[valakii]

That looks great so far!

Strangely, when I create a new pak file containing your edited fullbody skinnedmesh, Sestak still looks exactly like this:

result: [Bild: Sestak.jpg]

Is there any chance you can find the missing knee polygons? And maybe even do the same for Alb Mid and Alb Mage armor? And maybe even remove the hood from the Alb Mage Headgear?
(Haha I must be sounding so greedy now . But I would have never imagined someone might actually accomplish this, since I always thought that there's simply no way to modify Elex meshes. Which is btw why initially I tried a different approach by turning all armor into fullbody armor...)

[tombom81]

Is there any chance you can find the missing knee polygons?

The upper body has these left knee protection polyons because I missed to find the correct -end of upper mesh-.

(You need to do the BodyPart change in the ABE_NPCs sector file like advised before, btw. Then the pants and shoes will appear, too.)

And maybe even do the same for Alb Mid and Alb Mage armor?

Well, YOU should do that. It's simply "zeroing out" some face indices. I'm thinking about a small tool that will tell you start and end of the face index block. (Then you'll need some "trial and error" to find out where the upper mesh ends - but that's not too hard.)

And maybe even remove the hood from the Alb Mage Headgear?

I'll take a look asap.

(Haha I must be sounding so greedy now .

Yeah, totally.

Which is btw why initially I tried a different approach by turning all armor into fullbody armor...)

There's more than one way to Rome. The one I used is "quick'n dirty", so absolutely not the best one.

[valakii]

(You need to do the BodyPart change in the ABE_NPCs sector file like advised before, btw. Then the pants and shoes will appear, too.)

Yeah I know. But for now, I simply wanted to have a look at how Sestak looks with upperbody armor only. But instead, lowerbody "raw mesh" still showed (without texture). You sure you uploaded the newest file? (time stamp is 26-05-2022, while lowerbody was last edited on 29-05-2022)

Well, YOU should do that. It's simply "zeroing out" some face indices. I'm thinking about a small tool that will tell you start and end of the face index block. (Then you'll need some "trial and error" to find out where the upper mesh ends - but that's not too hard.)

Sure, I'll try my best. Only need some advice or maybe a small introduction. Just remember I'm a noob when it comes to Elex modding, and coding / hex editing also... But I guess with a tool like that, I should be able to make it, eventually .

[tombom81]

You sure you uploaded the newest file? (time stamp is 26-05-2022, while lowerbody was last edited on 29-05-2022)

My bad! I've updated the zip here.

Sure, I'll try my best. Only need some advice or maybe a small introduction.

We'll be in touch! Stay tuned!

edit: ELEX1 skn checker tool and explanation:
ELEX1_check_skn.zip

[tombom81]

Mesh_Male_Hat_Alb_Mage_01_L1.elexskn, mask without hood, some faces left, though

Spoiler:(zum lesen bitte Text markieren)

[Bild: Mesh_Male_Hat_Alb_Mage_01_L1_elexskn.jpg]

[valakii]

My bad! I've updated the zip here.

We'll be in touch! Stay tuned!

edit: ELEX1 skn checker tool and explanation:
ELEX1_check_skn.zip

This is, as always, some great work and very helpful!! Still not sure whether I'm capable to fully comprehend everything, but I'll give it my best .

One question before I start testing out a little: Do I understand you correctly that the knee polygons that are still visible are hidden somewhere in the upperbody mesh? Btw, the lowerbody mesh you created has the lower part of Sestak's left leg missing, any hint where this might come from?

Oh and maybe you wanna share how you imported the mesh into blender?

Anyways, thank you so much again!
I'm beginning to get the impression that without your contributions, there wouldn't be any successfull Elex modding at all haha

[valakii]

That little sucker was supposed to worship you in awe, but background color stole his arms lol

[tombom81]

This is, as always, some great work and very helpful!! Still not sure whether I'm capable to fully comprehend everything, but I'll give it my best .

Feel free to ask when I was unclear somewhere in ELEX_skn_checker.txt.

Do I understand you correctly that the knee polygons that are still visible are hidden somewhere in the upperbody mesh? Btw, the lowerbody mesh you created has the lower part of Sestak's left leg missing, any hint where this might come from?

Guess, that's because I did a wrong splitting up; I split up too late, so that the left knee protection polygons are part of the upper body instead of the lower one.

Oh and maybe you wanna share how you imported the mesh into blender?

I converted elexskn data to a wavefront obj file. (technical background: IEEE-754 Floating Point Converter). Face indices are 16 bit integers (or DWORDs),

I'm beginning to get the impression that without your contributions, there wouldn't be any successfull Elex modding at all haha

Wrong impression. There were people like disi123, as you may know, Grumbledore, Penthesilea and some others, who were very active in the past.

[valakii]

Wrong impression. There were people like disi123, as you may know, Grumbledore, Penthesilea and some others, who were very active in the past.

Yeah, those are the names I come across here all the time. Too bad they had moved on already by the time I started modding Elex...

I'm at it now and trying to find the upper/lower body split. I'm getting closer to it, though upperbody seems to be considerably shorter than expected (the split comes from right shoulder over left lower leg to left knee, so I'm trying to find the sweet spot between right shoulder and left lower leg, which seems to be somewhere around 85000...)

What are the LOD files about that you were mentioning the other day, btw? I assume it's "level of detail", so basically two downsized versions of the same mesh? What does the game use them for, anyways? For far distance objects? Should I split them up just the same way I do with L1? And if yes, I wonder if they have the exact same proportion of polygons like L1

[tombom81]

Yeah, those are the names I come across here all the time. Too bad they had moved on already by the time I started modding Elex...

yeah, it's a pitty.

What are the LOD files about that you were mentioning the other day, btw? I assume it's "level of detail", so basically two downsized versions of the same mesh?

Exactly.

What does the game use them for, anyways? For far distance objects?

yep; same as for static objects, I guess. There's no need to render far-distant objects highpoly. Would lower the framerate, too.

Should I split them up just the same way I do with L1? And if yes, I wonder if they have the exact same proportion of polygons like L1

You will be the first person to examine that. I'd suggest to care for high lod versions first. Then I'd do the 2nd lod. (Maybe it's not even required to care for the lowest lod?)

[valakii]

I'm at it now and trying to find the upper/lower body split. I'm getting closer to it, though upperbody seems to be considerably shorter than expected (the split comes from right shoulder over left lower leg to left knee, so I'm trying to find the sweet spot between right shoulder and left lower leg, which seems to be somewhere around 85000...)

I think I found it. Looks like 84862 / 0x14B7E seems to be the sweet spot. Though according to my calculation, it's not divisible by 3... (tried it bit by bit when I came close to make sure I'm hitting the right one). At least, when I put the cut exactly there, both upper and lower body meshes are looking flawless to me

[tombom81]

I think I found it. Looks like 84862 / 0x14B7E seems to be the sweet spot. Though according to my calculation, it's not divisible by 3... (tried it bit by bit when I came close to make sure I'm hitting the right one). At least, when I put the cut exactly there, both upper and lower body meshes are looking flawless to me

Seems you're "off" by two bytes. At offset 0x14B7E there's 90 1C.

For wavefront obj you need to add 1 to get the face index: 7313 decimal.
That's the last index of the face f 7338 7316 7313.

Next face is f 4233 4228 4230
Sweet spot, the following faces look like so:
f 4236 4228 4233
f 7780 7781 7782
f 7780 7782 7783
f 7784 7785 7780
f 7784 7780 7783
...

(0x14B80-0x6c)/2/3, should do...

[valakii]

Seems you're "off" by two bytes. At offset 0x14B7E there's 90 1C.
[...]
(0x14B80-0x6c)/2/3, should do...

You're absolutely right. Corrected it.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to reproduce your elexskn to wavefront obj file conversion. Any chance you might be able (and willing) to create a converter? I'm doing some nice progress already (all Alb armors are mostly finished), but not having to check every mesh modification ingame might probably speed up things a lot.

PS:
I noticed vanilla Alb Elexetor fullbody armor is missing the waving dark blue skirt. Can't wrap my head around it, did PB change the mesh during one of their updates?

[tombom81]

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to reproduce your elexskn to wavefront obj file conversion. Any chance you might be able (and willing) to create a converter?

I created those wavefront conversions by manually searching offsets. A converter is harder to accomplish because they don't seem to use a byte alignment for start-of-vertex-block. Sometimes I'm off by 4 bytes, still no idea how to find the correct starting address by code (Plus, once it's ready, people usually demand an exporter, obj to elexskn.)

PS:
I noticed vanilla Alb Elexetor fullbody armor is missing the waving dark blue skirt. Can't wrap my head around it, did PB change the mesh during one of their updates?

Have to check this. (Maybe they removed it because I wrote the clothings are ridicously fluttering like a candle in the wind?)

[valakii]

I created those wavefront conversions by manually searching offsets. A converter is harder to accomplish because they don't seem to use a byte alignment for start-of-vertex-block. Sometimes I'm off by 4 bytes, still no idea how to find the correct starting address by code (Plus, once it's ready, people usually demand an exporter, obj to elexskn.)

That's a pity, but I'm totally with you on this.

(Maybe they removed it because I wrote the clothings are ridicously fluttering like a candle in the wind?)

Yeah it does look exaggerated, without any question . Nevertheless, I always liked the fact that the robe/skirt thingy made the Regent and Elexetor armor look somehow distinguished. Looks more "bosslike" to me because it stands out of all the other Cleric and Alb armor.

[tombom81]

Here's an update for checking resulting obj files:

7aOtm2pELEX1_check_skn.zip

No uvs, no normals, because it's just to check the results of full body splittings.
(May fail for some skn files.)

[valakii]

Thanks a lot for your effort!

I was already able to split most of the Alb armors and especially the hood quite nicely, but meanwhile I encountered the next problem: since fullbody armor obviously wasn't supposed to consist of two separate parts (even though the meshes were probably created separately at first, which is evident by the fact that the polygons - for the most part - follow a strict upperbody first, lowerbody second order), the waist line of these meshes doesn't correspond correctly with vanilla upper and lower body armor parts. Thus, in some combinations, there's a visible empty gap which you can see through...

My first idea to solve this would be to use another mesh as some kind of "underlay". What came to my mind is "Male_Fullbody_Naked_Mesh_L1", which, to my knowledge, isn't used in the actual game. As the name suggests, this mesh looks like a plain body without clothes, while in contrast to that, the texture actually "glows" like the cleric projection ghost, which of course is not very helpful in this case. (ProjectionGhost btw uses "Mesh_Male_FullBody_Hologramm_01_L1".)

Since I anyways already had the idea to make the PC_hero look actually clothless when there's no armor equipped, I'd like to edit that texture. Unfortunately, I can't find any texture file in the images folder that is named accordingly (I would have expected "Tex_Fullbody_Naked_Mesh_L1" or something like that).

So any idea which texture file is actually used by that mesh? I was hoping that from the elexskn file code of a mesh, we could maybe somehow be able to "read out" the path to the texture it uses, or am I being to optimistic here?

PS: Oh and I noticed some very strange thing about that waving skirt of the Alb mage armor:
The vanilla mesh is fine, but as soon as I decompress/extract it from the original .pak files, the skirt is gone all of a sudden. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Anybody got an explanation/solution for that?

[tombom81]

[...], the waist line of these meshes doesn't correspond correctly with vanilla upper and lower body armor parts. Thus, in some combinations, there's a visible empty gap which you can see through...

You were splitting up the fullbody texture?

So it's a matter of texture editing? As you can see I've problems to even put a texture correctly on a full body:

[Bild: Alb_High_Tex.jpg]

So any idea which texture file is actually used by that mesh? I was hoping that from the elexskn file code of a mesh, we could maybe somehow be able to "read out" the path to the texture it uses, or am I being to optimistic here?

All I see is this:

Male_Fullbody_Naked_Mesh_L1.elexskn:
Hum_M_Body_Bare_Non_Default_Skin_1(.elexmat) -> VFX_Ghost_Buddy.shader

and
Mesh_Male_FullBody_Hologramm_01_L1.elexskn:
Mat_Male_FullBody_Hologramm_01(.elexmat) -> VFX_Ghost_Buddy.shader

[valakii]

You were splitting up the fullbody texture?

No no, I didn't touch textures lately. But I tried my newly split-up Alb armors with other armor parts. And since the waist line of the Alb armors isn't at the same height as with, for instance, other faction's armor, in some combinations a gap appears because the waist simply isn't covered by any mesh. I can hand in a screenshot later if isn't clear yet what I mean.

As you can see I've problems to even put a texture correctly on a full body:

[Bild: Alb_High_Tex.jpg]

The Alb fullbody armors use two separate textures, one for upper and one for lower body. You're aware of that?

In this case, those are

Tex_Male_FullBody_Alb_High_01_*
and
Tex_Male_FullBody_Alb_High_02_*

The upperbody mesh texture mapping is looking very nice in your picture, but as far as I can tell from one of the legs, upperbody texture is applied to the lowerbody mesh part... Might wanna use Tex_Male_FullBody_Alb_High_02_* here instead.

All I see is this:

Male_Fullbody_Naked_Mesh_L1.elexskn:
Hum_M_Body_Bare_Non_Default_Skin_1(.elexmat) -> VFX_Ghost_Buddy.shader

and
Mesh_Male_FullBody_Hologramm_01_L1.elexskn:
Mat_Male_FullBody_Hologramm_01(.elexmat) -> VFX_Ghost_Buddy.shader

How did your find that out? Were you able to read it out from the elexskn file? If yes, is there any way to edit an elexskn so it points to another texture file?

[tombom81]

I can hand in a screenshot later if isn't clear yet what I mean.

No, no, keep it secret until it's ready.

The Alb fullbody armors use two separate textures, one for upper and one for lower body. You're aware of that?

Well, no. I was confused to find the _02 material name in _01 skn. Both textures, _01, _02, look to me like they were for fullbody each. Very strange...

How did your find that out? Were you able to read it out from the elexskn file?

Just drag'n drop an elexskn onto a hexeditor, then scroll at its end where you'll find the material name(s).

If yes, is there any way to edit an elexskn so it points to another texture file?

You can change the mat name taking into account the string length counters before it (DWORD and WORD), like so:

1F000000 1D00 Mat_Male_FullBody_Alb_High_02
31= 29 (+2)

(If the game crashes with a mat name of different lenght there's probably a property size value which needs to be adjusted, too. Found some sort of block size counter; needs a closer look.)

edit: well, too many property size values, too much trouble.

Here's a simple workaround for exchanging "Mat_Male_FullBody_Alb_High_02" for example:
create a copy of a material file of your choice and rename it to Mat_Male_FullBody_Alb_High_03.elexmat.

Then replace the _02 of "Mat_Male_FullBody_Alb_High_02" in the elexskn file by _03.

(Not tested but should do, hopefully.)

btw: I'm surprised other factions' amor part textures do fit the uv map of FullBody_Alb_High. Do they really?