Texture Editing guide for beginners...

[UndertakerWLF]

I have knocked up a quick guide to show the beginners on how to texture.. If peolpe can follow this I will do another for creating normal maps and viewing the model using 3DS max...

I've attached a download link for the tools in the guide which also contains an MS word copy of the guide.

Anyway here goes!

Texturing the SVR/WWE games

This guide will show you the very basics of extracting your Pac file and making it editable, this will be done based on my setup so if this is your first time I suggest you use my setup so that you don’t screw things up….

Please note I will not be explaining how to use Photoshop to edit, nor will I tell you how to get it, this guide should be all you need to get started, if you cannot follow this guide I suggest you use your console as a form of paper weight.

Prerequisites

Xpacker (Thanks Tekken)

Hex Editor

Image Editor like Photoshop, Gimp, Paint.net etc….

A JTAG Xbox or a PS3 with CFW

A Brain

Download link for tools -

http://www.mediafire...y2qvoh9j4owvu88

Creating your Working Directories

First of all create your working directories, I have a folder setup on my C: drive called Modding and within that I have several subfolders, one called Tools and the others are named after their respective games. (See figures A and B)

**It’s very important to have no spaces between any folder names or Xpacker will not work**

Find the Pac file you wish to edit and drag it into the relevant games folder, so if it’s for WWE13 drag it into the WWE13 folder. I like to keep my files tidy and organised so at this

point I will create a subfolder within WWE13 called CH and within this name it to match the Pac you are editing. So I will use the Rock for example who’s CH is ch100, so I will create folder called CH100 and place the CH00.Pac file within this.

So your file path should look like - C:\MODDING\WWE13\CH\CH100

Now we have our folders setup for Modding you will now need to browse to your tools folder and create a folder called Xpacker. Now download Xpacker and extract it into this location:

C:\MODDING\Tools\Xpacker

You should now have everything setup ready to mod (If you are lost at this stage I would give up now).

Launch Xpacker and you can either press ‘CTRL+X’ to open the Pac or go to File and select ‘open xbox360 \ps3 Pac’ and select your CH100 Rock pack from the directory you created earlier. It should look a little like the below image:

Now click on ‘Extract’, Xpacker will now extract the .Pach file, once extracted press ‘CTRL+3 OR CTRL+D’ to open the extracted .Pach file which has an ID of 00010002, Xpacker should now look like the following:

You should see a list of all the files contained within the .Pach file, the one that holds the textures is entry 000C, click on Uncompress and select the file path - C:\MODDING\WWE13\CH\CH100

Xpacker will now Uncompress the BPE file and generate 2 files (000C.BPE and 000C.Pac), while in Xpacker press ‘CTRL+T’ and open the newly extracted 000C.Pac file. Once opened you will see the texture archive:

Click on extract and Xpacker will now dump the texture which is in the DDS format (DirectDraw Surface)

Importing Images Into Your Editor

I use Adobe Photoshop for my texture edits, as standard Photoshop does not natively support DDS files so you will need to install the NVidia DDS plugins, there are both 32bit and 64bit versions of the plugin so I suggest you install the one that is native to your machine.

If you don’t have access to Photoshop you will need to grab either ‘GIMP or Paint.net’ and install the relevant plugins.

Once you have the plugins installed open up your extracted DDS file and make the relevant changes.

MIpMaps and DXT

Before saving your file open up the DDS File in your hex editor, it should look like the below image:

The number 04 denotes how many MipMaps the image has and DXT shows which DXT compression the file uses.

What’s a DXT – A DXT is a form of graphic file compression.

What’s a MipMap - MIP mapping features multiple images of a single texture map at different resolutions to represent surface textures at varying distances from the viewer's perspective:

So in the example the DDS File shows that it has 4 MipMaps and usesDXT1 file compression.

Make a note of the Mipmap and the DXT compression used

Saving Your Edited Texture

Once you have made your required edits click on save and select save as DDS. A new box will appear as shown below:

Pretty straight forward select your DXT compression version and then select the number of MipMaps and hit save.

Repacking your CH100.pac File

This again is very straightforward; it’s exactly the same as how you unpacked the file except in reverse……

While in Xpacker click on Inject and inject your new texture, If you get a file size is to big error then you have saved the file incorrectly. Once injected open up your 00010002.Pac file and inject the 000C.pac file into it, now open up the ch100.pac and then inject the 00010002.pac file into that.

Now all that is left is to update your arc files, simply click on update arc and select your arc files.

Thanks to Tekken for the Xpacker application and thanks to Brienj for XHP when it was around as I learnt a lot just from reading the threads in the many posts and for his tools which has made modding easier as has Tekkens although you can never beat a brain and a good Hex editor!

Happy texturing!

Edited March 6, 2013 by WWFfanatic

[Judders]

You're far too kind 'Taker lol. Prepare for the next onslaught of PM's asking why it's not working.

[UndertakerWLF]

Lol, there's always one person Judders who fails to read...

[OverTheEdge]

I will truly be stunned if someone manages to screw this up. This was the first thing I tried and learned how to do back when I started learning all of this stuff a few months back. It's ridiculously easy to do. Thanks for taking the time to put this together, though, because as you mentioned, there sadly is always that one person.

[Twistedmisery666™]

Nice good basic stuff guide taker

[bugsyboy]

Thanks alot for taking the time to make this great and simple tutorial

[tekken57]

Nice tutorial. This should be pinned

[Spyder78]

Needs more pictures & less text : (Just kidding man)

Appreciate the type up of this guide, will come in handy

[bugsyboy]

Ok there is nothing that i dont understand in that tutorial.i did everything you said but everytime i try to open let say ch101.pac with xpacker i get the invalid pac file selected message ,the only pac im abel to open is a ch101.decompressed.pac witch was create by extracting with brienj tool ,so from there i extrac the Pach file only to get that message again after trying to open the extracted .Pach file.

I made sure that there is no space in my folders name just like you said and i even try from desktop ,does anybody know why i cant open the pac file directly like in the tutorial

[tekken57]

Thats because the ch files have all been compressed this year. These files need to be decompressed first before they can be opened by x-packer.

[Deleted Member]

Excellent guide thx for the write up and ot. Hey Tekken

[UndertakerWLF]

Thanks guys, to be honest I forgot about the compression. I'll update that later tonight

[canaus]

WWfanatic nice tutorial ,

format texture for normal.dds and alpha?

[chokeslam]

Awesome！！

[brienj]

Needs more pictures & less text : (Just kidding man)

Appreciate the type up of this guide, will come in handy

Exactly my thoughts as well. There isn't a video either, which is needed by the people who even need this tutorial ...

BTW, this will only help people do the exact same example you gave, when they try to apply it to their own thing, they will come back to get the exact info on each of the files they work on ...

But I gave up on posting tutorials ages ago, because if someone needs a tutorial like this, they are usually beyond help.

I'll say you did a good job on the tutorial though.

[UndertakerWLF]

Yeah I know it won't help everyone but at least it will get them looking in the right direction...hopefully...lol

BTW I actually found your tutorials pretty handy and I think I may still have them on my HDD somewhere

[canaus]

i don't know the format for dds files Mask01, Mask02.dds, who knows can give me this info please?

[canaus]

uhm i found , the all mask .dds have all RGB 16 4.4.4.4 bp unsigned

[bugsyboy]

Thats because the ch files have all been compressed this year. These files need to be decompressed first before they can be opened by x-packer.

ok thanks

[Mathayus]

Thanks for the tuto, WWFfanatic, this things do the forum better.

uhm i found , the all mask .dds have all RGB 16 4.4.4.4 bp unsigned

Thanks for the tip, canaus. It can be usable for people.

[VinceRusso]

taker love your tutorial but one question once i made the mod how do i update de h files?

[UndertakerWLF]

The H files are opened in Notepad (just type in notepad in the run command box and it will open) then say you have ch100 Rock, just remove the ch so it reads 100 and save the file.

Simple as that

[Koolgus]

If I get it working I will make tutorial video.

[UndertakerWLF]

It's not that difficult to get working....just follow the exmaple in the guide and apply it to your own texture mod. If nobody can follow the guide they need to find a new hobby

[Miztah Raza]

It's not that difficult to get working....just follow the exmaple in the guide and apply it to your own texture mod. If nobody can follow the guide they need to find a new hobby

If someone can't follow a tutorial this well-written, and with examples, they really do need find a new hobby, a hobby which has absolutely nothing to do with 'modding' and requires using as less common sense as possible LOL