I know that Ubi/Arkane will shortly release a modkit for DM, but I could not wait for this, so I started to search for alternative methods to making skins (or any kind of mod) for Dark Messiah on my own. I did not find anything; this lead me to experiment a bit on my own - granted, I did have a bit of knowledge from modding Half-Life 2 (and the HL2 mod community is huge!), so it wasn't very hard to figure it out.

So anyway, I decided to make this little tutorial for people who'd like to get their own skin into the game. Also, this is for the single-player portion of DM; I haven't gotten around to the multi-player part yet (in fact I won't even play it until a patch comes out - I've heard about the numerous bugs and balancing issues).


Introductions aside, let's begin... !

Before we start, these are the tools you'll need (click links to download):
-GCFScape
-VtfEdit
-Vtf2tga
-Any photo editing suite (such as Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop or The GIMP)

In this tutorial I have taken for granted that you are at least somewhat familiar with editing images and producing skins, thus I will focus on engine-related procedures rather than actual texture work.


1. Fire up GCFScape.

a. There are three different GCFs (game cache files) that I will focus on in this tutorial, these are also the files in which (most of the) textures are stored in; mm_materials_a_pub.gcf, mm_materials_b_pub.gcf and mm_materials_c_pub.gcf, respectively.

b. So, make your way to the open file dialog (File -> Open in layman terms).

c. Browse to where your "\mm" folder is (by default it's "\Dark Messiah of Might and Magic\mm") and open any of the aforementioned files. I will choose mm_materials_b_pub:
IMGhttp://img294.imageshack.us/img294/993/step1yu7.jpg[/IMG]



2. As you can see there is now a hierarchy of folders in the left-hand pane. Expand all folders and make your way down to the one called "npc_orc". Select it; the right-hand file viewer is now filled with VTFs and VMTs.

a. We will be working with the orc's body texture (skin); click and drag the mouse to select multiple files. Select [i]orc.vmt and orc.vtf.

b. Right click on the selected files and choose "Extract". Extract them wherever you want, just as long as you can easily find them:




3. Time to use Vtf2tga. Extract your downloaded Vtf2tga archive and copy its files to where you extracted the orc files.

a. Run vtf2tga.bat. When the program asks whether to delete the original files or not, press N on your keyboard, and then press on the RETURN/ENTER key.

b. A targa (.tga) file has now been created in the same folder:




4. Whip out your favourite photo editing suite (I use Corel's Paint Shop Pro X). Of course, it has to be able to handle the TGA file format. Be sure to check that it does!

a. Edit the texture to your liking. When you're done, save a copy in whatever format is native to the editor of your choice (.psd for Photoshop, for example). This is to ensure that all the layers etc. stay intact, so that you can make changes to the skin later on.

b. Merge all the layers and save it (the original, not the copy) as TGA. Overwrite.



5. Launch VtfEdit. Go to File -> Import.

a. Browse to your newly saved targa and import it by clicking on "Open".

b. Leave the "VTF Options" dialog unchanged; just click OK. Wait a few seconds for the texture to load:


c. Now that the texture is loaded, we are going to save it as a VTF. File -> Save As. Overwrite any existing VTFs of the same name (orc.vtf):


d. There! Now we've got a spanking new Valve Texture! Time to install...



6. To install the skin properly, we must first see how the folder hierarchy in mm_materials_b_pub looks like. So fire up GCFScape once again.

a. This time around, go to File -> Recent Files and choose to open mm_materials_b_pub.gcf:


b. Expand all the folders once again. Now look at the tree view:




7. Since mm_materials_b_pub is located in the "mm" folder, we will need to make the sub-folders situated under that folder to recreate an identical directory structure. This way, when DM (Source) is told to load the orc texture, it will first look in the primary folders for textures before looking in the cache files (GCF).

a. So, with the information we have gathered, the folder structure must look like this:


b. Follow the guidelines in the above image and then copy orc.vtf (the one you recently saved in VtfEdit) and orc.vmt (the one you extracted with GCFScape in the beginning of the tutorial) into the "npc_orc" folder.



Done! You may now enjoy the fruit of your hard work - you've earned it! This is how mine turned out:

You can download it here if you want.


If anything goes wrong, you can make a post in this thread stating your problem.

Note to Ubisoft / Arkane / Forum Mods:
I would highly appreciate if you could sticky (feature) this thread. I have a feeling it would please the crowd as well.

Well that is realy good work! dont know if they will sticky it thouge maybe in the techelp forum!

Well ill just say good work!

Yes, quite impressive!

Once we've released the modding toolkit, I suspect that modding will really take off for this game.

If so, you just might see a new DM forum here just for modding/mapmaking.

Cool

O_O
>_<

*takes off hat*
*salutes*

Second the request to sticky this sucker!

The formatting seems to suffer some major weirdage. I'm fixing it as we speak.

Oh, and thank you for all the kind words!


EDIT: Okay, I've fixed it. It's better now huh?
EDIT2: Yay, just noticed the sticky. I'm ever so greatful!

quote:

Originally posted by Acheval:
Yes, quite impressive!

Once we've released the modding toolkit, I suspect that modding will really take off for this game.

If so, you just might see a new DM forum here just for modding/mapmaking.

Is there an ETA on the modding toolkit? I'd assume its probably a bit far off since the game still has some bugs in it, and the bugs probably take priority.

quote:

Originally posted by Acheval:
Yes, quite impressive!

Once we've released the modding toolkit, I suspect that modding will really take off for this game.

If so, you just might see a new DM forum here just for modding/mapmaking.

Toolkit? No sdk? Make sure to atleast include the tier0.lib and vstdlib.lib wouldn't hurt, can't really compile working plugins whitout it :/

If using photoshop you can simply use this photoshop VTF plugin to open vtf files like any other image format.

http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?c=154#p154

Then when saving the VTF you get your normal vtf options in a window that pops up after saving.

Some general settings that I use-

Template:

Unconpressed Texture

Use this when saving your custom skins, otherwise, it will compress it and not look so good.

Uncompressed Texture With Alpha Map

Use this when using alpha channels for setting transparency or specular maps on your skins.

Normal Map

Use when using normal maps of course

Normal Map with Alpha

Normal maps with Alpha channels, good for when you want specular type shines and using normal maps, since it doesn't like to use ref maps(specular maps) with normal maps.

Sharpen Filter:

Sharpen Strong

Also good for custom skins. Sometimes custom skins can come out a little too soft than what you wanted, setting this to Sharpen strong gives it a nice sharp look. However, if the skin is sharp enough already this is not needed, leave it on "Sharpen Soft".

Checkboxes

Uncheck the Mipmaps checkbox, not sure what this is exactly but it really jacks the skins up ingame, makes them look seriously low quality.

Flags:

Also check "No Mipmap" in the flag window, same thing.

Using "No Level OF Detail" in the flags window is also good. I was told this will not set the quality of the skin to low when your actual video settings are on low or whatever. However not 100% sure on this.

ok now if someone makes certain mods for leanna and xana...

quote:

Originally posted by EyeoftheJackal:
ok now if someone makes certain mods for leanna and xana...

Xana... we already have a certain... well... base texture for her. thats a good idea actually

after we made some changes, will the other players of the server we make see the changes too? or its only for our personnal use and fun? Because if its only for my pc, then I dont think it will be useful unless you make some fun videos

Or unless your tired of the same skins...

I know I'll probably be looking for some Mage Re-skins, because I think the hood on the human mage is awful. I also have some really cool ideas for Knight skins, so I might take a stab at reskinning Knights as well.

quote:

Originally posted by FireBurst699:
after we made some changes, will the other players of the server we make see the changes too? or its only for our personnal use and fun? Because if its only for my pc, then I dont think it will be useful unless you make some fun videos

In my initial post I clearly stated the following:
"...is for the single-player portion of DM; I haven't gotten around to the multi-player part yet..."

So to answer your question; yes, it is only for your personal use and fun.

Awesome work skribb, I just finished posting your Green Orc skin on Dark Messiah files. Good work.

great job! way to start off the community right!

quote:

Originally posted by Mana_SG:

quote:

Originally posted by EyeoftheJackal:
ok now if someone makes certain mods for leanna and xana...

Xana... we already have a certain... well... base texture for her. thats a good idea actually

I know you're all focusing on the other extreme, but is there a chance of someone 'sanitizing' Xana via a mod? I've had at least one inquiry in the community on how to remove that partial nudity element from the ESRB rating...

quote:

Originally posted by Acheval:

quote:

Originally posted by Mana_SG:

quote:

Originally posted by EyeoftheJackal:
ok now if someone makes certain mods for leanna and xana...

Xana... we already have a certain... well... base texture for her. thats a good idea actually

I know you're all focusing on the other extreme, but is there a chance of someone 'sanitizing' Xana via a mod? I've had at least one inquiry in the community on how to remove that partial nudity element from the ESRB rating...

Well see the cut scenes where she is nude are pre-rendered but her hair covers some of her upper-body... Besides the human Xana isn't partially nude now is she? Atleast I don't think she is?

It would be nigh impossible to mod out the Xana nude scene, because it's in video format, not an in-game rendered cutscene. You'd have to change the video, not the skin. Though I guess you could use a video editor of some kind and make some cuts, if you could riddle out the format... or just get it to not play...

Now.. *cough*.. about that Leanna mod...

PS: to answer your question, the human Xana is wearing a nightgown of sorts that shows a lot of leg, but not much else. Again, it's in video format. The only time you see Xana rendered real-time is just her face, when you put in the Gems in the spider statue.

quote:

Originally posted by Felio2006:
It would be nigh impossible to mod out the Xana nude scene, because it's in video format, not an in-game rendered cutscene. You'd have to change the video, not the skin. Though I guess you could use a video editor of some kind and make some cuts, if you could riddle out the format... or just get it to not play...

Now.. *cough*.. about that Leanna mod...

PS: to answer your question, the human Xana is wearing a nightgown of sorts that shows a lot of leg, but not much else. Again, it's in video format. The only time you see Xana rendered real-time is just her face, when you put in the Gems in the spider statue.

I played the game myself too :P