Help needed - Blade & Soul NA/EU costume modding (1 Viewer)

[lolilove]

Yes, it s a biggie but at this point I don't think it will be particularly difficult. What I'm most worried about at this point is what kinds of translation will be needed for the internal objects when they are exported to make them useful to the people doing the real hard work of changing the skins.

I have seen OGG files, TGA files, and even fonts and those should export fine, but the animations and meshes and all the 3D stuff may be a pain from what I've read.

TGA files would be for textures and imo the most important, which I have seen a program be able to extract those, but again, no way to put them back in once edited. Except of course you have access to the super secret elite club member that a select few seem to have been granted. Which is why we need this program so everyone can start modding for Blade and Soul and not just a few elitist.

Now this is just my opinion, even if you can't get the animations and meshes, but make it so you can export the textures and then be able to repack the edited versions that already is a major breakthrough.

Of course, it would be better if we could mod meshes + animations as well, but right now modders can't do ANYTHING at all. The only thing that can be done in BnS right now is to swap existing assets, but that isn't exactly modding.

And even if only texture editing isn't everything, it is something and is very powerful in allowing modders to do a lot of stuff. Certainly more than what can be done now.

Anyways, I guess I would suggest that if it proves very time consuming or difficult to get the animations + meshes, perhaps first release a version of just being about to export + repack textures, then later versions could include other stuff as well.

Also, making the textures come out into .dds files is not absolutely necessary to change/edit/mod textures. It would be nice, since a lot of work has been done using that format, which is what umod put textures into, but as long as the .tga files could be exported and repacked, modding that way for texture is still very doable.

Which, again, in the end, I think a lot of modders are looking for just SOMETHING to be able to do, just get started, because right now there is nothing at all that can be done...

 

[PrincessNicky]

TGA files would be for textures and imo the most important, which I have seen a program be able to extract those, but again, no way to put them back in once edited. Except of course you have access to the super secret elite club member that a select few seem to have been granted. Which is why we need this program so everyone can start modding for Blade and Soul and not just a few elitist.

Now this is just my opinion, even if you can't get the animations and meshes, but make it so you can export the textures and then be able to repack the edited versions that already is a major breakthrough.

Of course, it would be better if we could mod meshes + animations as well, but right now modders can't do ANYTHING at all. The only thing that can be done in BnS right now is to swap existing assets, but that isn't exactly modding.

And even if only texture editing isn't everything, it is something and is very powerful in allowing modders to do a lot of stuff. Certainly more than what can be done now.

Anyways, I guess I would suggest that if it proves very time consuming or difficult to get the animations + meshes, perhaps first release a version of just being about to export + repack textures, then later versions could include other stuff as well.

Also, making the textures come out into .dds files is not absolutely necessary to change/edit/mod textures. It would be nice, since a lot of work has been done using that format, which is what umod put textures into, but as long as the .tga files could be exported and repacked, modding that way for texture is still very doable.

Which, again, in the end, I think a lot of modders are looking for just SOMETHING to be able to do, just get started, because right now there is nothing at all that can be done...

I am one of those with just basic modding ability, I wouldn't even know where to start editing body mesh and stuff.
I've been working just on textures, doing mods for costumes to make them more appealing.
So I agree 100% with lolilove, if a version of the application being worked on by stricq can first be finished that can deal with exporting and re-importing costume textures, that would make me one happy girl, allowing me to start sharing my work with the community like I promised during the early betas.
For myself, having the files to work with in .dds format would be easiest since I know where I am with those, but I'm sure I can learn to cope with them in another format if that proves easier.

 

[stricq]

TGA files would be for textures and imo the most important, which I have seen a program be able to extract those, but again, no way to put them back in once edited. Except of course you have access to the super secret elite club member that a select few seem to have been granted. Which is why we need this program so everyone can start modding for Blade and Soul and not just a few elitist.

I am one of those with just basic modding ability, I wouldn't even know where to start editing body mesh and stuff.
I've been working just on textures, doing mods for costumes to make them more appealing.
So I agree 100% with lolilove, if a version of the application being worked on by stricq can first be finished that can deal with exporting and re-importing costume textures, that would make me one happy girl, allowing me to start sharing my work with the community like I promised during the early betas.

Alrighty then! Let me see what I can get done for just the "Texture2D" stuff (that is specifically what you are both asking for.) I'm very close to being able to export the individual objects now. In the meantime, you will need to install the very latest .Net Framework if you don't already have it. Here is a link to the runtime installer.

Download Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1 (Web Installer) for Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 from Official Microsoft Download Center

 

[stricq]

Looking at this screenshot, you can see the highlighted property. This tells me that the format of the object is very likely DDS regardless of the extension on the file name. It was most likely converted when the upk file was created. At this point I have the data stored in its own memory array. All that is left is to save it out to a file.

 

[lolilove]

Looking at this screenshot, you can see the highlighted property. This tells me that the format of the object is very likely DDS regardless of the extension on the file name. It was most likely converted when the upk file was created. At this point I have the data stored in its own memory array. All that is left is to save it out to a file.

If you are able to extract the textures as .dds that would be great, since I am assuming it would be easy to repack .dds back in if you can pull them out as .dds. This would be great news since a lot of work has already been completed with textures using .dds, (for example all of naduron's work).
The problem is that the live full release NA version of BnS won't allow the latest versions of umod to work. I believe the program itself (not even the game guard) is detecting umod messing with the memory and causing the game to crash. Which is why ultimately, a unpacker/repack for the .upks is a much better solution to modding BnS or even any other game than a program that messes with the memory which can actively be detected. Doing a checksum on files could in theory counter changing .upks, but usually they are only done once before launch and thus can more easily be bypassed or worked around since they are not "24/7" actively checking.

But, anyways, yeah, I would be very happy if we could get all of Naduron's work of all the .dds into .upks. I guess Naduron would too, since I would image that it must suck to have all the work you did into a bunch of textures suddenly became useless after the full release launch.

 

[terrytmk]

I hope the repacker could fix the low poly nude for Yun and find a solution to torpedo tits on Gon

 

[PrincessNicky]

Looking at this screenshot, you can see the highlighted property. This tells me that the format of the object is very likely DDS regardless of the extension on the file name. It was most likely converted when the upk file was created. At this point I have the data stored in its own memory array. All that is left is to save it out to a file.

It's fantastic to see your application unpacking files in a recognisable .dds format, certainly looks like it's well on the way to doing what we need it to do.
During the short period in early CBTs where it was possible to use uMod 2 to capture hi-res costume textures (in-game texture setting 5), I grabbed a handful of textures to start working on. These were all in the DXT5 .dds format.
I see your example shows a texture in DXT1 .dd format, can you have a look to see if you're also getting files as DXT5 please?
I'm sure that BnS uses both these formats just the same as TERA does, but they were never interchangeable, if you accidentally saved a DXT1 as DXT5 or vice-versa the client had a fit and died when you imported it back into the game.
In TERA's case, the majority of costume textures were DXT5s, though they threw in some DXT1s as well, so it may well be the case in BnS as well.

But, anyways, yeah, I would be very happy if we could get all of Naduron's work of all the .dds into .upks. I guess Naduron would too, since I would image that it must suck to have all the work you did into a bunch of textures suddenly became useless after the full release launch.

Poor Naduron may be having a heart attack with this, but I hope it goes well for him <3

I hope the repacker could fix the low poly nude for Yun and find a solution to torpedo tits on Gon

The new application will first allow us to work on existing textures. If we can find a Yun body mesh that's complete after removing whatever clothing she's wearing, then a hi-res nude becomes no problem.
Similarly, fixing the barbiedoll lower half on existing nude mod upk files should work.
Fixing Gon boobs is a different problem. BnS devs for whatever reason decided it's fine to totally change the shape of the boobs depending what costume is being worn, so those lovely shapely boobs you think you got when you created your character can distort into all shapes and sizes whenever you wear something different.
Why they didn't just use the one body mesh for all when dressing them I have no idea, but fixing it would have to be done at the individual costume level and being able to reshape the boobs on the actual body mesh for that costume.
It looks likely that our new application will at some point make it possible to do all this, for those modders who understand how to do it, though whether or not anyone will want to spend the time on it when you can't just do one fix that suits all we'll just have to see.

 

[c6222848]

hey um, do you guys found a way to repack the upk file?
I'm a chinese here and the website 'the land of hope' do have one but they keep it as 'Core tech' and we can only ask them to pack our texture files.
It's quite annoying, i would support you guys in anyway i can for a public repack tool...

 

[Naduron]

Poor Naduron may be having a heart attack with this, but I hope it goes well for him <3

It will never be as horrible as when the "Tera - Nude Mods" topic crashed, so i had to create a new topic called Tera - Nude Mods; Continue and spammed lots of "reserve posts", spent so many days re-creating that topic. xD
Even the Tera - Nude Mods; Continue has reached it's limit long ago xD


The most famous games almost always has a import/inject tool, so my mods are already ready for them, except for a few tools/package that req a different DXT version, size, resulotion, while others are just copy/paste :p

 

[c6222848]

It's a lot more complicated than that. You have to know what it is you are looking at/for. You would need to know what a dds file looks like when looking at the hex view of the data. Then, once I get that figured out I can make it a lot easier. I already have it displaying a hex dump of each individual item in a file, but no further. Those individual items have their own format. Once I identify what a dds file looks like then I can hunt for them quickly.

If Gildor's umodel app supported BnS NA upk file formats it would be perfect for this but the format has changed slightly from the asian release. I could probably take some time and modify Gildor's code (it is on github) but I need a better understanding of the format before I can do that.

I do have a app that contains all previews of files, like a small database

 

[stricq]

Just a quick update. It seems the texture files are compressed (and encrypted but that's not a problem.) The structure of the data is very similar to the whole package compression, but just different enough that I had to do more research on it. I know enough now to write the code to decompress/decrypt but there are still a few bytes here and there that I don't know what they represent. If I am to have any hope of repacking modded textures I need to know what they are. I've asked Gildor for help but he keeps say to just look at his code. It takes some time to understand someonelse's code so it may be another day or two.

 

[PrincessNicky]

Just a quick update. It seems the texture files are compressed (and encrypted but that's not a problem.) The structure of the data is very similar to the whole package compression, but just different enough that I had to do more research on it. I know enough now to write the code to decompress/decrypt but there are still a few bytes here and there that I don't know what they represent. If I am to have any hope of repacking modded textures I need to know what they are. I've asked Gildor for help but he keeps say to just look at his code. It takes some time to understand someonelse's code so it may be another day or two.

Thank you for all the time and effort you're putting into this stricq, it's really appreciated here <3

 

[c6222848]

Just a quick update. It seems the texture files are compressed (and encrypted but that's not a problem.) The structure of the data is very similar to the whole package compression, but just different enough that I had to do more research on it. I know enough now to write the code to decompress/decrypt but there are still a few bytes here and there that I don't know what they represent. If I am to have any hope of repacking modded textures I need to know what they are. I've asked Gildor for help but he keeps say to just look at his code. It takes some time to understand someonelse's code so it may be another day or two.

Nice! Thank you so much

 

[Lucif]

Just a quick update. It seems the texture files are compressed (and encrypted but that's not a problem.) The structure of the data is very similar to the whole package compression, but just different enough that I had to do more research on it. I know enough now to write the code to decompress/decrypt but there are still a few bytes here and there that I don't know what they represent. If I am to have any hope of repacking modded textures I need to know what they are. I've asked Gildor for help but he keeps say to just look at his code. It takes some time to understand someonelse's code so it may be another day or two.

Em... Thank you for your work, and i would be help u, but don't know how... i find this site, may be it help you in work. This man wrote program to BnS (retexture files), but he do not post this program.
Texture Data in BNS UPK - Sippey Fun Labs

This mod done with his program >>

p/s sorry for my english

 

[PrincessNicky]

Whilst excitedly waiting for stricq to complete his work, I've found I can do some limited costume modding, albeit that they can't be used in the game yet.
In the hopes that it won't be too long before we can really get to work with stricq's tool (wow that sounds wrong, but you get my meaning :p), I've done a bit of work on the new Trancendence costume which is a beautiful dress but a little too fussy.
My rough mod sexifies it a bit as you can see here (first image is the original unmodded dress):

The finished mod and others like this to follow once we have a working tool :)

 

[Lucif]

Whilst excitedly waiting for stricq to complete his work, I've found I can do some limited costume modding, albeit that they can't be used in the game yet.
In the hopes that it won't be too long before we can really get to work with stricq's tool (wow that sounds wrong, but you get my meaning :p), I've done a bit of work on the new Trancendence costume which is a beautiful dress but a little too fussy.
My rough mod sexifies it a bit as you can see here (first image is the original unmodded dress):

The finished mod and others like this to follow once we have a working tool :)

Ohhhhh.... its wonderful! It's work!

 

[stricq]

Em... Thank you for your work, and i would be help u, but don't know how... i find this site, may be it help you in work. This man wrote program to BnS (retexture files), but he do not post this program.

I've already read that site and it was very helpful. The only thing he doesn't cover is how to save the texture data to a file. That part I'm still working on. I'm also doing a quick rewrite of the code that parses the upk file now that I have a much better understanding of the inner workings.

 

[stricq]

Can someone send me an actual DDS file that was exported from the game. I'd like to take a look at its structure.

 

[PrincessNicky]

Can someone send me an actual DDS file that was exported from the game. I'd like to take a look at its structure.

Here's the un-modded Trancendence costume I captured earlier:
Client_W1024_H1024_F894720068_T_0X4C10198EF164F576.7z

 

[stricq]

Here's the un-modded Trancendence costume I captured earlier

Perfect, thanks!