[Tutorial] MHW Modding Tutorial Links

[UberGrainy]

Texture editing (sorta outdated):

[Tutorial] How to import/export BM, NM (BC1, BC5U, BC7) textures

 

Model editing:

 

[Tutorial] How to split a single mesh outfit into player equippable parts

[Tutorial] How to erase mesh parts, define material ID/LOD, change mesh address reference

[Tutorial] How to fix NPC models causing crashes

[Tutorial] Importing Custom Models, Model Editing

 

 

Material editing:

[Tutorial] How to edit eye color in mrl3 files

[Tutorial] How to make an NPC skin material support skin color customization

 

Physics:

[Tutorial] Notes on CTC physics/jiggle files

 

Character/NPC editing:

[Tutorial] Notes on editing npc_basic.nbsc, gen files

[Tutorial] How to make character presets/customize NPC appearance

 

Tutorials by others:

[Tutorial] itemData.itm

Ezekial's Model Editing Tutorial

 

 

Relevant Blender links:

Triangulating faces

topology - How do I convert a triangle mesh to a quads one?

Changing Viewport clipping parameters

 

modeling - Set origin to vertex in edit mode?

Is there a shortcut to repeat the last operation in Blender

 

texturing - Extracting a UV layout

 

rigging - Transferring rig weights from one mesh to another in blender 2.76

How to exact copy paint weights from one object to another

 

How to quickly remove all zero-weight vertex groups?

Weight paint against current pose?

 

Potentially useful Blender addons from Dead or Alive 5 modding:

Under dtr mnr's Tools (haven't checked the others, there may be more). Blender 2.7x folder.
https://www.loverslab.com/topic/54820-doa5lr-modding-tools-updated-april-24-2017/

Vertex group utilities, keep normals while editing, transfer vertex data such as weights between selections.

 

 

Theoretical stuff:

[Tutorial] Making a material shiny, wet, etc

[Tutorial] How to make boob physics (theoretically)

[backup] MOD format specifications from RE6

Edited December 31, 2018 by UberGrainy

[vaultcorn]

i lov u so much

[kornicska1975]

Monster hunter mod what used the offline playing game? I installed 8-10 nexus mod and not working the game offline version :(

[UberGrainy]

@kornicska1975

Sorry for the late reply. If you're sure you have the correct folder locations and it's still not working, try this (I heard it works):

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-files/controlled-folder-access-keeps-blocking-my-games/b7f8271d-2207-4fe9-9958-214f58c164e0

[UberGrainy]

I recently logged in and received a warning that some of the old images I uploaded were deleted for violating nudity regulations.

 

Some of the images contained details on how to mod MHW. I was worried the information may still be relevant and useful, so I asked an admin if they could restore the images and set them to adult-only. They kindly pasted me the text. I decided to re-share the info here in case anybody needs it.

 

198 = 2B Wip Update 04. I think this was the image of 2B without her skirt, to show that I got the entire lower body to deform properly.

140 = Restoring Normals. I believe this was a screenshot of attaching barefoot legs to a legs mesh.

80 = Skin-tight Outfit Test. I don't think this had any useful modding info.

 

#198

 

Fixed the thigh and knee rotation points. Thanks to CrazyT's import/export tool now exporting updated bone positions. Previously the thigh and knee rotated at a much lower position on the leg. Just moving the bones isn't enough, because the mesh moves along with the bones. To solve that, I posed the mesh to be the opposite direction of all the bone position changes. That way, when it's loaded in-game, it appears "correct".

Also, a new problem: the thighs move higher up now, so they clip through the skirt. I need to figure out how to fix that. Probably try to change the skirt weights, so that the ends move upwards more.

Edit: Forgot to say, I also adjusted the mesh around the neck area to hide the player neck. You can still see a little bit of it sticking out the back of the neck, but it's barely visible.

 

#140

This is regarding the problem where any mesh requiring recalculated normals results in any places with UV seams having visible seams in-game.
Because MHW can only store a UV per vert, so looping UV islands need multiple verts for its edges. And for some reason Blender makes these verts have different normals.
I've been trying to fix this for a while. Here's what it looked like before.

Earlier today, I came up with an idea while trying to sleep. It worked.
Edit: The remaining glitchy parts were because my comparison patch didn't have all the normals. Fixed now. Updated the instructions.

Here's what I did:

Isolating the leg mesh, making a patch to restore its normals:
Edit: Updated this part. If you don't squeeze the verts when making the recalculate export for patch comparison, it won't grab every byte of normal data.
1. Export swimsuit legs with the legs verts squished to 0,0,0 (to isolate the verts) and an original data version for comparison (may need to import and reexport the original, in case the exporter changes anything on export).
2. Compare these two to get the exact location of all the leg vert data. Because it's a whole object, all the verts will be in order with nothing else in-between. The leg mesh address is 51200 and length is A2C0.
3. Export swimsuit with the legs squeezed and recalculate normals, and without. The reason you squeeze it is to ensure the normal bytes are totally different on recalculate.
4. Open these two exports, copy paste the leg mesh data (From 0x00051200, A2C0) into new files on their own.
5. Use a patching program. Use the recalculated normals as "original" and original normals as "modified". This will make a patch that restores the original normals of the leg mesh data.

Combining the mesh:
1. In the original swimsuit model, rename the vertex groups (bone weight assignments) to match the target model (eg. Vaal legs).
2. Import the Vaal legs mod3, and then copy paste the swimsuit legs over from another Blender window. Alternatively, delete everything but the swimsuit legs and import Vaal Legs mod3 on top (untick clear scene).
3. Rename the swimsuits legs to replace one of the Vaal leg objects. I used the first one. Delete the Vaal leg object that you're replacing.
4. Test the model in-game to see if the weights are mangled or not. You may need to export with recalculated normals.
5. If the imported mesh looks like deflated twisted rubber in-game, you'll need to export the combine as FBX, open a fresh scene with the FBX, and import the Vaal mod3 on top of that. It fixes the mangled weight problem.
6. When you're sure the weights are working properly, export this edit without recalculating normals, and with (just in case).

Restoring the normals:
1. Open up the non-recalculated normals mod3, and look for the appended vert data. It should have the same position values, and they will all be i nthe same order. If you replaced the first object, it will be right at the start of vert data (0x00007280 for Vaal leg).
2. Copy paste this appended vert data (it will be A2C0 in length) into its own separate file.
3. Use the restore normals patch on this separate file. It will restore the normals.
4. Copy paste the restored normals vertex data back into the combined non-recalculated normals mod3.
5. If this doesn't work, do it with the recalculated normals version, and then use the non-recalculated version to copy paste the Vaal object data (so that it's normals aren't broken).


Edit: This does not work https://www.blend4web.com/en/community/article/131/
Same results as using Blender's default normal transfer stuff.

#80

Testing editing the skin texture to make skin-tight outfits. Looks okay. Just needs some cleaning up and a normal map to go with it.

 

Edited August 27, 2019 by UberGrainy

[UndeadCrow19]

Man, if there only was a tutorial on how to make non layered armor layered...

 

My favorite mod and I can't use it because it has some files (mlr3?) or whatever missing and I have no clue whatsoever how to make those and what I would need or why the author didn't include them...

 

Btw I love your mods, hope you come back for iceborne or something (it's probably needed with how much they're changing lol)

[UberGrainy]

The way to make non layered armor layered is to just use transmog or use cheat engine to change the layered armor value in memory.

Dunno what you mean by mod author didn't include files. Doesn't that mean the mod doesn't work at all?

 

Anyway I decided to post some of my recent tricks and solutions here. Because I'm too lazy to figure out how to do it on GitHub.

Some of these are basic knowledge, some of them are probably not well-known.

 

Modeling notes and tricks:
When merging model parts, don't need to join the verts (doing so requires splitting UV islands again).
You can just join the objects and then dupe the model, remove doubles in the dupe and then transfer normals onto the original.

When editing weights of objects with separated mesh parts, it's more difficult to paint consistent weights at the seams between meshes. To get around this, you can dupe the model, remove doubles, then edit weights on the dupe. You can then transfer weights back onto the original after. Use clean all groups 0.001, normalize all, and then limit total 7 (or 3 if your limit is 4).

You can change proportions by scaling bones. When you move/scale bones, you can reduce distortion by manually adjusting the weights.

 

When smoothing normals, Blender/Yavne's results aren't as good as Capcom's. I found the best way to mimic this is to dupe a model, quadrify it and then use subdivision smooth 3-4 times. Set normals to face. You can then use that version as a reference to transfer normals, and it will look smoother than Blender/Yavne default. Note that you can transfer weights via selection only, so only use this when you're dissatisfied with smoothness in some places.

 

Import/export bone numbers go up to 255. But bone IDs seem to go much higher. So if you want to slap on physics bones and are worried about interfering with existing bones, you can use numbers like 350+ to be safer. I haven't tested this thoroughly yet though.

Error/problems:
Weighting over 4 bones per vert requires you set the custom properties to support 8 bones.
If a model glitches out no matter what, make sure you limited the weights to 7. The 8th is a negative, so you can't use it.

If you edit the UVs and it says you need to separate islands, you can just dupe the model, split all edges on the original, and then copy the normals from the dupe. This means higher polycount though. WARNING: generally avoid doing this as much as possible.

If you delete parts and it says there's an orphaned UV/vert, you need to go to select, by type, select loose verts/geometry. This will select the loose verts for you to delete.

Visible seams between model parts. You need to pull up the original seamless model. In your edit, select the verts where the seam is, and then transfer normals from the seamless one. It will affect only the verts you have selected.

Some models need to be imported using split weight notation, or the weights implode horribly. Split notation splits parts of each bone weight into separate weighting groups. You can override this by then merging those groups under vertex group options in blender, but some data may be lost. You can safely delete the negative weighting groups.

 

When trying to replace hairstyles with another hairstyle, wearing helm causes implosion. This is because the helm uses an EVHL that expects a specific hairstyle in a specific folder. So it tries to adjust the bones of the hairstyle model to fit the helm. The ways around this are to either use hair bone IDs that won't be affected, to override the helm EVHL, or to hide the helm.

 

 

Edit: Fixed using the wrong word when describing fixing seams. Fixed a few other mistakes here and there. Thanks to Asterisk for going through them.

Edited February 14, 2020 by UberGrainy

[UndyingEternity]

Not sure you even reply here anymore, but...

 

I want to change the Hunting Horn music to an outside song, but have literally no knowledge of modding and the Audio Replacer tool on here is outdated and isn't even that helpful... I was hopeful you could answer my questions?

[phrynoxe]

+1

I would like to have this music on the Teostra HH :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9xqO9kKqyk

I am waiting to have a hope for my request

[lovender]

Hello, Modders!

I'm doing my very 1st project in MHW modding.

 

I have a question btw:

Tried to find tutorials on the internet, but haven't got one...

 

I use body replacer (Innerwear) from a modder here in Nexus .

Then I want to add Origin pauldrons from Origin female armor.

I modified it in Blender 2.79b, and merged it into one mesh.

But now, when I want to export the mod3 file, it looks I can't export it yet...there's an error message.

I know, because there are still 2 armatures (one from Origin body and one from the Innerwear body).

 

So, what should I do to export it and use it in game?

 

Thanks in advance.