Updated guide for adding/modifying custom textures

[Hepativore]

So, I have been looking around the forum, and found some old topics on using Pigg Pro and Pig Viewer 1.6 to edit and modify costume textures. I know that some people here regularly release new costume bits such as the Goldbricker set. My question is, how are you guys doing this? I know that there is another utility that was brought up. the Ourodev Pigg viewer, but the link to it is now dead.

 

If I may ask, can somebody put together an updated and idiot-proof guide on how to create or modify costume texture parts? Pig Viewer 1.6 hates Windows 10, and so I would like to see how you do this on modern machines.

[AboveTheChemist]

You can get a compiled version of Piglet here (courtesy of Michiyo): https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/5405-piggviewer/#comment-562266

 

13 hours ago, Hepativore said:

I know that some people here regularly release new costume bits such as the Goldbricker set.

 

The only folks that I am aware of that release new costume sets is the HC team. I could be wrong, but I don't think it is possible to mod in new costume sets. One could theoretically mod the textures of existing sets to tweak their appearance, but my expertise is with map textures so I am not exactly sure how that would work.

 

The general procedure for modifying textures is as follows (and isn't idiot-proof, unfortunately, as I can personally attest):

1. Find the texture you want to mod in the piggs and extract it (with Piglet, for example)
2. Split the texture into two components: the texture header, and the DDS file
3. Split the DDS file into two components: the DDS header, and the source image file (usually a BMP or PNG file)
4. Modify the source image as desired, maintaining its dimensions
5. Convert the source image back into a DDS file, using the same compression and number of mipmaps as the original DDS file
6. Re-attach the texture header to convert it back into a texture file
7. Place the modded texture in the CoH install directory, either within the assets folder as a compressed pigg file, or into the data folder as a texture file

Steps 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 require external software. I use simple Python scripts for steps 2 and 6, a tool called DDS converter for step 3, and the NVIDIA texture tool for step 5. For step 4, you can use whatever image editing tool you like (I keep it simple with Paint3D). This is my basic workflow for map textures. I think it would be similar for other game textures, but having modded only (well, mostly) maps, it may be slightly different for other textures.

 

Here's some info from OuroDev that goes into a bit more detail and speaks specifically about costume textures: https://wiki.ourodev.com/view/Texture_modding

 

And here's an older thread that may have some useful info: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/11322-how-do-you-create-texture-mods/