Tutorial on Swapping character models

[Master Kyodai]

Family Guys 99 minute rip also seems to be extremely complete, prolly the only rip that comes close to a full dump:

http://www.snesorama.us/board/showthread.php?t=53068

[Oppy]

its cool, downloading the gdi, as its for emulation and modding purposes only. Just signed up for a rapid share premium account. Thanks heaps for the help kyodai.

[Oppy]

Ok kyodai. Sorry to bug you again man. but where do i find ryos model? I cant find Akir in human.afs nor could i find it in your face textures zip.

[wude]

the swapped character is for cut-scenes only ,or you can play with it?

[Master Kyodai]

Oh i wish there was just one Ryo, i think there are 3 or 4 different models for Ryo. I remember when i made my first character swap i had the bright idea to change Ryo with Shenhua. What i didn't know was that YKB was a model of ryo, but it was the one from the moves scroll, so my Ryo model stayed the same , only when i opened the moves screen it was Shenhua who was doing the moves in the little preview. It comes even worse - there is a more detailed Ryo model for inside the Hazuki residence and a less detailed for walking around. It's only that bad for Ryo - prolly as he's the character you play. I know this is gonna come next, so before you ask - i don't have a list which model is called what and in which folder. My best advise here would be to extract all models and take a look at the filenames while browsing them. I am quite sure to remember that AKIR is Ryo, YKB is Ryo, i also think AAA was Ryo. Then theres also the young Ryo from the flashback cutscenes. Wish i had more info, but i don't.

[wude]

thanks for your precious info, i'll try with AAA, and see what i can get.

[wude]

oh man this is so frustrating!!

i wanted to swap ine-san with nozomi, but nozomi is named HRSK in the HUMANS.AFS ,and NZM in the textures folders(head , chars , hands). so i was confused ,and the result was that all the town resident desapeared exept the wrestling boy.







any ideas, because in the tutorial (witch is a shenmue 2 exemple) , the names in the afs file are the same in the mt7 files.

[Master Kyodai]

Well i know this problem, but i haven't gotten it that far that like EVERYONE disappeared (Why the fat boy stays is beyond my understanding). Actually this is cool, you should keep that built for a "Sightseeing" version, it might also be helpfull for grabbing with 3D ripper as less peoples means less polygons on screen so maybe it has a positive effect on the backface culling issue. It might also be cool to record a "Dobuita walkthrough" video to show off the city without the people, giving a quite unique experience.


To get back on topic - if you read the tutorial you notice there are 2 handles you can use for character swapping.

On the one side the game has a "list" with which filename belongs to which character, so one handle is to edit this list as David described in the tutorial in the first post of this topic.

The other handle is the files themselves - like you did it - just rename the files.


After i tried both methods i had much more success with David's method of editing the reference list (In S2 namely the IDX file and the PKS/PKF files themselves). I know it is a bit different for Shenmue 1.


The only thing i really learned from swapping files is that you most often end up with invisible characters. From what i understand: The problem here is that when you swap like Ryo and Nozomi (Would be funny to see the motorcycle ride home with that set-up) just swapping the filenames makes The game read the Nozomi file (Which in reality is the renamed Ryo) when Nozomi appears on screen. But when it opens up the Nozomi file it looks for like "HRSK" but as only the file name changed and not the contents of it it will see like "AAA" but not find "HRSK" - obviously as you fooled it and made it look into the Ryo file which of course doesnt contain any "HRSK" descriptor.

David is much better at explaining such stuff, wish he was here. Try to get familiar with a Hex Editor (I use HxD which is free and good) and the search function. Search Nozomis files (ALL) for HRSK and learn where the descriptors are.

My recommendation would be to try following the tutorial strictly. I know you prolly arent into swapping Master Tao and Shenhua, but do it for the learning. You'll get much more familiar with the files if you did this.


I wish i could make a Shenmue 1 modding tutorial, but at the moment stress is overwhelming, I am working on too many projects, having too many appointments and stuff. I will get back to Shenmue modding and try making some good tutorials on your own, but untill then you're more or less on your own i fear.


One day i wanna make an easy to use GUI tool which does the changes for you with like 3 mouseclicks, but at my current workload i barely have 5 minutes to even think about it, so it is rather unlikely i will get to it in a near future.

I try to pop in here at least once a day, but i seriously lack time atm. But I'll be back, bet on it!

[Oppy]

Master K. Do you know which files i swap if I want to use Ryos passport model in game and in the hazuki residence?

[Master Kyodai]

Sorry, i don't remember what the name of the passport model was, but from common sense it's prolly the largest of all Ryo models.

[Oppy]

Inesan is now chai, Fukusan is now Mark, Lan di is Master chen, and iwao is nozomi. Hillarious starting cutscene. I know its impossible, but iy would be even funnier if it changed the voices aswell.

[Master Kyodai]

lol, you should definitely post a video of it at youtube. Maybe you can post which files you finally changed, so others can avoid the problems you initially had.

[dotsona]

^^ I want to see a video of this as well

[wude]

lol, you should definitely post a video of it at youtube. Maybe you can post which files you finally changed, so others can avoid the problems you initially had.

i agree with that

[Oppy]

Whats a good screen cap program? Im struggling to record something that isnt a shuttering mess.