Belt Model Swapping

[Kevdo]

Hello everyone,

I posted this over at the SWGEmu forums as well, but thought I'd post here as well given that this community in particular is focused on mods for the game.

Anyways... I remember back in SWG after the NGE, you would choose what outfit you wanted to wear after creating your character. I was particularly fond of the outdoor outfit, especially the belt. I'll link it here so you guys know what I'm talking about.

Anyways my question is: is it possible to replace an existing belt model with the NGE simple belt model? If so, how can I do this? I know backpack models can be swapped, as I've seen a very handy installer for it, so I imagine the belt is also possible to swap, but I've no idea how. If anyone can shed some light on this, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Honestly, no one has to do this mod for me. Teaching me how to do it would be great too, I just really would like to see this old belt model in the Emu.

 

[Timbab]

Heya, you'll want to get SIE first of all.

Then, once you've selected your SWG path (The one that contains your .tre files), go to: object\tangible\wearables\belt in the SWG Repository screen.

You'll want to look which belt you'd want to replace, then download this and place it in your SWG folder. Go to that file now and then simply rename it to the file you want to replace it with. So for example, if you want to replace shared_belt_s01 with the Simple Belt, rename the downloaded shared_npe_belt_03.iff to shared_belt_s01.iff.

Hope this wasn't too confusing, I'll need to write a proper guide sometime.

But yes, it's possible to do this with most NGE items, if not all. The only thing that creates problems sometime is the .eft file.

 

[Kevdo]

Hope this wasn't too confusing, I'll need to write a proper guide sometime.

But yes, it's possible to do this with most NGE items, if not all. The only thing that creates problems sometime is the .eft file.

Not confusing at all. I downloaded the SIE tool, chose my SWG directory, searched for the belt to replace, renamed the downloaded NGE file and dropped the folders it was in into the root of my SWGEmu folder. So it's in G:\Computer\Star Wars Galaxies\object\tangible\wearables\belt. I didn't already own the belt, so I went to a Bazaar and bought it. In the display window, it looked like the simple belt from NGE, but when I equipped it, it went back to the normal, chunky two pocket belt. If I unequip it and hard reset the client, it looks like the NGE belt again, but once I equip it, it reverts back to its ugly self.

Not sure why that is, but it got me wondering if you can also swap these out for something like a bandolier. Is it possible to replace a bandolier model with a belt model? Or would that require some extra tinkering, like setting the correct position etc.?

EDIT: I looked at what that backpack installer adds in more detail, and it installs a lot of things. Several files and folders like appearance, mesh, lod, skeleton, object etc. etc. Do I really only need to replace 1 file to swap the belt? Wouldn't I need to swap multiple files, like the ones in appearance folder and even texture folder for it to work properly? I don't know much about SWG modding, but I've modded a lot of games in my day, so it seems like this is just TOO simple, haha.

 

[Timbab]

Huh, strange, that's how I always did my swaps, hm. Oh, I think it's probably because it's handled by datatables/appearance/appearance_table.iff, where it assigns the model for race and gender.

Swaps work fine as I described above for anything but wearable though. If you edit that datatable, you can assign the correct model for each race and gender then, in this case, you'd assign 'armor_marauder_s01_belt_f.sat' and 'armor_marauder_s01_belt_m.sat'.

But to keep things simple, download this and then in SIE go to appearance/ and look for the belt name you want to replace. (You can filter SIE with belt_ at the bottom!).

for Post preCU items, you generally need to include shaders, models, textures, etc for them to work, replacing the Object .IFF file is generally a good idea though, because you keep the original model alive, in case something else uses it, creating less conflicts, etc.

For this item, the models, etc were already included in preCU, so you'd have only needed to replace the Object .IFF, if it was a weapon, for instance.


To your other question, you definitely can replace a belt with a bandoleer, but as you thought correctly, you'd need a tiny bit more tinkering. It's been forever since I've done a swap like that (I really rarely do swaps), so I couldn't give you a simple write down because I'd need to see how you'd do it again. Forgot if prefixes (armor_, etc) matter for clothes, I don't think they should though. It was pretty simple, I'll post back if I remember.

Edit: Quick not about the Simple Belt, only Color 1 modifies the appearance, Color 2 doesn't doesn't affect it.

 

[Kevdo]

Alright, I did exactly what you said and it worked, haha... excellent thank you! I really appreciate you taking the time to explain that to me.

I did mess up though and spent about 3 hours fooling around with this, but let me explain why:

I opened Sytner's IFF Editor to see what belt I would replace. I decided to replace the Workman's Belt, since I like it's original appearance (sort of) and like the name as well. Problem was, instead of filtering belt_ like you said, I friggin' filtered _belt instead. So, when I went under appearance, all I saw was ith_belt_s04_f.sat and ith_belt_s04_m.sat, and that's what I renamed the armor_marauder_s01_belt_f.sat and armor_marauder_s01_belt_m.sat files respectively. This, of course, didn't work though, since I had unknowingly swapped the ITHORIAN models instead of the HUMAN ones... derp.

So, persistent me decided to look at every single tree in Sytner's IFF Editor to find and replace all marauder belt files with any belt files that came up using the _belt filter. After hours of d***ing around, I figured out that the ith_ in ith_belt_s04_m.sat was for ITHORIANS. I reread your post VERY CAREFULLY and realized that you said filter belt_ and not _belt.

So, I went back into SIE and found the correct belt_s04_m.sat and renamed the file accordingly. This screw up did teach me a lot about SIE though, as I managed to extract various other models and replace them as well. So, in a way it was kind of a good thing, but jeezus I gotta be more careful haha. By the way, when I finally got the proper files in place, I realized that the belt I had bought on the Bazaar was colored black. So now the belt is colored strangely since half of the strap and pocket is black and the other half is beige/brown. This leads me to believe that both Color 1 and Color 2 work to change the color of the belt. I'll have to ask a Tailor to craft me another belt with different colors to test more thoroughly though.

Anyways Timbab, thanks a bunch for your help man, I appreciate that! You are a boss.

EDIT: I have tested these belts with a very friendly tailor who didn't mind making me some belts. It would seem you are correct Timbab, Color 2 - no matter what color you choose - will not affect its appearance. Only color 1 will, but if you choose a different color than beige/brown, it will look very weird.