Mass Effect 3 TPF/DDS tool

[AdrianGadgetman]

Hello to Nexus people. Late last year my Gaming PC had broken down. Not a major breaktown. In my local Town was a very good IT repair shop and the Gaming PC is running beautifully again with some upgrades. Of course I needed to reload the PC games which thankfully I put on an external Drive. Mass Effect 1 and two went back on the Gaming PC no problems at all. I waited until January this year to have a playthrough with ME3. I needed to reload all the game MODS and the TPF Textures. ME3 opened with no problems and I followed the advice on the EGM Mod page which included, Our recommended install order is:

1. SP Controller Mod (if using a controller)
   EGM + Compatibility pack if needed
   Other story mods (Including ME3Recalibrated, Backoff, Thanemod or Citadel Epilogue Mod)
   EGM Add-ons
   Textures (Must use ME3Explorer 3.0 or later)
   Build GUI Compatibility (if using SP controller mod using Mod Manager)
   Edit EGM Settings file
   Run new playthrough

I did not put every mod or texture straigh away on ME3 . I would make sure ME3 was running well with EGM and a few other textures. Yep all fine so far. Since I was right at the beginning of ME 3 I started changing some of the textures such as the M 96Mattock rifle, TPF mods I had saved. Changing the assault rifle from its original game colour to a all over black texture. Then changing Liara's breathing mask which I do not like, to a helmet for when she is on missions. And that is when problems started. It seems to be hit and miss with TPF mods. Some work like better looking Normany crew uniform. I have read through all the information on the ME3Explorer instructions and the FAQ and help tips. As of the present day here there are only a few texture mods will not show up in the game. 1. The black texture TPF for the M 96 . 2.Changing Liara's breathing mask to a helmet . 3. Changing the M96 rifle with a TPF to black and red colour finish. The picture on here shows the most common problem with TPF. I am not Mod expert. I try to follow each instruction to the letter. Could it be that older TPF mods do not work on the lates version of ME3 Explorer?

My PC gaming machine is running Windows 10 with no problems running ME3.

 

 

I just tried to attach a photo image of the problem with say Liara's changing from breathing mask to Helmet. It would not load saying the file is too big.

So just did a cut and paste and hope you can see all of it.

 

There you have it. I hope I have made sense?? I would appreciate any help. Thank you.

Edited March 4, 2017 by AdrianGadgetman

[rubydorje]

one of the mods for Ashley.... the 'battlepack' or something like that is a DLC and has helmet for Liara...

[AdrianGadgetman]

OK, cut and paste did not work to show you what is going wrong on the TPF mod.

[rubydorje]

Hey Adrian,

Could You describe what is going on?

TPF tools is simple apart from when it cannot find the textures in the tree...

Thnx.

[AdrianGadgetman]

Hi rubydorje,

 

OK, I will have a go at describing one of the TPF mod problem. I open ME3Explorer v3. Click on TPF tools then go up to top left for the Load button. Press that and search to the "Harrier Black Re texture v1.tpf." I click on that tpf and there are three texture images, and a something below that called texmod def. So far so good. I then check all, go down to "Analyse with Texplorer" and click on that. There are three boxes left and agains each one is " MASSEFFECT3.EXE_0x20D364C0.dds <...... NOT FOUND IN TREE." The 0x number is different on each line. I wll just see if I can load and image on here.

 

 

 

[AdrianGadgetman]

Oh, it worked. The image loaded. Good. Thank you for any advice about this problem.

[rubydorje]

Thanks Adrian, this is what I was thinking...

Those *_*0x*.dds numbers are the texture identifiers,

thus for you they do not match, TPF tool cannot

place them into the right place...

I don't know why, could be that other mods already made

changes, you could vanilla the game and install them afterwards...

The other solution is you find those # numbers in the tree with Texplorer and paste them into the # fileds in TPF tool before analysing...

 

This way might be better but requires more effort:

1: extract the 3 (diff, norm, spec) texture with TPF tool,

2: resave them in Photoshop *see details below*

3: in Textplorer use 'Start TPF tool'

4: thus create a new *.tpf file with replacing the textures

5: Install them with TPF tool...

 

*Diff and Spec files you can be just resaved as DTX1 and DTX5 .dds files

* for the Norm you need to save it as .bmp and

with DirectX you need to resave.

*there is instruction online how to do it...

I'll try to find the links for you later on..

[AdrianGadgetman]

Hello rubydorje,

 

Thank you so much for your advice. I just spent a few days reading through all the ME3Explorer manual, FAQs and other tips and advice pages. I had one of those "light bulb" moments. In your comments above you wrote about vanilla the game. I had the same thought. What happened two nights ago the Game crashed completely. Since then I have returned ME3 to vanilla and adding textures and mods one or two at a time. This seems to work. The mods giving me trouble such as the Mattock being changed to all black finish, have now replaced the textures. Since I am still at the early stage of ME3, I am going to add textures and Mods slowly. Making sure each one takes to the game.