Altering a prop

[rybray]

For my custom story I would like to create my own paintings. But honestly the tutorials on the wiki are very hard to follow and thrust you into the action immediately and it seems like there are always issues people have between actually making the model and then using it in the editor. What I plan (and I hope its possible) is to take the model of one or two of the paintings in the editor and just, change the picture area to something else. I'm not quite sure if it is possible though. Of course after this is done I'd like to be able to use it in the editor.

What exactly need be done for this to work? What programs should I use?

[rybray]

When you open a painting in the model editor, the actual picture is something called the painting_image. I basically want to know how to edit this. I can't find out how to change the painting_image for a picture or where is its located in the files.

[Rapture]

If you look in your Amensia the Dark Descent > entities > ornament. Find the particular painting with the frame, it has a .dds. Use GIMP with the .dds plugin to open it and edit it from their.


GIMP is a free editing program for pictures and stuff.
You need the plugin for .dds to open and save .dds images.

[rybray]

I open them in CS2 and I have the right plugins, but the .dds files have three paintings in them... I really don't understand what I'm seeing. When you are opening the pictures in the model editor you aren't opening the .dds file, youre opening the painting folder, which has a .dae, a .ent, and a .msh which don't open in photoshop...

[DRedshot]

there should be a

"painting_xxx.dds"
"painting_xxx_spec.dds"
"painting_xxx_nrm.dds"

the one you want to edit is the top one, the one with no suffixes. When you open the .dds file in photoshop, there should be a seemingly random scatter of images, ranging from gold trimmings, gold planes, and importantly - the picture. Don't worry about the other things, just focus on the actual painting. Find a painting you want to use, paste it into the .dds file as a new layer, crop it / scale it / move it until the picture matches perfectly with the old picture. Then merge visible layers, autocrop layers, and export as a modified .dds (save as new don't overwrite!)

I've never done this myself, so just ask if something doesn't work, hopefully it does!

[rybray]

But when you open, for example, painting_image02_04, there are three paintings in the one file. How does that even work?

[MegaScience]

When the model was made,the person simply aligned the image in the frame. the game knows which sections of the textures to display because it is told to. Not hard to understand. Just edit the section where the painting is.