Understanding How to Mod Hair Model

[IAmTheClayman]

So I'm still *very* new at modding ME:A (and modding in general.) First mod I worked on was a tintable version of the Angaran armor set, but that was fairly simple overall since it just meant editing the diffuse and tint map texture files.

 

Now I'm interested in swapping out hair "models" to change the available hairstyles in game. I've been digging through 2 different areas in FrostyEditor:

1. game\characters\human\customization\hair -- this seems to contain a texture file responsible for the gradient that goes from hair root to tip
2. game\characters\human\hmf\0_hair -- there's a ton of subfolders here, but I figure this is where the models are located for the female hairstyles

My problem is that there's almost 2 dozen subfolders in 0_hair with SkinnedMeshAssets that have very similar names but pretty drastically different models (for example, hmf_hair_a_mariah_unique_mesh.fbx does not look at all like hmf_hair_n_mariah_unique_mesh.fbx), and as a result I'm unsure which models to alter. As a side note, unlike with texture assets FrostyEditor doesn't give you the option to import 3d models as far as I can tell

 

Does anyone know where else I should be looking in the hierarchy? Has anyone tried working on a mod like this before?

Edited July 14, 2017 by IAmTheClayman

[Ehamloptiran]

One difficulty u'll face with hair is each hair model is morphed to a particular head, thats why u see different instances with different names in them, the name represents the head it is morphed to, there are some mods here on nexus that unlock (overwrite other hair models) npc hair for the player, but they have varying degrees of issues, such as freezing the CC. Even when mesh importing does become available in v1.0.3 of the tools, editing hair models may still be out of the question due to the morph data.

[IAmTheClayman]

One difficulty u'll face with hair is each hair model is morphed to a particular head, thats why u see different instances with different names in them, the name represents the head it is morphed to, there are some mods here on nexus that unlock (overwrite other hair models) npc hair for the player, but they have varying degrees of issues, such as freezing the CC. Even when mesh importing does become available in v1.0.3 of the tools, editing hair models may still be out of the question due to the morph data.

 

I see, thanks for clearing that up.

 

Just out of curiosity, if the hair model is being morphed to the base head model then why isn't there only 1 hair model per style? I guess this is more of a game dev question, but if there are (for the sake of argument) 20 different base heads wouldn't it make sense to have 1 hair model and 20 morph files instead of 20 pre-morphed hair models?

 

As a sidenote, how would you accomplish the hairstyle combinations I've seen in some mods? Like I remember coming across a hair mod which added Cora's asymmetrical 'do to one of the female ponytails

[Ehamloptiran]

some hairs will work with some heads, others will cause massive clipping, so uve seen coras hair working on a head that it works with. The reason for all the different hair models and not morphs is probably coz the data is cooked, they most likely started with one hair model and 20 morphs, but when the game cooked, it made 20 hair models (for easier loading, and so it doesn't have to do runtime morphing). but thats just a guess really.

[IAmTheClayman]

some hairs will work with some heads, others will cause massive clipping, so uve seen coras hair working on a head that it works with. The reason for all the different hair models and not morphs is probably coz the data is cooked, they most likely started with one hair model and 20 morphs, but when the game cooked, it made 20 hair models (for easier loading, and so it doesn't have to do runtime morphing). but thats just a guess really.

 

That makes a lot of sense, didn't consider that the use of multiple models was an engine-side decision and not a developer decision. Thanks!