Recolouring Models On Mac

10-02-2007, 12:32 AM	#1
Tide-Arc Ephemera	This is almost definitely the wrong place for this topic... How would one recolour a special effect on Mac without using an emulator to cheat and use Windows/Linux/Etc programs? If it's in notepad, could someone tell me a tutorial or method?

10-02-2007, 03:18 AM

Pyrogasm

In Notepad/Textedit it's rather simple. The only problem is that you must do it with a .mdl instead of a .mdx; you'll need to get someone to convert the models for you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daelin

It's actually pretty simple and I will explain it to you here right away. It's like this. In the MDL, you should find something like this:

Code:

GeosetAnim {
	static Alpha 1.000000,
	static Color { 0.952941, 0.717647, 0.000000 },
	GeosetId 0,
}

This is above Bone "Temp02". Now, the color is determined by the numbers between the accolades after static Color. How they are represented? Simple. First value is blue, second is green, third is red.

Now, they take values from 0 to 1 (so it is represented in decimals). How does this work? Really simple. Let's take #57EB96 (hexadecimal RGB). Therefore, we have 57 hexa RED, EB hexa GREEN and 96 hexa BLUE.

We apply a simple proportions rule like this:

1 ................... 255
x ................... a (where a is the hexa color converted to decimal)

From here, x = a/255. Therefore, we would have Red = 0.2235, Green = 0.9215 and Blue = 0.3764.

How do we change the values above? Well, it's BGR, so we take the colors in the inverted order. Therefore, it would look like this (final result):

Code:

GeosetAnim {
	static Alpha 1.000000,
	static Color { 0.3764, 0.9215, 0.2235 },
	GeosetId 0,
}

10-02-2007, 04:37 AM	#3
Tide-Arc Ephemera	So... basically I should just tally up all the models that I want to mess around with, and then I pass them to someone else? On that note, can I import a model that's an mdl or must it be reconverted first?

10-02-2007, 03:03 PM	#4
Rao Dao Zao	Got to go back to an MDX.

10-02-2007, 10:13 PM	#5
Tide-Arc Ephemera	So, convert to MDL, edit it, convert back to MDX, import and I get my oh-so-awesome recoloured special effects?

10-02-2007, 10:38 PM	#6
TaintedReality	Yup. Some special effects are also based on the color of a texture, so you might have to change that too. Although maybe you can override/tint the texture color through editing the mdl.

10-02-2007, 11:07 PM	#7
Tide-Arc Ephemera	Okay, I think I'm ready, time to tally up my models! +Rep to everyone who contributed! The forum's being greedy and won't let me rep Pyro and RDZ... it will come in the near future! I hope...

10-03-2007, 01:29 AM	#8
botanic	If you want I can mdl > mdx them for ya i made a batch program so its easy ^.^

10-03-2007, 12:50 PM	#9
Tide-Arc Ephemera	Wait what, you have a Mac program that converts MDL <-> MDX files?

10-03-2007, 05:44 PM	#10
TaintedReality	I think he's saying he made a batch program for windows, rather than most convertors which only do 1 file at a time.

10-03-2007, 06:15 PM	#11
Rao Dao Zao	Yes, sometimes the emitters use things like Blue_Glow2.blp or whatever; in these instances, you have to hope there's a similar image somewhere in the appropriate colour (they have yellow, red, green and more, I think). Failing that, swap it for a generic (white), and add the tinting yourself.