Blade and Soul - How to Mod BnS (Guide and Tips) (1 Viewer)

[Naduron]

Someone asked me how to mod BnS, so i thought "so why not just make a guide here also"? :p


How to Mod with Umod

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1. Click on [Add Game] -> Client.EXE

2. Turn on [Use Global Hook]

3. Launch Blade and Soul (Do not use "Start game through uMod)
(More options will now pop up)

4. Click on "Save Single Texture" and "Show Message"

5. Umod will only grab stuff from what you are seeing on the screen
So if you want to Mod female Lyn with the tutorial Armor so must you be using a Female Lyn with that armor on.

6. switch between texture resolution before you start so the Umod can grab all the textures. (Umod works very different from each games, most common is that Umod can only grab textures when using the lowest texture resulotion.)

7. Scroll "next" until your character looks weird and save that texture, now do that until you have saved a total of 4 textures (they are bump, spec, cstm and diff)

8. Now you simply mod your dds files and save them as DDS DXT5

9. When you are done "Open Texture" and select the modded files.

10. Click on Update (Reload) to see your changes

11. Done

 

[Dream Angel]

The new versions of the game , with the possibility of modding uMod fixed.

 

[Mimimimi]

[...]

How to Mod with Umod [...]​

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Hi, thanks for your tutorial and all your work here.

I'm on Windows 7 x64 and downloaded r53. I followed all steps but don't get beyond character creation on the EU release of BnS. It just hangs when global hook is enabled. Any idea to bypass it and get the game to run?

Thanks.​

 

[Naduron]

try r49 it is the most stable one atm.

 

[Alexander Cooks]

I know this thread hasn't been active for a while, but I'm kinda out of options. So, forgive me if I'm doing something wrong/rude.
I need help with the actual 'modding' part of the process.

My situation: I exported Yulia's outfit, and tried editing the dds in GIMP (with dds plug-in). While just messing around and trying to decrease the amount of clothes on my character, I noticed that if I erase certain parts, that part of the character becomes invisible. For e.g. I tried shortening the leggings, and part of my character's legs disappeared. Similarly, if I remove the scarf, the neck disappears.
But, at the same time if I erase her ribbon (and bow), it works fine (i.e. in-game character doesn't have the huge ribbon).

So what exactly am I supposed to do while editing the dds? Or am I doing something wrong. Or is it that I'm trying my hand at something impossible to do? (Hopefully, not)

Any help would be appreciated (even if its related to something other than GIMP).
If you need to know, I play on TW server, and am using Windows 10.

 

[PrincessNicky]

I know this thread hasn't been active for a while, but I'm kinda out of options. So, forgive me if I'm doing something wrong/rude.
I need help with the actual 'modding' part of the process.

My situation: I exported Yulia's outfit, and tried editing the dds in GIMP (with dds plug-in). While just messing around and trying to decrease the amount of clothes on my character, I noticed that if I erase certain parts, that part of the character becomes invisible. For e.g. I tried shortening the leggings, and part of my character's legs disappeared. Similarly, if I remove the scarf, the neck disappears.
But, at the same time if I erase her ribbon (and bow), it works fine (i.e. in-game character doesn't have the huge ribbon).

So what exactly am I supposed to do while editing the dds? Or am I doing something wrong. Or is it that I'm trying my hand at something impossible to do? (Hopefully, not)

Any help would be appreciated (even if its related to something other than GIMP).
If you need to know, I play on TW server, and am using Windows 10.

What you're seeing is something called clipping, where the game devs cut away parts of the basebody skin texture underneath clothing. It's done to save computer resources since there is little point in drawing a complete body under clothing if it's hidden.
In B&S there seems to be a different basebody provided with every costume, hence why boobs on female characters vary in shape and size so much depending on what they wear.
The amount of clipping also varies a great deal from one costume to the next and you can never be really sure what you're going to find under parts of the clothing until you try modding the texture files.
Sadly we have no way to put back the missing skin textures, at least not through modding texture files. It might be possible to un-do basebody clipping (it's been done in BDO for example), but I don't know of any tools available to do it in B&S.
So all you can do really is just work with what you have, experiment with modding to see what you can get away with before you get holes in the body.

 

[Alexander Cooks]

Thank you very much for informing me of this.
I have done a fair bit of graphics before, but not for games and such, so I didn't need to 'clip' stuff, as you said.

Anyway, though I'm sad my perverted creation won't see light of the day, I'm extremely thankful to you for stopping me from wasting further time on this.

So I guess for any further editings, I should probably erase everything from the dds and check what all was clipped, and then edit parts accordingly.

I must say, I've a newfound respect for modders, now.

 

[PrincessNicky]

So I guess for any further editings, I should probably erase everything from the dds and check what all was clipped, and then edit parts accordingly.

This is exactly the way I do it, and depending on the result I'll screenshot a few angles so I've got something to refer to while I'm modding the texture file.

B&S does have a few surprises in costume texture files though, check out the Profane Shroud for Gon for example ;)

 

[Alexander Cooks]

Ooh, you've got me interested. I'll check it out.
Again, thanks for all your help.

 

[Alexander Cooks]

Sorry again to bother you people, but I have some more doubts.

This time, I tried modding another outfit and while I steered away from parts that were clipped, I still didn't get a satisfactory result.
The reason being the shadows cast by the parts I erased.
So a flap of a dress that is now invisible still casts a shadow and makes the crotch and legs look weird.

There are 4 files ( col1_D, col1_m, col1_n, col1_s ) in the exported folder.
And I thought that maybe '_s' stood for shadow, so I tried erasing the same parts from that file, but the results were same.

I have seen people solve this, but couldn't find a method to do it on any forum.
So, if possible can anyone help me with this problem?

 

[PrincessNicky]

Sorry again to bother you people, but I have some more doubts.

This time, I tried modding another outfit and while I steered away from parts that were clipped, I still didn't get a satisfactory result.
The reason being the shadows cast by the parts I erased.
So a flap of a dress that is now invisible still casts a shadow and makes the crotch and legs look weird.

There are 4 files ( col1_D, col1_m, col1_n, col1_s ) in the exported folder.
And I thought that maybe '_s' stood for shadow, so I tried erasing the same parts from that file, but the results were same.

I have seen people solve this, but couldn't find a method to do it on any forum.
So, if possible can anyone help me with this problem?

The shadows are direct colouring on the texture rather than something added. I've had reasonable success simply copy/pasting from parts that have no shading over the top of the shaded parts.
I don't even understand why they do it, if not just to be annoying to modders!

 

[Alexander Cooks]

Thank you very much for your reply.
But unfortunately, I don't seem to comprehend it fully.

I understood that shadows aren't kept in a separate file.

But what do I copy? And where do I paste it?
I mean I understand the process, but I'm erasing parts of an outfit, so what good will copying and pasting something do me?
If possible, could you explain it for a modding newbie like me?

Thanks.

 

[PrincessNicky]

Thank you very much for your reply.
But unfortunately, I don't seem to comprehend it fully.

I understood that shadows aren't kept in a separate file.

But what do I copy? And where do I paste it?
I mean I understand the process, but I'm erasing parts of an outfit, so what good will copying and pasting something do me?
If possible, could you explain it for a modding newbie like me?

Thanks.

If you look closely at any costume texture file, you'll see that it includes the parts of the body that are not clipped, whether or not they are covered by clothing and likewise parts of the clothing may be present that are also covered by other material. In both cases, where something would be covered by another layer, the part underneath will have been coloured with shading.
So to fix it the best you can, you need to copy/paste from parts that are visible without shading onto the parts that have been shaded.
To give you an example, here is the texture file (as a jpeg) of the Gon Kaari suit. I've put a red ring around the part of the texture that is her boobs skin texture under the bikini top she wears:

I've also circled that area on a picture of the original outfit so you can see the part I'm referring to:

If I want to mod the bikini to disappear, I can edit the texture file accordingly but then I'll have this:

To remove the shadow now showing on her skin, I need to fix the skin texture (and give her some nipples), which I can do by modding the part of her skin texture that I circled, so giving you a modded texture file looking like this:

You can see from that I actually made some other mods to the costume to remove the extra stuff hanging off it, but the important part you can see is where I've copy/pasted skin colour texture on the parts of her boob that got exposed (and added a nipple).
I can't find a photo of the final result on the Kaari suit, but it's identical to the Poineer costume apart from base colours, so here's how that one looks with the mods I did to it:

I hope this clarifies what I've been trying to explain.

 

[Alexander Cooks]

Thank you very much. I was finally able to mod it. Your explanation was really easy to understand and cleared up my doubts.

Again, my deepest gratitude.

 

[Alexander Cooks]

I swear this is really the last time I'll waste your time... hopefully.
This time, I was able to mod another outfit and no issues with clipping or shadows, at least most probably.
The uncertainty is because whenever I try to use the wardrobe to check out the modded costume, the game invariably crashes.
No internal errors, and I've checked no server maintenance, but a Windows 'Not Responding' message, and I have no choice but to terminate the game process.

I've repaired it through the launcher, and have run it in different situation as follows:
1. ONLY English Patch (latest, Project Izanami) - doesn't crash;
2. ONLY JP Voice Pack (latest, Project Izanami) - doesn't crash;
3. ONLY Disabled Loading Screen (since my PC is crappy) - doesn't crash;
4. ONLY mods from One Click Replacement Tool - doesn't crash;
5. MORE THAN ONE of the above - doesn't crash

The moment I use a mod that I exported, modded, and repacked myself, the game crashes (same is the case if I use my mod + any of the above).
This time I tried modding Red Specter, and the moment I try to look at it using F3, *BOOM*.
If I don't do that, the game still crashes, but after say 5 minutes.

So, obviously there's a problem with what the stupid me is doing, but I can't just put a finger on it.
(I figured it could be due to my editing, maybe a certain compression format of dds that I'm not using, or presence of minimaps, and I did try out a few things, but they didn't work)
Thus, I plead you kindly help me resolve this problem as well.

Also, sorry for the huge post.

Thanks.