guide Guide: Porting 7.5 Models to VX

[Arse22]

Porting 7.5 Models to VX

 

By arse22 APR 2021

 

Intro

 

Up until version p of VX, model porting was sort of a problem, since models were missing some sliders and would require manual editing. Though it’s more or less fixed, there seems to be some confusion on the matter nonetheless and I am writing this guide to provide some 1:1 steps to ensure proper conversion. Even if you are experienced in this, it may serve as a good reminder of steps to take.

 

 

 

Pre-Requisite

 

-Old model to port
-Installed VX
-EMFS, recommended, will come in handy but you may not end up needing it.

 

 

Checklist of a Port

 

-Is the model an EMFS model or base model?
-Did you use a replacer in your install?
-What skin did it use? H5, H4 or none?

 

You must find:

Head Replacer
Body Replacer
Active Mod Skin
possibly Base Body/Base Morph (explained later)

 

 

How to Use EMFS to Locate Model Skin

 

One of the most important aspects is having the correct skin. If you have a big ActiveMod folder of skins, on 7.5, you are pretty much stuck painting a marker on the skin and Alt+R every skin until you find the one on your model. That is unless you use EMFS to simply look it up:

 

 

 

After you load in your model, look at details and find this entry.

 

 

 

The stuff about dress etc is irrelevant, if it’s a skin you know, you will recognize the name of the folder in that entry. This gives you terms to easily search your ActiveMod folder for. You can do this for any model but sadly you cannot assign the skin from here.

 

How to Find Base Model

 

If the model is a base model, all you need to know is the replacer used, if any. You will need to get the body and face replacer for VX and then assign them in-game to the model. Other than that it’s a straight forward drag and drop to VX model folder, if there was none used, it’s ported automatically.

You can always check by looking into the model folder, check the file Base.id, and verify against a base model list.

 

!!!Basic Game Model Numbers.rar1.85 kB · 0 downloads

 

If it’s an EMFS model and used an EMFS replacer, again you just need stand-alone versions of the face and body replacer that were combined by EMFS. If you are not familiar, EMFS tool was only really used to combine a custom body + custom head in a new mod which was then given a new unique base id.

 

 

Info About Base Morph/Base Body

 

There is one key difference between models that use a replacer and those made with EMFS, is that a model that used a standalone replacer is ALSO affected by base model morphs. I don’t know the proper name but that is what I will call it here to avoid confusion, the proper name is something like Base Body, but it’s basically morphs that get applied to a model. The base id of the model essentially tells the game which ones to apply.

In EMFS, you can locate it here, under AvLook tab of the model details.

 

 

That may be pretty confusing, because those are just a list of morphs and doesn’t really tell you much if you are not familiar. Here is a good file to check:

 

EMFS_DefaultTypes.rar1.64 kB · 0 downloads

 

EMFS models all use a default base body/morph for the most part. You can find it in …/EMFSTool/Data/Face/Female/[your_replacer]/AcBodyLook.bs file:

 

 

The first entry FGmeshfile is the .tri file of the head replacer, while the one I highli ghted is the “base morph.” In most EMFS they look something like default 01.

In VX, you can find similar info in Archives/2.158.001/Scripts.zip/Scripts/Luder/[Person XX]/AcBodyLook.bs   :

 

 

Where Person XX is the base id of the model you are looking up, it will tell you which “base morphs” it uses. In the same directory the AvLook.bs file will tell you the exact morphs that were applied (same as they would look in EMFS.) But basically, as you can see in the screenshot in VX it tells you which base model number correspond with the “base morph” set name. It’s the same name used when you look at the dropdown in VX:

 

 

The ones used by EMFS are here in the list too. But here is the truth: You don’t need to do this most of the time, it’s actually automatic. It only becomes relevant when you port a model which used a base model with some morphs on it AND a non-emfs standalone head replacer, even then it should convert on it’s own since the base id of such a model will be one that already applies the morph in VX. If for some reason the model looks wrong, you can try to reapply it from the menu, using the above info to look up the one you need.

 

 

Extract Body from EMFS file

 

Since we covered info about heads, I should note that all that EMFS model has inside is a custom body that it assigns to a head in a big head pack by unique name. So you can get the head by looking through EMFS, but you can actually get the body directly from the EMFS file and make a new replacer.

 

 

So you can see if you extract the .b*b file from that directory, and convert it to .bs, all you would have to do is rename it “body01” and you have created your own VX body (02 for male, 03 for shemale.) You would delete all the other folders and files, and rename the folder to avoid confusion, before drag and drop into addons.

 

 

Tips and Other Relevant Factors

 

There are many things that can drastically change your models look. Using exact parts like hair, hair texture, eyes , eyebrows, etc and using the correct lighting and same hook settings. A level def of a room can drastically impact how a model looks.

But at the very end of the day, you can know for a fact that the model is the same one as long as you use the same body file and the same .tri head. But now you know how to get the skin and even look into which base body/base morphs was used if it becomes necessary, 90% of the time it’s either irrelevant or automatic.

 

 

Conclusion

 

That’s about it. There is no way to know if you model used a non-EMFS replacer unless you wrote down the info or it’s provided by the model author, as far as I know.

Porting models in VX version p is very straightforward other than that, EMFS tool is still very useful to look up all the necessary info about base model or an EMFS model.