Hi Res Hair or Hi Res NPC's & Entire Player

[Rotastico]

With all the close up this game gets it would be pretty epic if the textures on the characters weren't so smudgy and low res. SR3 raised lighting quality and other special effects a lot from SR1 and 2, but washed out texture quality horribly. Could anyone fix this or show how to do it at least for the hair in the game? The hair and the lips(expecially big lips) seem to suffer from this the most. lol

 

[Haganu]

Unpack Default female diffuse.str2_pc, Default male diffuse.str2_pc, and further all npc diffuse files. Unpack the GPEG_PC or GVBM_PC files inside those STR2_PC archives, and open the .DDS files with your favorite painter program. When done, repack everything and update the ASM_PC files going with the STR2_PC files.

 

[.Swami]

Could anyone fix this or show how to do it at least for the hair in the game?

Unpack Default female diffuse.str2_pc, Default male diffuse.str2_pc, and further all npc diffuse files. Unpack the GPEG_PC or GVBM_PC files inside those STR2_PC archives, and open the .DDS files with your favorite painter program. When done, repack everything and update the ASM_PC files going with the STR2_PC files.

Hey, Miku. I'm sure dude appreciates the mini-tut (if he's still around).

But, on that subject, I can't for the life of me find any hair textures (diffuse maps)!

All the "Hair <color>.str2_pc" files have is just a single small circular map that seems to be specular/reflective maps. No textures, though.

Any suggestions?

 

[Haganu]

Hey, Miku. I'm sure dude appreciates the mini-tut (if he's still around).

But, on that subject, I can't for the life of me find any hair textures (diffuse maps)!

All the "Hair <color>.str2_pc" files have is just a single small circular map that seems to be specular/reflective maps. No textures, though.

Any suggestions?

Actually that circular map is what color the hair will have. It looks like that the hair only has a color and not a real texture...

 

[Rotastico]

Thanks for the help and also ... just a color? But if that's the case... if I make it a big circular map, would that make a difference or would it just be rejected altogether?

 

[Haganu]

If you have a bigger circular map, something like twice as big, and mip maps enabled, it should work fine, at least, for most games where you edit .DDS textures, you can make that way higher quality textures, but takes a lot of more space, thus longer loading times.

 

[.Swami]

The hair choices have to have a diffuse map (texture) somewhere.
If not that than at least a normal map, but I don't believe the hair choices don't have textures to them.

I mean, you can see the texture change when you change styles; i.e. Afro -to- long, straight hair.

I don't have the game open right now, but I seriously doubt the Afro is texture-less, as the only alternative would be a 3D model, and I've NEVER seen a game with 3d models that complicated. Do you have any idea how many vertices would be in an afro 3D model?

And if it was texture-less, it would just look like a smooth ball, too. Like, a big-ass ping pong ball helmet.

I'll keep looking for a texture somewhere. There's gotta be some, I just know it...

 

[Haganu]

Those texture changes are all in that little circular map. In that little file you also see the shaders and the highlights. I assume they're just stretched differently on every hair piece, making it look like there are textures... I mean, I haven't found anywhere an actual texture of the hair in any VPP file, so I think it's all in that circular map.

 

[.Swami]

Found 'em!!

I found the textures!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO—gimme a minute to sort some out.

If you wanna just dive right in:

They're buried deep in customize_item.vpp_pc, but the .str2_pc files inside that are all named like custmesh_139168360f (which, by the way, is for the pigtails hairstyle, specifically for female characters; it ends with an 'f' for female textures).

EDIT:
I've attached a .txt file with a list of custmesh's with hair files in them.

Please note: I found the custmesh's by searching for files with "hair" in their titles. So this is by no means a complete, or even necessarily an accurate list as a result.
It's just something to start from.

 

[Haganu]

Only thing I didn't search through because I don't like going through so many custmeshes to find out that custmesh_<random_number> is for this and custmesh_<other_random_number> for the other.
Still thank you for taking your time to find out the textures. Seems like the circular maps are only for the color of the texture then, including highlights and shaders.