Skin tint for that perfect tan XD

[amycus]

Hi,

Not too long ago someone asked how to make the skin on "exposed" parts of the armor the same colour as the face ( http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/423834-the-witcher-1-armors-in-da-origins/page__view__findpost__p__3596623 ). Unfortunately I have no idea how to do this, and now I myself need to know how to do it for some armors I'm doing.

 

After searching, both here on the nexus and on google, all I have found is this link on the subject, but that still doesn't tell me very much I'm afraid.

 

So far I'm thinking of "combining" the armor mesh and textures with those of a vanilla nude body, but is there really no simpler process than this? (not to mention that I havn't tested it yet in reality, so far it's just a theoretical method)

[amycus]

Ok, seems like I got the answer to my question thanks to tmptmp:

 

At the moment I have no idea how to change the textures so they allow skin tint

The "bare skin" areas are defined in the alpha channel of the _0t texture (this is texture which defines the tint areas for the armour in general) Paint these areas with ~90% white and they should receive proper colouring.

 

If you used the .mao file from existing DAO armour then it should already enable the tint functionality as they tend to use a shader which supports it ("ArmourSkinTint" if i remember right) You might need to create your own _0t texture for the models which lack it, though.

[OriginOfWaves]

u should also be aware that for the tint to work properly your armor needs to be named: armorm1 or glovesm1 or bootsm1, or clothesm1.

the m1 part of the name is very important. tint mask only work for armors that have the m1 in their name. cheers.

[sendo75]

When I was fixing the odd finger color issue on some gloves, I only needed to change the rendering semantic in the mao file to LerpedTint. This works and the finger color matches the skin tone set in the character creation. Good to know there are quite a number of solutions.

[amycus]

u should also be aware that for the tint to work properly your armor needs to be named: armorm1 or glovesm1 or bootsm1, or clothesm1.

the m1 part of the name is very important. tint mask only work for armors that have the m1 in their name. cheers.

 

interesting, I think that's the first I heard of this... So if I have an armor currently exported in the name "hm_arm_wica_0", it should instead be exported in the name "hm_armm1_wica_0"?

 

It does seem like there are several ways to do the skin tint. When I ported Bethanys robe from DA2 to DA:O there wasn't any tint map, but with the render semantic "armor w/skin tint" it still changed the skin tint appropiately in-game...

[ishmaeltheforsaken]

No, the MMH_NAME field in the MMH needs to be "armorm1" or what have you, not the filename or anything.

 

Also, there's currently no way I know of to tint all parts of a multi-part mesh. So if you're putting together custom models, put as much as possible into one object.

 

As for skin: the most important thing to note is that the .mao has to have a tintmap with the appropriate skin tint mask. If anyone has any specific questions, I can probably answer them, so I'll keep an eye out here :)

[sendo75]

I was curious about the various rendering semantic like LerpedTint, AlphaEmissiveNoTint, PunchthroughNoTint etc. I have a rough idea what some of them does, but do you or anyone have a complete list with the specific uses? Does this require a toolset update or does the existing toolset have these information? Edited September 19, 2011 by sendo75

[OriginOfWaves]

No, the MMH_NAME field in the MMH needs to be "armorm1" or what have you, not the filename or anything.

ye thanks for clearing it up Ish. I realized later that i could have explained myself better. also don't forget to sat the same name in the .msh file too.

 

Also, there's currently no way I know of to tint all parts of a multi-part mesh. So if you're putting together custom models, put as much as possible into one object.

well i actually found a little workaround for this during my modding. if u have a mesh consisted of two parts and u want both to have a working tint mask, name one part armom1, glovesm1 or bootsm1 (as u normally would) and the other part scalpm1. this way both parts will have a working tint at the expense of your chars scalp which will always be white. of course u will only notice the white scalp if your char is bold or has a buzz-cut, any other hairstyle will conceal the scalp. not the perfect solution but a solution nonetheless. not sure about the meshes with more than two parts, that's a little tricky. hope u understood some of my ramblings here. :thumbsup: cheers.

[ishmaeltheforsaken]

I was curious about the various rendering semantic like LerpedTint, AlphaEmissiveNoTint, PunchthroughNoTint etc. I have a rough idea what some of them does, but do you or anyone have a complete list with the specific uses? Does this require a toolset update or does the existing toolset have these information?

 

Those are described in the .mat files. You can read the Origins ones to get some idea, but DAII's are compiled... not much plain-text.

 

If you make a list of which ones you're curious about, I'll explain them later today. But right now I have to go class!

 

Also, scalpm1? Does it still mess with the *actual* scalp if the model isn't hair or helm? And does it still take the same tint as the rest of the armor (material tint or tint override)? That could be incredibly thrilling and helpful. I'll test it out later today (again, class!).

[LapisLazzuli]

Having made a few custom armors with skin showing I've used the following receipe with success:

 

- in the .mmh, the MMH_NAME has to be either armorm1 or glovesm1 or bootsm1, or clothesm1 like Ish said. The .msh chunk has to have the name too.

- in the .mao file, any of the SkinTint will work. (my personnal favorite being PunchthroughSkinTint). Every.mao that has the "NoTint" or "Tint" can be replaced by "SkinTint"

- You need to declare in the .mao a tint file and that file has to use an alpha channel with the skin portion you want to change. I typically use a 100% white mask.

 

Concerning file naming: In my experience, it doesn't matter what you name your files has long as they have the proper extension and that you use the _0d, _0n, _0t, and _0s for the texture files. I try to keep the Bioaware naming convention to make it easier to know what is what but it's not necessary.

 

Hope that helps

Lapis