masking tool Masking Tool HELP REQUIRED!

[Perfectplex]

Alright I think I've dug into this file as far as I can and now running into bother working out some annoying little bits.

Once this part is sorted the Masking Tool can go ahead but until then the information should prove helpful for people wishing to make their own mask files (00CE).

The irony is I actually joined this site a year ago and made one post, regarding masking , now here I am over a year later taking it to the next level to get the most out of this little file.

Anyway the 00CE files breakdown.

This is a custom built 00CE file but they all follow this structure in some way or another.

OK right off the bat, the traditional method to disable masking has been to 00' out every byte, this isn't necessary, just change the number of objects to mask to 00 in the headers, there will be a similar structure for the head model, I for now wish to conquer the body model before moving onto the head but it would be likely the first byte after a row of 00's if it has any masking properties applied to it you wish to remove.

Starting from the first bytes:

00 00 00 00   0C 00 00 00   02 00 00 00

the 02 I believe is the number of headers to work with, in this case the head model and the body model.

Then we move onto the Head model, I am going to skip this for now because the body is the focus to get perfected, worry about the head later.

OK so now we have the Body header, this seems to start with 4C 00 00 00   XX XX 00 00 each time, the XX XX seems to change from 00CE file to 00CE file and I have yet to find the exact meaning behind it so any help cracking this would be welcomed.

Then after a cluster of 0 bytes we have the 09 (for this case) which is the number of models within the Body model to work masking on, I have chosen 9 because 0 - 8 = 9 models.

I have highlighted and labelled the reference ID for each body part but just to clarify.

Object 01 : Torso	00 = 98 (152) [14]	(20)
Object 02 : Left Arm	01 = A9 (169) [09]	(09)
Object 03 : Right Arm	02 = 9B (155) [09]	(09)
Object 04 : Left Hand	03 = 8C (140) [17]	(23)
Object 05 : Right Hand	04 = 63 (99)  [17]	(23)
Object 06 : Hips	05 = E7 (231) [06]	(06)
Object 07 : Left Leg	06 = 1F (31)  [0D]	(13)
Object 08 : Right Leg	07 = 49 (73)  [0D]	(13)
Object 09 : Feet	08 = 79 (121) [19]	(25)

So with that in mind we move onto the chunks in detail.

10 00 00 00   28 00 00 00 = I am sure this is just code reference but I can find no specific reasoning that it must be this or what it refers to exactly but this seems to be the method used.

Then comes the body part reference ID as mentioned above, eg: 08 00 00 00  is for the feet.

Next comes 10 00 00 00   18 00 00 00 which as before I don't know the deeper meaning behind so again any help would be welcomed.

00 00 00 00   01 00 00 00  = I think this refers to the opening face to start from?

00 00 00 00   XX XX XX XX (last bytes of chunk): I believe this refers to the end face to mask up until?

This is where some problems are, you see for most models using the code I can hide the waist, both legs, feet and hands, but the body and arms vary on success of masking coverage from person to person.

A pattern I have recognised or THE MYSTERY BYTE!

Each time the torso bytes end in 14, the arms end in 09, the hands in 17, the hips in 06, the legs in 0D and the feet end in 19.

It is the byte before which must be played with to be able to hide the entire object successfully.

I can alter a single byte for each body part to be able to switch on or off the body part I wish in the structure but with the mystery byte being variable between different characters I am stuck on progressing any further on developing the Masking Tool, which would allow you to choose what you want your mask file (00CE) to display or hide and with a click of a button generate the 00CE file for you to drop into your mod without you worrying about having to shrink or hide objects with anatomizer to prevent pop through.

 

So any help on some of the parts here would be very welcomed, especially that mystery byte.

In the mean time you can work off what I provided here to mask out body parts manually, but please don't use this thread to ask about intricate masking details or "why does my mods arms not mask" as that isn't the purpose of this thread, the purpose is to get a fool proof way to be able to mask body parts for ALL characters that I can then programme into the Masking Tool to do the job at the click of a check box and this is what I need help with.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Perfectplex