FFXIV: Accessory Porting
In this guide I will show you in easy steps how to do your own Accessory porting. This will be done in 3DS Max as I do not know that much about Blender to be able to write guides with it.
The Guide will be broken up into sections for Headpieces, Earrings, Necklaces and Bracelets, other accessories like Wings etc
Headpiece
First of all we will start with a headpiece, this is by far the easiest.
Choose which Headpiece you want to port or make your own one. For the sake of this tutorial I will be using a port.
1. You will want to export your chosen head from TT. For this I will be using Midlander Female, This is so that the headpiece will show up on every tall female. (Although you may need to uncheck some heads in metadata depending on what you choose to replace but we will get to that).
2. Import your head and head accessory into 3DS Max. You'll see this on your screen (Depending on where your import ended up as it will be different, Possibly even smaller):
3. Then you will want to select the arrow Edit Mesh on the left, here you will want to select Vertices and then select the whole mesh, this is what you will want to do when moving into place. Position the headpiece into place how you want it on the head. You can also scale if you wish to or if the Item is too small. You could also Import hair into the scene to see how it would look like with a hair, but bear in mind adjusting to a hair will mean that it will clip with others depending on the hairstyle. So just make it float a tiny bit above the head, Clipping with others hairstyles is inevitable. With this guide they can adjust themselves.
4. You may notice that sometimes your item may be a little dark, this is because of the Normals. to adjust this just select your item and add an Edit Normals Modifier. You will see Green Lines all over your model, this is normal. You'll now want to Ctrl A or move your mouse to higlight the Green Lines Which will now turn red. This means they are selected, You can now proceed to edit your normals.
5. You will need to click the arrow on the modifer and select normal, from here you will Uncheck Unify/break to Average (if it is checked), then click Break, check Unify/break to average again and then Unify. Collpase To the Edit Normal modifer. Your Model will now look much brighter and not so dark. As you can see in the first Image, it is a lot darker.
6. Once you have moved your headpiece into place and the Normals are edited if needed, you will then want to start weighting it. This is easy. All you need to do is add the Skin Modifier, go down to Bones: and click add, a screen will pop up to select bones, you can search or find yourself. You will want to add the J_Kao bone. This is the default headpiece bone. It is static and will move with the head. You can see if it is weighted by selecting Envelope and seeing if the entire mesh is red.
7. For the Next part you then need to put your headpiece into a group, We don't need the head for this so we can delete the head parts. Leave yourself with one group and Rename Your headpiece to Part 0.0, If you have extra parts they will be Part 0.1, 0.2 etc. You should be left with a screen Similar to this:
Now got to File, Export and save.
8. When you have done that you are ready to put into TT. Choose what you want to replace, I would suggest firstly adding in the textures, this will make it easier when importing the model and selecting the right texture if need be. If the Model you are replacing has multipe Races for example, Midlander; elezen etc and you want to replace all Just go to the Metadata Tab and select/unselect the races. For this example I will only be replacing Female Tall Models. If Only Midlander Male is selected this will allow the headpiece to be for all characters. It will auto Scale, so you don't have to worry about manually adjsusting for each race.
9. If you are only replacing Female like I am You will need to add a New textutre. For this go to More Options on the Bottom of Textools and select Add New Material, This screen will appear, select Use Enique Textures and save. If your Item has a diffuse Select Preset and choose Diffuse.
This will ensure the textures aren't saved with any other races or similar items. (Although the model will be the same for Shared items). You will now have an extra Material for your Midlander Female.
10. You are now ready to add in your Tetxures. The Alpha of a DDS will affect the Colourset. So keep this in mind When you are adjusting your textures. To make it easier to import Export the DDS from Tetxools first, so then in your editing program you can just save over it. Once you've done that you can go to the colourset tab under Texture Map and choose your colours.
11. Once you have done that you will want to import your Model, So go to the Model Tab and Select Import Model, (You can do the same here with the texture and Export FBX first for easier Importing and not having to look around where you saved). You will be greeted with a screen, before you click Import Select Open Editor, This is because we added new Material so we will need to assign the textures.
You will want to select the material that you added, in this case it is Material A - Hyur Midlander Female and once you have done that select Import. You may also want to check Clear UV2.
12. If you got this far then, YAY Congratulations. Your Model will now be imported into The game. Adjust textures if needed and See how your Headpiece looks in game.
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