Render modding discussion thread

[4 Life]

Thought I'd get a thread going where we can discuss what we've found so far and hopefully get on track with this year's changes! @robbie686 @SixZz|RipZz@TheVisitorX@Perfectplex

So I've been doing some picking apart. The general layout is exactly the same as last year - you have your type a, b and c ltag_type.pac files and inside them are all the SHDCs, and inside those are the 0000.pac and 0001.pac files, with the 0001.pac being the file with the render inside it. No changes there and the X-Packer method can still be used to inject for now. I've also managed to inject one of my renders from last year, which was a DXT5 image made with paint.net, meaning still no need to use slow-ass Visual Studio

Now for the changes... The sizes of the type b images have totally changed. The image size itself is still 1024x1024, but upon injecting my Edge attitude era render over Edge's in-game, it was WAY too big:

I did some messing around and found that if you're porting over a correctly sized 2K16 render, change the image size to 775x775 and then change the canvas size back to 1024x1024 (anchor your image to the bottom-middle so it doesn't move upward or sideways) then it's pretty much perfect, both in comparison to a current image in photoshop as well as compared in-game.

The type a images, you almost do the same thing as I found out last year - complete the type b first, then change the height of the image to 1275 before resizing the canvas height back to 1024, but rather than anchor the image to top-left so it stays in the right place, you anchor at the bottom-middle.

The type c images also work the same as last year - the same as the type b images, but resized to 512x512.

 

That's all that stuff taken care of. Now, hopefully we can find a way to replicate Perfectplex's method from last year - the X-Packer method MIGHT not be a problem so much, as I think it might have been the DXT10 format images causing the problem last year from Visual Studio, but I don't think we'll see a render injector tool in Visitor's program if we don't figure it out which would suck having to do it all manually.

Edited February 14, 2017 by 4 Life

[Perfectplex]

I'm just waiting on @tekken57 to send me my activation key for x-packer and I'll be able to get digging about and testing the pot.

Good idea to create a thread we can all put our heads together on so we can all keep on track of where we are at.

Good start on getting the ball rolling with your findings, that should save some time picking past the first layers of the onion.

[4 Life]

4 minutes ago, Perfectplex said:

I'm just waiting on @tekken57 to send me my activation key for x-packer and I'll be able to get digging about and testing the pot.

Good idea to create a thread we can all put our heads together on so we can all keep on track of where we are at.

Good start on getting the ball rolling with your findings, that should save some time picking past the first layers of the onion.

Awesome, be great to have you on-board, you're a fricking hex guru mate I'm currently working on a spreadsheet of the IDs, just got started but working my way through the main roster type B ones atm.

[Wizard3]

Exactly the same 4life as in there prob is nothing for adding a mod, nothing to inject to render wise as the same with 2k16?

[4 Life]

3 minutes ago, Wizard3 said:

Exactly the same 4life as in there prob is nothing for adding a mod, nothing to inject to render wise as the same with 2k16?

Hard to tell on the surface of it, might even still be possible on 2K16 as well but yeah, looking exactly the same on that front so far. Though I was just making the type b table and I noticed there are 4 renders for guys just called "nxt mob" in the pac file. Might be MyCareer characters? Might be a few there to replace without affecting the main roster if so, their pac numbers are shown as well.

The type b's are looking nice in the pause menu

 

[Wizard3]

that would be cool if we could do that guess we will have to wait and see then;)

[TheVisitorX]

 

3 hours ago, 4 Life said:

That's all that stuff taken care of. Now, hopefully we can find a way to replicate Perfectplex's method from last year - the X-Packer method MIGHT not be a problem so much, as I think it might have been the DXT10 format images causing the problem last year from Visual Studio, but I don't think we'll see a render injector tool in Visitor's program if we don't figure it out which would suck having to do it all manually.

I hope that, too... because...  You're right! That HSPC/SHDC thing is such a pain in the a**. It makes things so much more complicated than last year. I feel a bit lost at the moment :/. The only good thing is, the game still reads the old EPK8 files. Even the old render stuff does work like last year. But the only place where I can get my LTSA values is the memory, because they are not encrypted or compressed there... But I really don't like it that way. Hope we will find another way.

My only success for today:

I have found the memory location which shows the LTSA ids for typeb during changing the characters ^^. With that values it is possible to use the old render format, which is still working. But it only refers to typeb so far...

Edited February 15, 2017 by TheVisitorX

[4 Life]

21 minutes ago, TheVisitorX said:

 

I hope that, too... because...  You're right! That HSPC/SHDC thing is such a pain in the a**. It makes things so much more complicated than last year. I feel a bit lost at the moment :/. The only good thing is, the game still reads the old EPK8 files. Even the old render stuff does work like last year. But the only place where I can get my LTSA values is the memory, because they are not encrypted or compressed there... But I really don't like it that way. Hope we will find another way.

My only success for today:

I have found the memory location which shows the LTSA ids for typeb during changing the characters ^^. With that values it is possible to use the old render format, which is still working. But it only refers to typeb so far...

2K have gone the extra mile to screw us over this year Well no worries on the type b renders, I've done a spreadsheet with all the values there just going through each SHDC file (there's a little bit of readable string in the hex that tells you the pac slot number and image name in there, which is named after the superstar/diva). It's a rough version and could do with some formatting but all the IDs are there

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RffToCki-qc4UR7swmFz7NQIEEYypA-xE7uXjGEIDF0/edit?usp=sharing

Noticed you can also replace the renders on some of the alt attires that have their own renders, but if you replace the render of a wrestler who has attires unlocked via the attire unlocker then your new render applies to all those attires. Wonder if there's a way to assign a render to each attire? Probably not.

[TheVisitorX]

Great work, that could be helpful. Now we only have to find out how we could build a custom pac file archive with only one file / a dds image, because I prefer the way to separate things like renders. The problem is the format of the HSPC file and the offsets. Last year, that information came from the "LTSA" string but now there is no LTSA string (there is one, but we can't read it). So the only way would be to understand that new format.... or to find out which value belongs to the image. And, the data is encrypted/compressed. Is it possible to add that data uncompressed/unencrypted? Or do we have to compress/encrypt it?

But to make things clearer, the old fashioned way with EPK8 pac and LTSA tag is still working. The ids are already there (and they aren't matching the SHDC file names, because that LTSA ids are always have 8 chars).

Edited February 15, 2017 by TheVisitorX

[ObsoleteRipZz]

Nice work man! I was actually wondering if there were any size differences. I'm also very interested in something VisitorX said about the LTSA IDs showing during the selection screen. Could that possibly be a way to figure out the string needed for adding renders to mods? I haven't used cheat engine much so bare with me a bit and correct me if I'm wrong but for instance if it's showing you corresponding IDs can't we highlight a mod in the selection menu and inject a render for whatever the ID says or is it two different values? This is an area I REALLY wanted to figure out on 2k16 but didn't have the complete know how.

[TheVisitorX]

No, at least not at this location. This will only show the id of the rendered image. Because mods have no id/render, it will show you the id of the dummy render used.

[4 Life]

21 minutes ago, SixZz|RipZz said:

Nice work man! I was actually wondering if there were any size differences. I'm also very interested in something VisitorX said about the LTSA IDs showing during the selection screen. Could that possibly be a way to figure out the string needed for adding renders to mods? I haven't used cheat engine much so bare with me a bit and correct me if I'm wrong but for instance if it's showing you corresponding IDs can't we highlight a mod in the selection menu and inject a render for whatever the ID says or is it two different values? This is an area I REALLY wanted to figure out on 2k16 but didn't have the complete know how.

Yeah there were a bunch of us tryna figure this out last year, was easier then too cause as Visitor said above, the LTSA values were visible in the ltag files, but this year the files are encrypted so we can't do things the way Perfectplex discovered, at least not yet. Hoping we find a way to decompress it like you can with string files.

[tekken57]

@TheVisitorX , the memory location you are referring to, are the files listed with a string hashed name or text corresponding to the slot eg. 00046000 

 

With games on the previous gen of consoles, all we needed to do was add a dds file With a name corresponding to the slot for it to appear in game. 

 

If it is in plain text, then maybe we can build a pac to do the same on the pc version. If not, we have to figure out the string hash 

[I CAN I WILL]

my ss_face folders are empty?

[jakeypearce]

Just been trying to reverse engineer The Rock's (type b) string hash. I suspect that it's likely a bunch of different hash algorithms at play here, as the hash is consistently changing between games (eg. The Rock's 2K15 hash was 1B95EBA4).

Edited February 15, 2017 by jakeypearce

[4 Life]

7 hours ago, I CAN I WILL said:

my ss_face folders are empty?

Where are you looking mate? It should be in pac/menu/assets/wwe17_singleread/texture/ssface

Edited February 15, 2017 by 4 Life

[I CAN I WILL]

On ‎2‎/‎15‎/‎2017 at 10:49 AM, 4 Life said:

Where are you looking mate? It should be in pac/menu/assets/wwe17_singleread/texture/ssface

Found It Thanks Mate

[THEpaynexkiller]

In theory, is there not a way that we could create a CAW of a modded wrestler, save them - giving us the render of their new attire - then exporting that as a render for the Mod? Or is that just mumbo jumbo?

[esbatmusic]

@4 Life Are you saying that there could be an upcoming tool to inject them in a faster/easier way? That would be amazing. Really amazing.

[4 Life]

35 minutes ago, THEpaynexkiller said:

In theory, is there not a way that we could create a CAW of a modded wrestler, save them - giving us the render of their new attire - then exporting that as a render for the Mod? Or is that just mumbo jumbo?

Really depends on how they work, whether the image is saved somewhere or just generated on-the-fly like the CAWs themselves. It'd also not really work in most cases because a lot of the objects or textures don't show up properly when opening a mod in CAS, if they even load at all. All in all, I'd say it's at the very least highly impractical, at most not going to work at all. Plus I prefer actual photo renders anyways so that all works out fine for me

12 minutes ago, esbatmusic said:

@4 Life Are you saying that there could be an upcoming tool to inject them in a faster/easier way? That would be amazing. Really amazing.

Visitor made a tool that did exactly that for 2K16. Whether or not he can make one for 2K17 depends on if we discover a similar method to what Perfectplex discovered for replacing renders without X-Packer last year, which would mean finding a way to null the current LTSA ID and then placing a pach/shdc file in the render folder. We're just having a tough time finding a way to do so currently since the render pacs are encrypted this year so it's pretty much just the X-Packer method we've got to work with atm.

[esbatmusic]

1 hour ago, 4 Life said:

Really depends on how they work, whether the image is saved somewhere or just generated on-the-fly like the CAWs themselves. It'd also not really work in most cases because a lot of the objects or textures don't show up properly when opening a mod in CAS, if they even load at all. All in all, I'd say it's at the very least highly impractical, at most not going to work at all. Plus I prefer actual photo renders anyways so that all works out fine for me

Visitor made a tool that did exactly that for 2K16. Whether or not he can make one for 2K17 depends on if we discover a similar method to what Perfectplex discovered for replacing renders without X-Packer last year, which would mean finding a way to null the current LTSA ID and then placing a pach/shdc file in the render folder. We're just having a tough time finding a way to do so currently since the render pacs are encrypted this year so it's pretty much just the X-Packer method we've got to work with atm.

Wait REALLY?! I didn't even knew! It was a pain to do them manually. I hope he does. I'll pray to whatever wrestling god he wants. I'll hope VERY strongly for it to happen, even if I expected to see the attire like in game. Hopefully a way will be found. Can't wait for the tools to come out too.

[Perfectplex]

I made this thread separate as it is not part of the discussion but rather a guide. It needs to be moved to PC section though.

I can't see a problem using the old method in theory, single pac files containing a render.

List now with correct shdc file ID's.

Edited February 18, 2017 by Perfectplex

[4 Life]

32 minutes ago, Perfectplex said:

I made this thread separate as it is not part of the discussion but rather a guide. It needs to be moved to PC section though.

I can't see a problem using the old method in theory, single pac files containing a render.

Brilliant work buddy Yeah I've been working on converting my old renders over and injecting via the X-Packer method and it's all working without a hitch, just so damn time consuming doing it that way  

10 hours ago, esbatmusic said:

Wait REALLY?! I didn't even knew! It was a pain to do them manually. I hope he does. I'll pray to whatever wrestling god he wants. I'll hope VERY strongly for it to happen, even if I expected to see the attire like in game. Hopefully a way will be found. Can't wait for the tools to come out too.

Yeah it was an awesome tool, particularly since a lot of us were having trouble with the X-Packer method at the time, though looking back I believe most of that trouble to be the fact that we thought we had to use Visual Studio to get the encoding right on the images but as it turns out, any DXT5 image will also work and seem to cause less crashing. Still yet to test that theory extensively with 2K17, but I will Would definitely prefer the tool though as it's SO much quicker and easier! I had to replace renders for 100+ superstars in 2K16 and I once I had them all ready to inject I did the entire roster in like an hour. Yeah though, whether or not that tool gets remade this year all depends on what we manage to discover.

I pretty much show how to use the tool in this thread http://smacktalks.org/forums/topic/63359-tutorialpreparing-all-3-types-of-renders-injecting-with-visitorxs-injector-tool-easy-quick-all-free-tools/

Wouldn't follow this tutorial for making a render for 2K17 though as, as I sad above, they're all different this year!

[esbatmusic]

1 hour ago, 4 Life said:

Brilliant work buddy Yeah I've been working on converting my old renders over and injecting via the X-Packer method and it's all working without a hitch, just so damn time consuming doing it that way  

Yeah it was an awesome tool, particularly since a lot of us were having trouble with the X-Packer method at the time, though looking back I believe most of that trouble to be the fact that we thought we had to use Visual Studio to get the encoding right on the images but as it turns out, any DXT5 image will also work and seem to cause less crashing. Still yet to test that theory extensively with 2K17, but I will Would definitely prefer the tool though as it's SO much quicker and easier! I had to replace renders for 100+ superstars in 2K16 and I once I had them all ready to inject I did the entire roster in like an hour. Yeah though, whether or not that tool gets remade this year all depends on what we manage to discover.

I pretty much show how to use the tool in this thread http://smacktalks.org/forums/topic/63359-tutorialpreparing-all-3-types-of-renders-injecting-with-visitorxs-injector-tool-easy-quick-all-free-tools/

Wouldn't follow this tutorial for making a render for 2K17 though as, as I sad above, they're all different this year!

Oh boy, I cannot wait because I hated to replace with X-Packer, already that I want to do arena related stuff afterward, if I can have less injection to do with it...I'd be damn glad. Worth the wait for sure.

[TheVisitorX]

2 hours ago, Perfectplex said:

I made this thread separate as it is not part of the discussion but rather a guide. It needs to be moved to PC section though.

I can't see a problem using the old method in theory, single pac files containing a render.

Thank you for your work and this list, could definitely be useful!

The only problem right now ist the encrypted and compressed ltag-pac, which makes the whole process a torture! The old process with EPK8 / PACH is still working, but... We can't get the LTSA string from the ltag files, because we can't read them. And - unfortunately - The name of the shdc file does not match with the LTSA ids!

I've got all the ltsa typeb render ids from the memory. I have written a listener which logs all the ids in a text file.

But there are two problems:

1. It is really time consuming - To get typea render I have to select all Wrestlers in the game, so multiple matchup screens to get all characters.  And it would possibly not work with typec, because typec seems to be something like a dummy render which is the same for all (I'm not sure).
2. Even if I have them all, I don't know what I have to do with the old references in the ltag files. Because I've deleted the reference to the old file last year because otherwise the game does still render the old image.

I've done several tests with the new file format but I didn't even got a single renderimage to work...