=Editing & Creating Yakuza Kiwami Mods V3= -NOTE- This guide was written from personal experience using assets from the games. It may not be accurate to community-based Yakuza modding guides. Feel free to correct and improve it. Another thing to note, this guide is mostly an expansion. Most of the necessary details can be found in the Yakuza 5 modding guide. Anything you learn off of that can also be applied to "Yakuza: Kiwami". Required: - QuickBMS (Not recommended) -- PARC.bms Plugin (Not needed) - ParTool (Recommended) - PARC Archive Importer - Blender -- YK GMD Blender Plugin -- XNALaraMesh (Optional, for importing XPS files) -NOTE- QuickBMS: Can only be used to repack equal amount of files. Severely limited. ParTool: Can be used to repack with more or less files. No limitation. -------------------------------------- - Using ParTool- 1. Drag a Mesh.par over the "ParTool.exe", the contents will be unpacked into an output folder. 2. At this point, either delete the Mesh.par or move it elsewhere as backup so it doesn't get in the way. It is no longer required. 3. You can drop pretty much any material from another Mesh.par into your modded folder. 4. Once the modding is complete, drag the modded output folder over the "ParTool.exe". Let it do its work and you will soon receive a new .par file. Remember to rename it as "mesh.par" before you use it. -------------------------------------- - Both ADV and AUTH model files must be replaced. The game loads and switches between both for gameplay. - You will notice several meshes ranging from a hi-poly model [10] to a very low-poly model [13]. These are either related to in-game graphical settings for model quality, or models based on distance. Try not to delete these in case of potential errors. - If you encounter a tiny texture that requires "repeats" (duplicating), but you don't know how to set it up, you will have to do it the old fashioned way. Open up an image editing program and load up the texture in question, then duplicate it several times over. Max canvas range is 1024x1024 height and width. Once done, go back into Blender and highlight the mesh that uses the texture, go into "UV Editing" at the top to open a new view, and locate your texture by searching for its name in the drop-down box that is slightly below "UV Editing". Click on your mesh and press "A" to fully highlight it and you will see its location on the texture. You can resize, rescale and move it. Be sure to keep an eye out for the part where the texture wrapping meets on the mesh. - DO NOT USE LARGE TEXTURE FILES. The game will crash, or load infinitely. .___. Use 512x512, 1024x1024 (1K), 2048x2048 (2K) sized texture files. -------------------------------------- - Model Height - Nearly every model in Yakuza: Kiwami share the same height. Their proper heights are only determined in-game. This means you won't have to worry about rescaling the model and can simply focus on model swapping. There may be some small discrepancies such as the neck area and wrong skin tone, so you will have to fix these manually. -------------------------------------- - Hair Transparency Fix - "Join" all the hair with the same name tag together, export the model, then re-import the file, highlight the hair in "Edit Mode" and "Separate" using "By Loose Parts", export it again and BLAM!!! The hair is fixed in-game. It is important that only the hair with the same name tag are merged. Do not merge [10] with other name tags such as [l3]. It will ruin the texture in-game. Remember to do this for other hair parts sharing identical name tags to avoid any potential transparency bugs in the future. Note: Removing [offset] from the Yakuza Properties in "Shader Name" removes the gloss in the hair. Probably optional. -------------------------------------- - Modding Accessories such as Hats or Glasses - By default, these won't show up on your model in-game. In order to make your selected accessory appear in-game, you need to "Join" it to your main mesh. Preferably to the head, body, or clothes. An alternative is to rename the mesh. -------------------------------------- - Yakuza Properties - Select a mesh and scroll down "Material Properties". You will find a lot of complicated letters and numbers the human brain cannot comprehend. As far as I know, the "Shader Name" determines how the texture will look in-game. A recommended suggestion would be to copy the settings from similar materials. However, it doesn't always work. Trial and error is a must. Examples: - s_o1dzt[skin] - s_o1dzt[ref] - s_o1dzt[rt] - s_o1dzt[rd][rt] - s_b1dzt[hair][offset] Some results may not be to your liking, so you may want to consider switching the Shader Names until you are satisfied with the look in-game. -------------------------------------- - Weight Painting - Weight painting isn't simply splattering colour over a mesh. You are painting vertice points that will be affected by a bone. To better understand how it works, select a mesh in "Object Mode", change to "Weight Paint Mode", and open the triangle symbol on the right called "Object Data Properties". Under "Vertex Groups", there will be a list of areas that can be affected in relation to the selected mesh that can be weight painted. You can find the area you seek by scrolling through the names, some are obviously named. You can control the weights atop in Blender: - Weight - Radius - Strength To use this in fine-tuning your weights, the process is best done in "Wireframe View". That way, the vertice points are easier to edit. Zooming in as close as possible also helps. You can test out the newly applied weights by moving the selected bone in "Pose Mode". This entire process isn't easy and will require much trial and error, but you will eventually get the hang of it. -------------------------------------- - Change Pose - If you are going to mod a static mesh, such as "Kidnapped Haruka", follow these steps: Start by highlighting the bones, enter "Pose Mode", adjust the pose to your liking, go back to "Object Mode", highlight the parts you want to remain changed, and click the wrench icon called "Modifier Properties" on your right. Find the modifier with the "grey stickman", click the drop-down arrow next to the camera icon and select "Apply". The modifier should now be gone, signifiying the change. You may have to do this per mesh. NOTE: If you are porting a model over, delete the ported model's bones beforehand. It'll save you a lot of headaches. NOTE 2: Also remember to delete the ported hands. Use the rope to cover up any disconnections. It's a cheap method, but it's the only one that works right now due to the export requiring weights for that part. (Outdated, no longer necessary.) If you are posing "Kidnapped Haruka", delete these weights in "Data Object Properties", the triangle icon: =Left Arm= =Right Arm= - kata_twist_l_sup - kata_twist_r_sup - elbow_l_sup - elbow_r_sup - sode_l_n - sode_r_n - ude2_twist_l_sup - ude2_twist_r_sup - oya3_l_n - oya3_r_n - oya2_l_n - oya2_r_n - oya1_l_n - oya1_r_n - hito3_l_n - hito3_r_n - hito2_l_n - hito2_r_n - hito1_l_n - hito1_r_n - naka3_l_n - naka3_r_n - naka2_l_n - naka2_r_n - naka1_l_n - naka1_r_n - kusu3_l_n - kusu3_r_n - kusu2_l_n - kusu2_r_n - kusu1_l_n - kusu1_r_n - koyu3_l_n - koyu3_r_n - koyu2_l_n - koyu2_r_n - koyu1_l_n - koyu1_r_n - kou_l_n - kou_r_n - ude3_l_n - ude3_r_n - ude2_l_n - ude2_r_n - ude1_l_n - ude1_r_n - kata_l_n - kata_r_n (IMPORTANT: Remember to remove all the weights from the fingers, hands and arms from all Vertice Groups. Use weight paint on the arms, hands, and the entire upper half of the body until they are completely red in the "mune" group. Use "Gradiant" function. Remember to use "Weight 0.100" on the neck if you somehow painted over it.) (IMPORTANT 2: Use "Smear" function for busy meshes such as arms and coat mixed together. Click and drag on a mesh with weight painting, this will only paint the surface of that mesh. Anything overlapping will be ignored.) (IMPORTANT 3: Turns out, the kidnapped model already has animation data for the restrained pose, meaning all this info on how to recreate it is unnecessary. On a positive note, you can now create your own unique pose, so it isn't a total loss! :D ) Press the "minus" symbol on the right to delete. Not removing these weights will cause the mesh in-game to distort. At this point, do not delete any more. Otherwise, the mesh will remain stuck in their default T-pose position. NOTE: If you still encounter issues, find the weights associated with the arms and delete them. Remember to make plenty of back-ups. If you want to replace the mouth tape with something different in size and shape, you will need to move the mouth. -------------------------------------- - Mesh Names & Flags - There are certain moments in the game where pieces of a character's model is removed, such as shoes in a gambling house. These are based on "flags", or more simply, ID names in the dictionary. If you want your mod to copy what happens in the original game, you will have to rename the applicable meshes to match the original. This can work for socks as well. They are disabled in gameplay, but are enabled in certain cutscenes. This is why they exist on the original mesh model and suffer no clipping issues in-game.