Scaling DLC Items

[P3G4SU5]

Hi,

 

I'm aiming to reduce the size of some of the weapons found in the DLC of 'Return to Ostegar' and 'Soldier's Keep'. Where are the directories containing the files for these items located (.mmh files specifically)? Are they in a compressed form and if so how would one go about unpacking them for modificaition. Also I'm still familiarising myself with the toolkit and so do not know all of its capabilities - does anyone know if it has any features for scaling items?

 

Thanks in advance.

[DarkeWolf]

Heyas P3G4SU5-

 

Ok, first I should mention that the toolset does not have the capability to manipulate model's scale. Only the tints and tones that are used on it, or set it to use a different skin/texture. So the toolset is not the tool that you would need for a project of actually resampling them. That you would need a 3d editing program to do a task such as that. (as far as modeling goes. its stats and stuff like that can be manipulated in toolset, but TS doesnt have the actual modeling functionality).

 

That said, I also want to mention that MOST of the DLC's use the original game content, but simply uses a different texture, and/or tint to the items. So depending on which item it is, you would more than likely need to modify the scale of the original item, from the original game, in order to get the results that you are looking for. I need to mention tho, that doing this... will affect ALL the weapons which use that model. (Bioware tends to recycle their stuff quite often, rather than release new items in their older DLC's)

 

Which items are you wanting to rescale? If you tell me which items you want to work on, I can give you the item's filename for the base model so that you can edit it. (assuming of course that I can find a picture of it to know which model it uses) (and hoping that it Does use a basemodel rather than a whole new one).

 

I wrote an article on how to scale most of the vanilla game items. It's written describing how to do weapons, but any of the models used in the game can be done via the method. Article is here- http://www.dragonagenexus.com/articles/article.php?id=41

This method uses a very easy to use program called DAtool. There's a link on where to get it in the article :wink:

 

And yes, the dlc content is packed up inside of database files. For SOME of the content you can use the toolset to extract it. You open up the toolset, open up the folder that the content's database files are in, and then drag and drop them into the toolset. It will then show a list of the files that are inside the database file (usually a .erf) and then you can right click on the one you want and choose extract.

I am not sure, however on how to go about extracting any of the models that are not in the vanilla game. Nor which folders those particular two DLC are in :(

[P3G4SU5]

Hey there :smile:

 

First of all I'd like to thank you for the article you wrote - it was actually your article which allowed me to resize all of the vanilla weapons with great ease just a few days ago (their proportions compared to the characters was bugging me). I successfully resized the vanilla weapons but when I installed the DLCs mentioned previously, the new weapons were unaffected by the rescaling of their matching vanilla models. This lead me to believe the designers had created new model files for the new weapons, which need to be resized as well.

 

I'm aiming to resize all weapons in the game with the exception of crossbows in order to make it more realistic, hopefully I can find the necessary files and they can be extracted through the Toolset.

 

If anyone knows the location of these files within the DLCs mentioned, please enlighten us :happy:

 

Something slightly off topic - is there a newer version of DAtool? I ask because when I run it I receive a message informing me it is an old version, yet when I check the link it provides (DAtool) there is no newer version.

[DarkeWolf]

Heyas again :)

First off, Thanks Much for taking a look at my tut! I'm really glad to hear that its been helping people :) And, you're very welcome! :)

 

Now...that said.... I GOTTA say that tracking down these files, and getting them to work in DAtool was a LEARNING EXPERIENCE! hahaha, they've got the necessary files spread out in several different folders, located in several different areas of the instal files! Hahaha just when I thought that I had them tracked down, DAtool just kept asking for MORE.

 

On the note about DAtool. Yeah, I get that message about it being obsolete/outdated too. Not really sure WHY... as no... as far as I know, there hasnt been an update to it. Maybe its just a quirk in the programming or something. Not sure, but since it doesnt really affect the functionality at all, I haven't really worried about it. *shrugs*

 

Ok, now.... I notice that you referenced "Soldier's Keep". I think that perhaps this is a translation/language thing where it might be named something else in other countries? (as thats not the first time that I've seen it referred to as that) As my DLC is named "Warden's Keep". So just for clarification, are you wanting to mod the StarFang swords? The ones made from the (meteor) star metal?

 

Alrighty, now on to it. There's some preparation that you're going to have to do before hand, before you can edit these.

-- 1) Locate where you installed DAtool to. You will need to extract these files TO THE FOLDER THAT DAtool IS IN or it won't read them.

--1a) Subfolders will not work. You have to have them in the SAME folder as datool.exe is in. So say that DAtool is in C:/mystuff/datool (just and example, I dont know where you downloaded and installed it to...) that is where you will need to extract your files.

--2) You will need the toolset. So if you havent installed that yet, you will need to download (DL) and install that. (And hopefully it doesnt give you the "cannot read database" error! )

 

-------------------------------

 

Now, first off, something that I forgot about before, is that the Return to Ostagar files are LOCKED by BioWare. We can't access those. So for the Maric's blade, I will give instructions on how to use a similar model and rename it to use the new model instead of the one that we cannot access.

 

Ok, here's where our file locations are for the .erf files that we will need to use. These contain the files in them that we will need to extract from the toolset in order to be able to mod them in DAtool.

Ostagar - \Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age\AddIns\dao_prc_cp_1

Keep - \Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age\AddIns\dao_prc_nrx_1

 

You're going to need to extract the following types of files.

weaponname.msh (modelmeshdata.erf)

weaponname.phy (modelmeshdata.erf)

weaponname.mmh (modelhierarchies.erf)

weaponname.mao (materialobjects.erf)

weaponnameX.dds (seperate folder) (there are actually 8 of these. 4 high resolution, and 4 medium res. Each of them are designated weaponname "d" "e" "n" and "s" .dds You dont have to worry about both sets, unless you are going to be doing some retexturing work. In which case you'd need to extract both sets of them. For this, I only extracted the high res sets. For remaking Maric's Blade, we are also going to have to extract both sets as we're going to have to rename both of them.

 

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1) Open up the toolset. Dont have it set to a fullsize window, as we're going to be dragging and dropping files into it.

2) Open up Computer/my computer and browse to your documents folder.

 

in documents, browse to \Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age\AddIns\dao_prc_nrx_1\core\data

 

modelhierarchies.erf is the file you want. Drag and Drop (DnD) that into the toolset. This has our .mmh and .phy files in it.

Locate the w_lsw_ls07a and the w_gsw_ls07a files in the list. Pick one, and right click on it. Choose export (or export without dependancies) and a window will open up asking where to save it to. Direct it to the folder that DAtool is in. Now, pick the other w_lsw_ls07a file and repeat. Close modelhierarchies.erf in toolset.

(theres an X button located next to where toolset reads PALLET WINDOW AREA that allows you to close your open file, without closing toolset. Click that to close the file.) We're closing them as we work, because if we drag and drop another file into it, it will try to ADD that erf file into the one we've got open, and we don't want that! Also because toolset eats RAM like a pig, and we're closing files to conserve system resources. We dont want TS crashing on us.

 

modelmeshdata.erf is the next file to take the plunge and be DnD'd to the toolset. Once that opens, find the w_lsw_ls07a and w_gsw_ls07a files listed there, and export them to the DAtool folder. Close the modelmeshdata.erf

 

materialobjects.erf now gets put into the toolset, so that we can get the w_lsw_ls07a.mao and w_gsw_ls07a.mao files. Export them to your DAtool folder, and close materialobjects.erf

 

now, we have to go to a different folder to get our texture files.

\Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age\AddIns\dao_prc_nrx_1\core\textures Theres two folders in here. One folder reads High and the other reads Medium. I'm gonna pull from the high, but I dont THINK that it really matters, as we aren't doing any texturing work.

texturepack.erf gets DnD to the toolset (TS). Extract the following files-

w_lsw_ls07a_0d.dds

w_lsw_ls07a_0e.dds

w_lsw_ls07a_0n.dds

w_lsw_ls07a_0s.dds

 

w_gsw_ls07a_0d.dds

w_gsw_ls07a_0e.dds

w_gsw_ls07a_0n.dds

w_gsw_ls07a_0s.dds

 

Because we're going to have to rename these files for the medium set, we're now going to go into the medium folder, drag n drop that into the toolset, and then extract those. HOWEVER... we dont want to over-write our High tex files, so we're going to make a new folder in our DATool Folder, and name it Medium. And THIS is the folder that we will extract these files to. While we're here, we're also going to make a folder named High. But at this time, we're not going to do anything with it, because DATool can't read files inside that folder.

 

WHEW !!! Ok, that parts DONE. Now DAtool can read the meshes, textures, tints and necessary files for us to mod the size of our weapons. Go ahead and do so with DATool. Save them. Now we create a new folder in our DATool directory. Name it what you want, and COPY and paste the modified files into our custom folder in the Override. Now, we are also now going to copy those .dds files into the High folder that we created and copied over. Now Drag and Drop our two texture folders into our custom folder as well.

-- We want to COPY these files into the folder, because we also still need a copy of them for Maric's blade.

 

 

-----------------------------------------

 

Now on to Maric's blade. Maric's blade is essentially the same model as the 1 handed Starfang Sword. Just with different color to the runes and different stats. The runes on Maric's are yellow, where the starfang are blue. This is actually NOT correct, as Maric's blade is SUPPOSED to have BLUE runes on the blade.

This is going to be VERY easy, since all we are going to do here, is rename those files.

 

So, lets go back to our original files that we extracted, that we Did NOT put into a subdirectory, and lets start renaming them. RIGHT click on the first one of the w_lsw_ls07a files, choose rename in the menu.

Change the 7 to an 8 and tap the enter key on our keyboard.

Repeat this with the next w_lsw_ls07a file. Keep repeating this until you've got ALL the w_lsw_ls07a files renamed to w_lsw_ls08a. INCLUDING all of our texture files. (Dont forget to do this in our original Medium texture folder too!)

Now put all those renamed files into our custom subdirectory.

 

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Now copy and paste your custom folder into documents/bioware/dragon age/packages/core/override folder and test it out in the game.

IF by some chance it doesnt work, close the game, move your custom folder to documents/bioware/dragon age/addins and That SHOULD work.

[P3G4SU5]

modelhierarchies.erf is the file you want. Drag and Drop (DnD) that into the toolset. This has our .mmh and .phy files in it.

Locate the w_lsw_ls08a files in the list. Pick one, and right click on it.

 

When I drag and drop the modelhierarchies.erf file into the Toolset nothing happens, I decided to search for w_lsw_ls08a_0.mmh anyway but only the vanilla models were visible in the under 'Models' in the Palette window. :dry: Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

 

 

BTW- I hope you dont mind if I link to this thread in my article. This is definitely good info, and since I really, really, really dont wanna type all this out again, I'll just put a link in there, to here ;)

 

By all means, link away :biggrin: The more help resources out there for modders, the better.

[DarkeWolf]

I remembered a hitch. I'll post back with the updated version of how to do this. Sorry about that. :(

Like a dummy I shouldnt have written the instructions out for Ostagar. I wrote them out for that since I figured it would be less typing since the Keep has more files in it, and didnt wanna type out the additional filenames repeatedly. This is what I get for getting lazy, I get forgetful. Ostagar files are locked by BioWare due to some issues that they had with the original (discontinued) release.

 

I'll retype it all out after I get back from school tomorrow night and put it back into the post.

Since you can't edit the Cailan Blade models, you can actually use the 1 handed starmetal sword model for it, by simply renaming the files from w_lsw_ls07a_0 to w_lsw_ls08a_0. The only difference in them is that the starmetal blade has a blue tint to the runes, where the Cailan blade's are yellow. The blue runes are ACTUALLY correct, as Maric's sword in the books had blue runes, not yellow ones. However, you will have to extract BOTH SETS of textures, (high and medium) and change the names on BOTH of them. Otherwise it will sit there and change colors at different distances.

 

I am really sorry about that tho. I'll get that corrected and throw that back in when I get back home from school tonight. I really apologize for that laziness on my part causing this delay.

 

But I DEFINITELY APPRECIATE you letting me link to your thread for the information! Thanks VERY much!

 

Toolset will not find any files for DLC content. The DLC's arent registered into the database files that TS reads. Similarly, you will not ever be able to locate any of the files contained in the .erf or other data files that TS/DA uses via windows explorer. Win Explorer doesnt have the codecs required to read the formats used. :-/

[nezroy]

The DLC erfs are encrypted, which is why the toolset won't open them. (Well, it WOULD open them if you can provide the correct password/encryption key - it'll even prompt you for that :). The only non-encrypted DLC erfs are in Awakening, AFAIK. We haven't had a toolset DB update since Origins, but at least you can work around that with Awakening content because all of the necessary assets can be extracted from the erfs.

 

EDIT: That said, it is possible to LIST the items in the encrypted ERFs, which is nice because you can usually deduce which resource names go with which DLC content for easy overrides.

[P3G4SU5]

Ok, here's where our file locations are for the .erf files that we will need to use. These contain the files in them that we will need to extract from the toolset in order to be able to mod them in DAtool.

Ostagar - \Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age\AddIns\dao_prc_cp_1

Keep - \Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age\AddIns\dao_prc_nrx_1

 

I still have the problem of being unable to open any .erf files from these locations. If i try to open them through File->Open File I get the dialogue box 'ERF File Options' which requires some ERF settings unknown to me. Isn't it as nezroy said earlier - these files are encrypted and can't be opened?

 

Incidentally I do not have DA: Awakening yet, nezroy mentioned that there was a workaround using those resources, do you have that addon DarkeWolf? Perhaps that is why I'm unable to open/view any of the w_lsw_ls07a files? My Models list (this is from searching through the Models category in the Palette window, visible when first opening the toolset) in the lsw folder only goes up to w_lsw_ls06a_0.

[DarkeWolf]

Hrm. Well.... this blows :sad:

 

I no longer have the DAA expansion. I uninstalled it shortly after my first playthrough of it.

I "BELIEVE" that the files for it (DAA) are located in your game folder (not your documents folder) /DragonAge/AddIns/dao_prc_ep_1

 

Now....there's a theory that if you copy that folder and drop it into your documents/bioware/dragonage/packages/core/override folder or maybe its the documents/bioware/dragonage/addins.... that you can view Some of the DAA content in the toolset. But as I said, I no longer have it, and dont want to go thru the crap that it caused on my system again, so won't reinstall it.... so I can't test the theory personally. :confused:

Then again, it might be something to do with the Awakening in the OC mod that the guy was using. Not sure.

 

the ls07a files are part of the dlc. That content will not be found in the functions of the TS unless you can add them into the database that the TS uses.

 

Well... on a hunch, I tried taking the gsw model that starfang uses resampled it, renamed it, and threw it into the override folder. Threw in a custom .dds file and .mao file renamed, and threw it into the same folder. then ran the runscript zz_starmetal_sword command and got the resampled blade. it didnt take the new skin. So that won't work either :sad: Unless maybe the mod I took the texture from didnt have enough of the files necessary, in it? It was the star blades complete mod. using the red textures.

[P3G4SU5]

Hmm. Troubling. :dry: I'm just puzzled why they decided to place encryption on the addons.

 

I've replaced Maric's sword with a smaller model using the DATool but this uses the standard texture for that sword model (the red steel variant specifically) and I haven't given it the appropiate yellow symbol texture yet.

 

Anyway I'll keep trying to find a way to access the addon .erf files, who knows? Maybe they'll be a breakthrough soon. One can hope.