armor models. So I ran aground there as to what the issue was.

 

Anyways making steps myself here to try to take care of this distaste I have for the Dragonbone tints in use but, largely, still running aground on complexities and confusions in regards to the toolset. This really isn't as straight forward a process as it could be.

[Modslave]

On another tack I tried editing the tints.erf entry for t3_arm_drb and changing the vectors there and saving the file, it didn't appear to mean much to the core resources though so a standard overall edit of the tints.erf doesn't seem to be the way to go either.

 

Maybe I need to export the changed tints.erf and chuck it in the override directory? I figured changing the diff/spec vectors for the core resource would work and be the "simple" way around this but that doesn't seem to be the case either.

 

Oh and maybe this post needs to be moved to Builders Help at this point since its not generating much in regards to response from people who could do it.

[nezroy]

On another tack I tried editing the tints.erf entry for t3_arm_drb and changing the vectors there and saving the file, it didn't appear to mean much to the core resources though so a standard overall edit of the tints.erf doesn't seem to be the way to go either.

 

Maybe I need to export the changed tints.erf and chuck it in the override directory? I figured changing the diff/spec vectors for the core resource would work and be the "simple" way around this but that doesn't seem to be the case either.

 

Oh and maybe this post needs to be moved to Builders Help at this point since its not generating much in regards to response from people who could do it.

 

Changing the t3_arm_drb.tnt file and putting your version in the <my docs DA>/packages/core/override directory should be the correct way to change that across the board. Note that there are other tint files for the different weapon materials, etc., so possibly what you are looking at is not using the tint you think it is. You can see exactly which tint file is being used for each material by opening up "materialtypes.gda" (or tools/source/2da/rules/materialtypes.xls if you have the toolset).

 

Also be sure you are modifying the specular colors too when you update the tint. Though it seems counter-intuitive at first, the color associated with the specular can have way more impact on the in-game color than the diffuse color, particularly for shiny objects.

 

Finally, just to make sure you're clear on what the tint is doing, the vector for each of the 6 fields (TINT_MASK_DIFFUSE_R/G/B and SPECULAR counterparts) are each complete RGBA color definitions. For instance the field TINT_MASK_DIFFUSE_R is NOT just setting the red component of a single color to be applied. It is setting a complete RGBA color to apply to any areas of the armor that have been masked out by the red channel of that item's tint map. So to truly understand which part of the armor will change when you change the color of TINT_MASK_DIFFUSE_R, you'd have to go look at the tint map for that specific armor and compare the area masked out by the red channel of the tint map to the original diffuse map to see which areas of the diffuse map will be altered. So a single tint can actually cause 3 different regions of the armor to have 3 different color (and specular) changes.

 

Hopefully that makes sense.

 

Of course it's not strictly necessary to look at the tint map for each item, you can just start changing things and see what changes. Also in general, the R channel generally masks out the primary item material (the main metal/leather/whatever), the G channel generally masks out the secondary/trim items, and the B channel is frequently not used or is used for like buttons and stuff like that.

 

I just tried it out to make sure I wasn't steering you wrong. I updated the t3_arm_drb.tnt to these values:

 

TINT_MASK_DIFFUSE_R: 0, 0.5, 0, 1

TINT_MASK_DIFFUSE_G: 0, 0, 0.5, 1

TINT_MASK_DIFFUSE_B: 0, 0.5, 0.5, 1

TINT_MASK_SPECULAR_R: 0, 0.5, 0, 1

TINT_MASK_SPECULAR_G: 0, 0, 0.5, 1

TINT_MASK_SPECULAR_B: 0, 0.5, 0.5, 1

 

And left the other values unchanged. I saved that to my <my docs>/BioWare/Dragon Age/packages/core/override directory, and got this chromatic result:

 

http://static.nezroy.com/images/dragon_tint.jpg