Trying to Change Texture/Color of Deadfire Spells?

[anthon]

Hi,

I've been messing with a mod to add a custom spellbook with custom spells to deadfire with mixed results. After a week ive got a book inserted with spells i can cast (mostly clone fx) but what i'd really like to do is white-wash/washout the color of one spell so it looks like its made of white energy instead of the stock blue/purple energy.

 

i tried using

                    "SelfMaterialReplacementID": "67ce2eba-4e05-48ed-b1fe-75d878a53dea"

which is described as
"Material": "art/character/textures/effects/whiteness/m_default01_v02.mat"

and i was hoping the "whiteness" would wash out the hues or something, but it didn't seem to do anything. This makes me think the other materialreplacements like fire, gold, wood, magran/fire, etc. probably won't work at all using my current fail_technique.

I was hoping to do stuff like this though - change colors of spells,
maybe even make a pink fireball.

Much advice requested. Been semi functionally modding deadfire since Nov 27. (i beat the game by accident last month by 'putting off' all the side quests until i was 'further along' with the main story. oops. been replaying it since and fighting megabosses).

[Noqn]

9 hours ago, anthon said:

I was hoping to do stuff like this though - change colors of spells,
maybe even make a pink fireball.

Sadly, visuals like projectiles or explosives are defined as paths to prefabs in the unity asset bundles and can't be modded through regular means.

For Fireball, you can see this in AttackBaseComponent -> VisualEffects -> VisualEffect ("prefabs/effects/abilities/wizzard/fx_fireball_aoe.prefab")

SelfMaterialReplacementID parameter of GenericAbilityComponents can be changed and MaterialReplacement Components them can be modified somewhat, the important visuals and colors are still defined in the unity asset bundles

[anthon]

54 minutes ago, Noqn said:

Sadly, visuals like projectiles or explosives are defined as paths to prefabs in the unity asset bundles and can't be modded through regular means.

For Fireball, you can see this in AttackBaseComponent -> VisualEffects -> VisualEffect ("prefabs/effects/abilities/wizzard/fx_fireball_aoe.prefab")

SelfMaterialReplacementID parameter of GenericAbilityComponents can be changed and MaterialReplacement Components them can be modified somewhat, the important visuals and colors are still defined in the unity asset bundles

Hrm, Sad Panda,

Well i have AssetStudioGui for pulling / compressing whatever unity 3D files, Blender (i made a 3D rapier i want to add later), and some stuff like that. if i can extract the right file, edit the hue in photoshop, then save back in the bundle or as an external bundle, maybe that would work?

im willing to give it - whatever it is i have to do - a try.

P.S. here's a mini of that rapier small enough to fit in file size. ^^

[Grape_You_In_The_Mouth]

There are older threads about this by the guy who did the Tint God mod.  I think his name was Fhav69x or something like that.  Amazing info but didn't he didn't explicitly say how to create and add a new asset to the graphics.  He only changed an existing one.

[anthon]

On 12/6/2020 at 9:23 AM, Grape_You_In_The_Mouth said:

There are older threads about this by the guy who did the Tint God mod.  I think his name was Fhav69x or something like that.  Amazing info but didn't he didn't explicitly say how to create and add a new asset to the graphics.  He only changed an existing one.

i have come across that user's tutorial which i found equal parts hope and vexation. Hexation?
I was able to extract the 70 files which apparently form the spell image I wanted to make snowy colored instead of blue colored, and was able in another program to locate the tint colors, for example, in particle 984
 

        MinMaxGradient startColor
            UInt16 minMaxState = 2
            ColorRGBA minColor
                float r = 0.5568628
                float g = 0.7294118
                float b = 0.9254902
                float a = 1
            ColorRGBA maxColor
                float r = 0.7450981
                float g = 0.8666667
                float b = 0.8980392
                float a = 1
            Gradient maxGradient
                ColorRGBA key0

the RGB colors, which in my converter worked out to one of the blue colors the spell uses. There were lots of whites, greys, and blues, and my goal was to copy these files identically,

with the exception that where-ever the blues were, change those to some shade of white/off white to maintain texture contrast, but wash out the blue. However, that turned out to be non negotiable so far, as i have no program to edit these lines, nor a method of packing them into something i can stick back into my override mod folder.

Fhav seems to indicate you can mutilate a graphics file of these categories, but you can't add your own. I think the mod tradition is to take some rarely chosen item, like a sword or hat, and over-write it.

the quest for pink fireball continues...

Edited December 9, 2020 by anthon
tuned turned typo

[Grape_You_In_The_Mouth]

Someone said (maybe it was Fhav) that the new Unity Asset Bundle Extractor doesn't have the bug limiting creation of new content.  This is my big hope that we can finally get new spell graphics by tinting them as you are trying to do.