Brawl Reskins: Custom Alt Colors (No burning needed)

[Sora Master2.0]

Yeah people have mentioned it. But idk if anyone's working on it, I could try to make one later, when I get home, It would take me a while, and his eyes would make it difficult for me because even the "experts" are having issues with them.

We should put Shadow on hold. I've heard talk about Model Hacking and that would make him look better. Btw, why can't we just take Shadow's textures and replace Sonics with his? :veryconfu

 

[Raganook]

Allow me to personally inform you that Sonic eyeballs are a completely fricking nightmare.


They are +2 textures (nightmare) WITH mitmapping (nightmare), and the combination is not SUPPOSED to exist, as the program used to generate .TPL files will not generate CI8+RGB5A3 textures WITH mimapping.

Allow me to personally inform you of one other thing:

As soon as someone far more talented than myself (*cough* Pharrox *cough* Gary *cough*) figures this small eye problem out, you will be pleasantly surprised

 

[Phreeq]

Has anyone looked at replacing Wario's pac with wariomans? So you could be like "I'm super powerful" but you're actually not...

 

[gigasteve]

Has anyone looked at replacing Wario's pac with wariomans? So you could be like "I'm super powerful" but you're actually not...

But Wario doesn't have a cape...

 

[Phreeq]

But, maybe the models are hidden within the PAC's or has this been disproved?

Anyone feel like testing out my Kirby TexHack for me?

Here is the PCS

 

[Raganook]

Gary/Pharrox, do you know of a way to extract the mipmaps from a file for editing? I just found that Peach's mipmaps actually come out separately...which is rather convenient...and would solve my Sonic problems.

 

[SarahHarp]

The TPL CI8 RGB5A3 combination can exist, seeing as the tool you use isn't the only tool Nintendo uses to generate textures. Mipmapping should be usually done with the graphics program anyway (some games used specialized mipmaps to give certain effects). You could leave it up to the tool, as you're doing, but then you might run into issues (as you are).

You could eliminate all your issues if you wrote a proper tpl generator tool. Because one doesn't exist yet, your best bet would be to just copy over mipmaps and overwrite the old ones in hex.

 

[Androu1]

We should put Shadow on hold. I've heard talk about Model Hacking and that would make him look better. Btw, why can't we just take Shadow's textures and replace Sonics with his? :veryconfu

WE CAN'T EDIT SONIC YET! HE HAS A FEW +2 TEXTURES!!!

I am making my own shiny Charizard,to go with my shiny Squirtle and (kinda) shiny Ivysaur.Kinda shiny Ivysaur because his bulb is an +2 texture...

Unless what was done with Ike's hair could be done with his bulb too

EDIT:I will just use his green costume and not change the bulb.I hate the green costumes of the other 2 pokemons,so it would be fitting.

 

[Raganook]

The TPL CI8 RGB5A3 combination can exist, seeing as the tool you use isn't the only tool Nintendo uses to generate textures. Mipmapping should be usually done with the graphics program anyway (some games used specialized mipmaps to give certain effects). You could leave it up to the tool, as you're doing, but then you might run into issues (as you are).

You could eliminate all your issues if you wrote a proper tpl generator tool. Because one doesn't exist yet, your best bet would be to just copy over mipmaps and overwrite the old ones in hex.

Thanks for responding However, this is actually what I did. I took the CI8 RGB5A3 indexed file and I, in photoshop, kept halving the total dimensions (1/4 the area), then I placed them into the file manually. This, however, did not work. Reason being (I assume), is that each mipmap was also indexed, and hence was looking for their index files. Instead of seeing an index file, it saw the previous texture, leading to all my mipmaps becoming pitch black.

I would be thrilled if you knew of a method that would allow a successful workaround, as I have been trying various things this entire day :D

Edit: After re-reading, I see you mentioned "copying over mipmaps". I know that the mipmaps are all jammed into my texture file, however I have no idea how to separate the texture into main/mipmap1/mipmap2 (etc etc).

If I could do that, in theory my problem would be solved Please advice!

 

[Sora Master2.0]

Okay. I found a program that hacks brawl in the same sense that AR does but all you need is a sd card and the program. It works the same way UsB Gecko does. U think that we could import the textures somehow this way?

 

[SarahHarp]

Finding the starts of all the mipmaps is quite easy, just cursor over a certain amount of bytes reletive from the start of the first mipmap (and so on) using the formula:

mipwidth*mipheight*(value)

where "value" is based on the compression ratio of that texture. (Ex: argb8 = *4 (4 bytes per pixel), st3c = *.5, CI8 = 1, etc.)

 

[Raganook]

I'm afraid you are going to have to simplify that one for me, way over my head =/

And since you are so knowledgable about this, I have one more question. In a CI8+RGB5A3 palette file, the mipmaps are going to use that same palette aren't they? Or do they use a different type of compression?

Let me tell you what I did:

1) I compared the size of my texture (it had no mipmaps) to the normal texture.

2) I discovered the a mipmap at half the size of my original file, plus a mipmap at a quarter of the size of my original would end up making a perfect number of bytes. So I took my original, and in photoshop I shrunk it to 50% and 25% size.

3) Both mipmaps I made CI8+RGB5A3, and both mipmaps I told to determine their palette's from the original file. This totally failed. What steps do I need to take to make this actually succeed?

4) By comparing my files generated without mipmaps to the one in the original, I now have separated the hex into Palette -> Texture -> 1/2 Mipmap -> 1/4 Mipmap -> 1/8 Mipmap. Of course, since I have it open in my hex editor, none of them really make any real sense, and I'm not sure how to export them so as to modify them.

 

[SarahHarp]

I just checked and palettes don't store anything related to mipmaps (so, all the subsequent mipmaps in an indexed colour texture reference the same palette.

As I said above, the mipmap size for the texture you're looking at is 128*128*1 = somewhere around 16,000. the next mipmap is 64*64*1 = 4000 or so, and the last mipmap is 32*32*1 = 1024. (sonic's eye only uses 3 mipmaps). From these you can determine the starting points of the mipmaps (so you can copy/past stuff over).

I'm not exactly sure where you're making your mistake, but if it isn't a fault of your own, then the problem lies with the tool you're using (in which it's having problems creating your "mipmaps" based on colours from a completely different file)

..Alternatively, I guess you could tell brawl not to use any mipmaps with this texture, and simply pad the unused space with filler bytes.

 

[Raganook]

Ah, thanks I understand the calculation steps now

Unfortunately, if I pad out the mipmaps with filler, the game will fade out into this strange black-ish transparent-ish thing. Its ugly as heck.

I'm trying again to simply re-paste my hand-made mipmaps into the file. With any luck it will work

Yes, the tools have their limits, especially because they screw around with the size of the palettes. I have been manually changing colors one at a time in the +2 palettes so as to avoid having to stick palettes at the end of the file, hence increasing file size and making the .pac incompatible with some other .pacs.

One very last question. I understand how to read RGB565 and RGB5A3 colors perfectly, no problem. In a CI8 file that references those palettes for colors, what do the values in the CI8 (the texture) portion of file actually mean/do? Do they all just reference a part of the palette itself?

 

[SarahHarp]

By adding filler bytes of all 0 and leaving it as that, it's obviously going to fade to black, which is why I said to tell brawl -not- to use mipmaps in this texture (change various mipmap values in the texture header).

The values in an indexed texture are simply just indices into the palette (which is just a table of colours). Index of 0 means use the first palette colour, and etc.

 

[Raganook]

Ah. I see, you mean just disable it entirely. Well, I'm happy to know the option is there, I'm going to attempt to avoid it . I'm assuming they have it there for good reason. Since you confirm that what I am doing SHOULD work, here goes try #2!

.....Fail. My only guess is that the mipmap files don't know where the palette is, and hence don't fill themselves in with any color. I just have no idea other than that....

If I zoom in REALLY close, the original texture is visible (and perfect!) but all the mipmaps are solid black.

 

[SarahHarp]

They have mipmaps set because as you zoom out, you won't have pixels fighting their neighbors to see who gets drawn (this makes things look artifacted (flashing pixels)).
Having the mipmaps would be better (makes things smooth at distances), but otherwise there's no other good reason for including them (unless of course, brawl had a special use for those mipmaps, sort of like mario sunshine's water) but it doesn't.

You're still not disabling the mipmaps if you say you can zoom in and it looks fine, but when you zoom out it's black. (when you disable mipmaps, zooming should not affect anything anymore)

 

[Raganook]

No I know, I was just mentioning what the current problem was I'm re-compiling Sonic as we speak trying something different...I'm not going to disable mipmaps unless I have to (not to mention I have to look up where that is stored in the header )

There is one other thing that has been bothering me. Mario's water tank is a RGB565, which has no transparency. However, his tank has quite a bit of transparency; you can actually see straight through it. How on earth was this accomplished? Or is this simply not a matter of textures, but of models?

 

[SarahHarp]

The transparency of that tank would be stored inside a material (which is model-related).

Also, I've never look at a palettes colours alone, but a possible technicality is that any new colours made from mipmaps (say because of the blending of two colours), it might be stored at the end of the palette, and the mipmaps simply references these ending values, where as the base texture ignores them.

 

[Raganook]

I in theory avoided that by having all mipmaps define their colors from the original file's palette only. Although, I never thought of the mipmaps appending the actual original palette, it just seems unlikely.

You have been incredibly helpful Thanks a lot! I'm minutes away from seeing if Sonic worked

 

[SarahHarp]

I was saying that since mimaps use colours unique to those mipmaps only, there will be colours in the palette that the base texture doesn't use, and if the mipmap has the same colour as the base, it'll reference that same colour in the palette too. (which seems likely)

 

[Raganook]

Gotcha! Well, testing Sonic now...I noticed that even though I did (what I thought was) the exact same thing, the hex editor picked up some differences. So we will see. If photoshop didn't completely screw up palettes, none of this would be an issue.

 

[The H Kid]

Okay. I found a program that hacks brawl in the same sense that AR does but all you need is a sd card and the program. It works the same way UsB Gecko does. U think that we could import the textures somehow this way?

Same story and same question.

 

[Raganook]

SarahHarp, you are my hero

All three of our Sonic redesigns work without the slightest problem. Thanks a million

 

[Sora Master2.0]

Same story and same question.

Is it ocarina?

 

[Menneb]

So has anyone got into music hacking?

 

[Phreeq]

Agh, will someone please try out my waddle doo texture? All you have to do is insert my pcs into the iso.

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=09d8bd3af739a51e19747bd91027d4dd5171a27c158cce27

 

[Androu1]

Agh, will someone please try out my waddle doo texture? All you have to do is insert my pcs into the iso.

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=09d8bd3af739a51e19747bd91027d4dd5171a27c158cce27

I will try it out when I fix/change my modchip,mkay?

 

[Phreeq]

thanks Androu

 

[Androu1]

OK.Problems...very stupid problem indeed!

When I use texconv to make the TPLs on Pikachu (bandana costume) and one of my Ness costumes I get an error saying there is no "alpha layer".What do I do?! I remember sending one of the textures to Raganook,so he used TexConv on it and instead of getting the stupid error,it worked! Why it doesn't for me?

I am,yes,using it on Vista...

Also,out of 12 costumes,only these 2 costumes have given me that error.And it's on all of their textures.

 

[Phreeq]

the same thing happened to me at first, I ended up re-extracting them and everything, then just pasting the tga's with errors over to the new ones, and voila!

 

[gehaga]

OK.Problems...very stupid problem indeed!

When I use texconv to make the TPLs on Pikachu (bandana costume) and one of my Ness costumes I get an error saying there is no "alpha layer".What do I do?! I remember sending one of the textures to Raganook,so he used TexConv on it and instead of getting the stupid error,it worked! Why it doesn't for me?

I am,yes,using it on Vista...

Also,out of 12 costumes,only these 2 costumes have given me that error.And it's on all of their textures.

is it possible to change someones hair color when they have a smashball, or only their eyes, i know you can do the eyes because they change there eye color when they have it but maybe theres something i don't know about?

 

[Androu1]

Only the eyes,gehaga.And not on everyone...I think MK uses the same eyes with or without smashball...I haven't edited him,but I think so.

the same thing happened to me at first, I ended up re-extracting them and everything, then just pasting the tga's with errors over to the new ones, and voila!

Mmmm...gotta try that.

On other news,I may fix/change my modchip next week (IF I'm lucky).My dad is almost all the time at work and the place where I need to go for the modchip is very far.If he's work-free next weekend,you all will most likely get picturs next week.

 

[Raganook]

Interesting issue:

In trying to replace Character Selection portraits (to match the texture swaps), I have encountered two different locations that have the graphics, but NEITHER of them affect character selection portraits.

1) Victory Selection portraits - Menu>Common>char_bust_tex

2) ???? - Menu>SelCharacter>Char_bust_text

The 2nd one, after being edited, does seemingly nothing, as I couldn't get my portrait to show up in any single/multi menu.


If you know (or have an idea) of where these *******s are hiding, please post

The other .brres files in the Menu>SelCharacter folder are deffinitely unrelated....

 

[Steelia]

Those Luigi-to-Mr. L and Charizard-to-Shiny colorings are GENIOUS! (I'm surprised I just found this topic out now. )

AMAZING job with those, as well as the Peach and Pikachu ones. Ahh, how nice it would be to be able to change up the models of characters, or bring in custom colors.

 

[Androu1]

What did you mean with "bring in custom colors" Steelia?

 

[memphischains]

I always liked kirby with the G&W hat, can that be done?

it should be right? there is probably already a texture for it since its already in the game. that would be cool to have that as a compete costume

 

[RaynEX]

lmao black charizard looks so siiick.

 

[Androu1]

OK.I am having 3 big problems:

1)Squirtle: when I put the HEX data of my 1st TPL it's WAY too big,so it ends up deleting another 2 textures.Why is it so LONG?

2)Snake: his 4th texture seems to be way too short.It doesn't reach the start of the next texture.Is that OK?

3)Alpha Layer: when I pass some textures (Ness' and Pikachu's) thru TexConv I get an "there's not alpha layer in file".It's weird,since I made 2 costumes for Ness and only one is giving me problems.I sent the files to Phreeq and he gets the same error. FIXED FOR ONCE AND FOR ALL

 

[Phreeq]

Woah what happened that other program fix didn't help?