How to recolour and retexture clothing- need more details

[ilsolas]

I have been trying to recolour some noble clothing for a few weeks now. Most tutorials I have found explain the file types and how to export which I understand perfectly and have done so on some test clothing. I'm using GIMP.

 

But the problem is the tutorials seem to focus all the detailed instructions on the diffuse map and skim over the other files. Also there are some diffuse files which are initially invisible until you remove the alpha channel but I can't figure out how to recolour them. I did find you are suppose to decompose them which I did but I can't figure how after recolouring how to make the file work again after merging all the layers.

 

If I want to retexture, what other files do I need to edit as well? If I just recolour the diffuse map, is that ok or do other files need editing?

 

I have been looking at about 5 tutorials but they are bare bones apart from one which is more focused on DA2. Could someone point me in the direction of a tutorial that has all the steps laid out or lend a hand?

 

Thanks!

Edited February 22, 2020 by iLoveStimpaks

[theskymoves]

I can't answer your question about normals and speculars, and I have no idea what those invisible-until-you-remove-the-alpha files are about (I'm a Photoshop user, and I've never encountered anything like what you describe), but I wonder.... are you talking about the base game noble clothing (like the florescent clown suits they wear at the Landmeet)?

 

Those aren't coloured via a texture. Well, not exactly.

 

All of the four variants of each noble clothing appearance uses the same texture. One of the four appearances actually uses the colouring from the texture in game. The other three versions use the exact same texture, overlaid with a tint, to give the appearance of a second, third, and fourth colouring.

 

So these diffuse textures for the nblc clothing variant:

 

are used for Eamon's clown suit and Anora's dress.

 

 

The same diffuse texture, with different tint overlays, is also used for this clothing

 

 

and this clothing

 

 

and this clothing

 

 

Now, here's where it gets really crazy. (Bioware crazy, to be exact.) Clothing tints are, IIRC, shared across the different variations, so, for example, one of the Dwarven noble clothing variants (such as the dress used by the player character in the City Elf origin) may use the exact same tints as the Day-Glo human noble clothing, so changing the tints rather than the textures affects multiple clothing items. (I'm very fuzzy at this point on the particulars of how the two sets of noble tints (four tints in each set) span the range of clothing variants... it's been years since I went down the recolour-the-noble-clothing rabbit hole and I deleted all my files after giving up on that dream.)

 

All of the clothing items in the game work pretty much the same way, though. If multiple items have the same basic appearance, but different colouration, they probably use the same texture with application of a tint being responsible for the different hues.

[ilsolas]

Ok that makes sense, I thought it was strange that some diffuse files were easy to edit while others were impossible, they must be the tint affected files. Only one modder mentioned removing (well hiding) the alpha to see the textures, it might be a gimp program thing.

 

I have to say it sounds much a lot more complicated than I thought! I have already thought about giving up on it, wasted too much time already.

 

It was that ugly orange outfit I wanted to fix...oh well

 

 

I might try playing around with tints in the toolset instead and fiddle around with the noble clothing I got working in game so at least one or two aren't totally hideous. Thanks for clearing things up for me!

[theskymoves]

Glad some of the info was useful, if not exactly helpful.Happy modding, and I hope you are more successful than I was. :smile:

[ovinnik]

Depending on how the mesh-side of those noble outfits is set up, you should be able to assign different diffuse textures to them by editing their MAOs. Notepad++ works just fine for that. I'm unable to check right now, however, so this is really just off the top of my head.

 

If you create somewhat extensive retextures with different fabric, visible skin and such, you'll likely need to make new normal and tint maps, or at least edit the existing ones. The specular map will probably look fine as is, unless it's the culprit behind the plastic-y vanilla look of those clothes.

 

I've no clue how to create normal maps for DAO from scratch. There's a nice resource around for Photoshop users, but sadly that won't work with GIMP...

 

Oh, and since I use GIMP as well, I can confirm that the invisible-without-disabled-alpha thing exists. Why? Who knows.

Edited February 26, 2020 by srnk

[theskymoves]

There's a single MAO for each clothing variation; all four colour variants of each appearance use the same MAO.

 

To use different MAO files for each colour variant would require different Item Variation IDs... I actually abandoned a mostly complete WiP overhaul of the noble clothing that did just that (assigned unique variations to each coloring, with unique 'hard coloured' textures rather than the tint-governed colourings) b/c it would have required 16 Item Variation IDs rather than the four used by the base game (if just the Human Noble clothing were affected; recolouring the Dwarven noble clothing would be another 8 variations).

 

Such a mod would create conflicts with too many other mods - because of the 255 limit on Item Variation IDs for an item class, there are almost no variations that have not already been used by one or another clothing mod - and thus would have been unreleasable in today's modding climate.

Edited February 26, 2020 by theskymoves

[ovinnik]

@theskymoves You know, more and more do I get the feeling that somewhere, you've probably stashed away a completely new version of the game, rebuilt from the ground up.

 

...After having re-read the OP and actually taken a look at the textures, I feel like discussing tints and MAOs is overcomplicating things. If we're talking about just retexturing the base diffuse (and other) maps, there should be no issue. It's pretty much what yixura did here for the female versions, and quite successfully at that. Granted, they did also edit three TNT files along with a bunch of textures. If you don't want to mess with TNTs at all for fear of explosions breaking unrelated clothing, you should be able to edit the tint map of the textures so that tints affect them less, or not at all. So what I said above about the various texture maps still applies; at least so far as my limited knowledge ain't failing me.