Thursday, May 21, 2015

BASIC ALT ATTIRES TUTORIAL FOR PC

I’ve had a number of people requesting a tutorial on how to create additional attires for existing wrestlers. With 2k15 you can have 10 attires per wrestler and these attires are stored in the wrestler pac file. The advantage of adding attires in this way is that they do not take up caw slots and you also have much more freedom to edit the textures and models.

This tutorial assumes that you have already been through my texturing and modelling tutorials and understand pac files, wrester ids, etc.

I have created a misc01_start file using the misc file from 2k14. It has many more attire slots than the 2k15 file. However I am not sure if the alt attires listed actually correspond to the wrestlers who have alt attires, you need to check this. I have also named all the attires wrestlemania1, wrestlemania2, etc. Download the file here but ensure that you back up your original misc file:
https://mega.co.nz/#!gwNSXCCa!fa9KawCOBzTVzBBnpFFdiSixhqrR1ZVfEZ0l4oxW8m4

For this tutorial I am going to show you how to create an alt attire for Booker T. Please ensure that you are using the latest version of X-Packer (10.3) to do this tutorial. Lets get started:


Help pic (click to zoom).



alt_attire_tut.jpg



  1. Firstly you need to know what the superstar id of Booker T is, in this case it is 108.  Copy Booker T’s pac file (ch108.pac) from your game directory to your modding directory. I would strongly suggest creating a backup of the pac file before you proceed any further.

Open the pac file using the PC Pac File – Pac File menu item in X-Packer. You will notice that there is only one attire listed 00010802. Extract this attire pach file by clicking the extract button.

  1. Typically you would extract all the textures and models out of this pac file and then make modifications to the textures and models. For the purpose of this tutorial, we are just going to make a duplicate copy of the pac file. Make a copy of the pac file and name it 00010812. We are using 12 instead of 02 at the end of the file as this is alt attire 1.

  1. Now that we have two attires 00010802 and 00010812, we need a pac file to inject these into. You either use the dummy pac file which I have created (30 slots) or you can use one of the other wresters pac file. Download my dummy.pac file here: https://mega.co.nz/#!V8MWCZBA!7RVpDAsO6Bav0URftenfiZYGfPLwqa9Qax7OCJZZ-Qg

To simplify things, I am going to use Hollywood Hogan’s pac file which has two attires in it.
Hogan’s pac file is ch363.pac. Copy this file to your working directory and rename it to the same name as the wrester’s pac who you are creating alt attires for. In this case we will rename ch363.pac to ch108.pac.

  1. Open your new ch108.pac file in X-Packer and you will notice that there are two attires in there which is Hogan’s ring and entrance attires. These are named 00036302 and 00036304.
Inject your Booker T attires into these slots i.e. inject 00010802 into 00036302 and 00010812 into 00036304.

  1. Now that your attires are in the pac file, you need to rename the attires inside the pac file so that the game knows which wrestler the attires belong to. Double click the name of the attire in X-Packer and you will be presented with a rename dialog box. You need to enter the correct name of the attire in the dialog box, in this case 00036302 will be named 00010802 and 00036304 will be named 00010812.

  1. You pac file is now ready to be used in game, copy the pac file back into your pac-ch directory overwriting the old pac file.

  1. Now that we have created a new pac file, you need to tell the game that there are additional attires which can be selected. This is controlled by the misc01_Start.pac file found in the pac directory. Copy your misc01_Start.pac file into your working directory and open it using the WWE 2k15 – Misc Pac option.

  1. When you open this file, you will be presented with a grid which lists the wrestler ID’s, the number of attires for each wrestler and the attire names. We need to search for the wrestler Id of the wrestler who you adding attires to. In this case because Booker T does not have any alt attires, there is no entry listed for him.
In this case, you need to use the misc entry for another wrestler. Find the wrestler Id of a wrestler who does not require alt attires and change the ID to Booker T’s ID (108).

  1. Set the number of attires to 2 and then select a name value from the list for both attires. If you need to know which value corresponds to which, hover over the attire value list at the top left. When you are done, click the save changes button.

  1. Copy the misc01_start.pac file back into your pac directory. Start the game and you should have two attires selectable for Booker T.


The End

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Basic model editing tutorial for PC version

With upcoming release of Xrey 1.5, I thought I'd post a tutorial on the process for those who want to start practicing using 3ds max to edit.

Basic controls for the program:

- Double click an object in the grid to display a preview
- Click the viewport to control the object. Zoom in and out using the mouse scroll button.
- Hold down the right mouse button and move the mouse to rotate the object.
- Some objects render off the screen for some reason so zoom out to view these.
- Some faces don't render correct in the preview viewport, not sure why as yet. You can still edit these objects as the program does not interfere with the faces.

Basic tutorial on how to do model edits

I am assuming that you already know how to extract your yobj file from the pac, have 3dsm 2011 installed and have brienj's import plugin.If you don't have brienj's import plugin, you will need to obtain it from Xentax.

The program also loads a texture as long as it is named color in the same directory of the yobj. The color texture can be in png, jpg or bmp formats in that order of preference. If there is no color texture the mesh will load without one.

1. If you uncompressed the yobj file using the x-packer, it will be named 0000.zlib.uncompressed. Rename this to 0000.yobj. Your hair yobj file is the 2715 file.

Import your yobj into 3dsm using the import menu item.


When the object has finished loading, select editable mesh on your right menu and select vertex under this option. Your object will now display all the vertices.


kx88.jpg

2. Select a few vertices and move them. Do something simple for your first try, just to understand the process. Make sure you do not delete or add any new veritices. The number of vertices must remain the same.

e04u.jpg


3. Select all the vertices for that object by pressing ctrl+a. Take a note of the number of vertices under the selection menu on the right you will need to know this number later on. In this example the number of vertices is 570. Also take a note of the name at the top, in this case the name of the object is 0_27.

9pkl.jpg

4. With the object still selected, select Export - Export selected from the main menu. Make sure you have selected "Export selected" as the import wont work otherwise.

Give your object any name you want, the name of object after the "_" corresponds to the object number in X-rey. In this case the object is called "0_27" in 3ds max, hence the name in X-Rey will be Object27.

For the export options, make sure you set all the options as follows:

3ds_max_export_settings.jpg

Please double check these options as the object will import incorrectly or wont import at all if these are incorrect. Note that the precision value for the pc version is 12. This is different from the xbox 360 and ps3 models which has a precision value of 6.


Click the export button when you are sure and the object will be exported to obj format. Double check the number of vertices is correct on the status box which appears after the import. In this case the number of vertices on the export status box is still 570 so it's correct.

5. Option your yobj in X-rey using the "Yobj new format" option. Look in the grid for object 27 and confirm that it has the same number of vertices. In this case 570 vertices.

gxut.jpg

Double click the object to preview it. In this case Hogan's belt is off the screen so I needed to zoom out with the mouse wheel to see it.

6. Click the import button and select the object you want to import. In this example, belt_570.obj. If you have done everything correctly, the object will be imported and the viewport will display the new edited object.

m992.jpg

7. Inject your edited yobj back into your pach file using the compress and inject function in x-packer. Then inject pach into pac as normal

That's it, the edited yobj should load in game displaying your changes.

Please note that the face object is rigged to a number of bones. This means that very minor edits on the face should be ok, but major edits will cause corruption on the face. Test your edits out as you making them to avoid spending a lot of time only to have corrupted objects in game.

Basic Texture Modding Tutorial for PC version

Click to enlarge help pics.

texture_tut.jpg


Welcome to modding the pc version of WWE 2k15. This is just a brief tutorial on how to extract and inject textures into the pac files of the game. The game has a separate pac file for each wrestler corresponding to the wrestler id. For a full list of wrestler ID’s, visit the Smacktalks website and look under the modding tutorial section.

Background to pac files
The pac files contain all the files for each wrestler (and arena’s, etc) in the game. The file are structured in a hierarchical manner and I will explain this to you using the analogy of a cupboard.

The pac file itself is like the cupboard. Inside this cupboard are a number of pach files. The pach files are like the drawers in the cupboard. Just like the drawers in a cupboard can contain clothes, shoes, etc, the pach file can contain models, textures etc.

Some wrestlers have different pach files for an entrance attires, and may also contain pach files for alternate attires. In ring attires always end in “2” and entrance attires always end in “4”. Alternate attires use the second last number to indicate which attire it is e.g. ring attire 1 will be numbered 02 and ring attire 2 will be numbered 12. The attires start counting at 0.

To illustrate, Hogan’s nWo wrestler id is 363. The first pach in his pac file is 00036302, this is his ring attire. The second pac file is 00036304, which is his entrance gear. If he had another attire, it would be numbered 00036312 and 00036314 for his entrance and ring attires.

Lets Get Started
With the background of the way lets get started with modding the game. Always take backups of all your files before doing any mods.

First thing you need to do is get rid of the arc file in the game directory. The arc file is a file which lists the file sizes of all the game files. If you leave this file in the game directory, your game will crash when you use your mods.

1.    Browse to your game directory and look for the file called plistWin32.arc. I rename this file to something else, you can either rename it, delete or move it to a backup directory. The choice is yours.

2.    With the arc file out of the way, you can now start modding a wrestler of your choice. The wrestler pac files are stored in the pac – ch directory. As stated before the pac files correspond to the wrestler id’s. I am going to be working on Booker T which is ch108.pac.

You can work directly on the file in the game installation path, but I prefer to copy the pac file to another location and work there. I also make a backup of the file before working.

3.    With the ch108.pac file copied to your computer, open X-Packer and then open the pac file using the Open – PC Pac File – Pac File (Or use the Ctrl + Q shortcut).

With the Booker T pac file open, you will notice that there is only one pach listed, 00010802. As discussed above, this is his ring attire for attire 1. Click the extract button on the row with the pach listed. Save the pach file in a location of your choice.

4.    Open the pach file in X-Packer using the Open – PC Pac File – Pach File. You will see a number of files listed. The file which you will be modding most commonly are the 0000 file which is the model, the 000C and 000A files which contain the textures, and the 2715 file which is the hair.

The file are compressed by default, you can determine this by the extension. If the extension is ZLIB or BPE, then the file is compressed.

In order for us to work with the files we need to uncompress them. You can either compress the files individually or all at once. I’m going to uncompress all, so I’m going to click the Uncompress All button in X-Packer. Select a location to uncompress the files to and all the files will be extracted and uncompressed there.

If you browse to the directory you will find that there are files with a zlib extension and files with an “uncompressed” extension. The zlib files are not require so you can delete these or retain them for backup purposes. I usually delete the zlib files to keep my workspace clean.

5.    Like I stated before, the 0000.zlib.uncompressed file is the main model, 000C.zlib.uncompressed contains the head and body textures and the 000A.zlib.uncompressed contains the attire textures and the normal maps.

For the purpose of this exercise, I’m just going to work with the face texture. The process for working on the attires and normal maps is the same. Open the 000C.zlib.uncompressed file using the Open – PC Pac File – Texture Archive (or the Ctrl + Y shortcut). You will see three textures listed: all_color, head and head_f. Extract the head texture.

6.    Open the head texture in photoshop. Make whatever adjustments you want to it. I’m going to make the head green, just to illustrate.

7.    Once you are done editing the texture, save the texture as dds. There are two types of dds textures, the face and body textures are DXT without alpha and the Normal Maps, hair etc are DXT with alpha. There are texturing tutorials on this topic, so read up on those. The settings you need to save the face textures and normal maps are in the help pic above.

8.    Now that you have saved the texture click the inject button on the row where the head texture is listed. X-Packer checks the filesize to determine wether you have saved the texture in the correct format. If you have saved the texture correctly, you will get a message stating the the texture has been injected successfully.

9.    The texture is now injected into the texture archive. Now we need to put the texture archive back into the pach file and then back into the pac file. Open the 00010802 pach file in X-Packer and click on “inject file” on the row where 000C is listed. Select the 000C.zlib.uncompressed file and the texture archive will be injected into the pach file.

You will notice that the extension of the file has been changed and is no longer zlib, this means that the texture archive is no longer compressed.

10.    Open the cho108.pac file and select inject on the row with 00010802 listed. Select the 00010802 pach and the pach file will be injected. You are now ready to test the mod in game. Copy the ch108.pac file to your pac – ch directory, overwriting the old file.
Start the game and select Booker T in the creation suite. If you have done everything correctly, you will see that his head is now green.

That’s it, your very first texture mod. The are many more advanced tutorials in the modding section on Smacktalks and on my site http://sf4mods.blogspot.com

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Editing PS2 Yobj files

(Click on any of the pics to enlarge)

What you will need:
-        X-Rey
-        Blender 2.49b
-        Python 2.6.2a
-        Blender 2.73

1.      After downloading and setting the above software up, open Blender 2.49b. Click File – open and select the import-rumble-roses-ps2-2011-11-06.blend script file. When the script file is open, click Alt+p to run the script.

The script will then look for a model file in a directory. Select the directory where your model is stored. Blender will then open the model for you.





2.      In order for you make edits which can be imported into a yobj file, you will need to export the individual parts separately. Unfortunately, blender 2.49b does not support this but blender 2.73 does. To overcome this, we are going to save the opened model in blender and then open in the newer version.         

Click file – save as and give your file a name. I’m going to call this model_edit.blend.



3.      Close blender 2.49 and open Blender 2.73. Open the blend file you just saved, in this instance is the edit_model.blend file. Now your model is opened in the newer version of blender.

4.      Edit the parts of the model you want in Blender. I’m not going to go through how to use blender to shape models as it is beyond the scope of this tutorial.

I’m just going to make a few minor edits to the left boot to illustrate the process.

5.      With your object selected, take a note of the name of the object, you will need the name when exporting. In this example, the name of the boot object is model-7.002. When we are exporting this will be named object7.obj. The “7” is derived from the name of the object i.e. model-7.002.



6.      While the object is still selected, click on file – export – wavefront (obj). When the export dialog appears, make sure you check the “Selection Only ” checkbox. Name the file the name we determined in step 5. In this instance it is object 7.



7.      Now we are ready to import the changes into your yobj file. Start X-Rey and select Open – Yobj (ps2). Select your yobj file and X-Rey will list all the objects in the model. In this case we are going to import the boot which is object7.

On the row with object7 listed, click on import and select the file we exported in step 6, in this case it is object7.obj.  If everything is in order with the file you exported from blender, you will get a message stating the “File has been injected successfully”.




8.      Your yobj file is now ready to be used in game. You can test the yobj file in blender again before you use it in game, but it is not required.