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Post by ottemis on Jan 30, 2017 0:41:44 GMT
 Hai peeps. This mod has been in the works for some years. It might just have been the best kept secret since 2013 so I think it's high time to officially announce its development. BackgroundI started work on CCO together with a then-coder for me3explorer, Ashley66444. We were making good progress when she disappeared for an extended period. Work on the Mod as a collaborative effort stopped entirely. Months later I heard back from her that this had been due to RL circumstances. She asked me if I'd continued work on it on my own. I had not seeing I felt uncomfortable without having spoken to her about it first and I had held out hope for her return, she told me I could and should have. She disappeared again from the modding scene afterwards. It took me quite a while to clear my schedule enough to actually start working on this again, but here we are a few months into re-development. But what is it, Otte?
Well, as the title reads, this is a CC Overhaul Mod. It will introduce new entries on a number of existing CC sliders, and it will add entirely new sliders to the CC while leaving the vanilla options largely intact.
When Ash and I were working on it, we had introduced functional new female hairs into the CC and added new slider options. Since then I've started from scratch, it will be a DLC mod and it will only feature my own work in terms of meshes and textures. I plan to bring in hairstyles from the entire trilogy not originally in the CC. This with an eye on import continuity (as really, the ME3 CC was an insult in that regard) and the fact that more choice is simply better. I'm also adding in some variations on existing styles. Hairstyles from older games will have their models updated, as ME1 and ME2 hairs had bucket syndrome they don't look particularly good in ME3 when you port them in unedited. All hairs will also use ME3 hair textures where feasible for consistency reasons. The same applies to new complexions, I will bring ones preciously unavailable into the CC, rework them where necessary for use on Shepard. I will also be including several custom complexions. Extra eyebrow options will be all new. Sliders added will hopefully take away the need to gibbed savegame edit your characters after creation. Which sliders are being expanded / added?
Currently I'm working on adding new female hairs. Once those are all added, I plan to add: - More male hairs
- New hair highlight colour sliders
- More complexions
- More eyebrow options
- More hair / eye / lip / eye-shadow colour options
- More eye-shadow intensity options
- New Brow thickness slider
- New Lip shine scalar slider
- Reworked make-up mask
Not all of these have been tested and more research will likely need to be done but I am relatively optimistic all this is feasible. I also plan to look into the possibility of re-introducing the ME1 scars into the CC somehow, but that's a potential pickle so that comes with a giant disclaimer. Obviously as I add sliders, facecodes expand. I don't plan to exceed the maximum number of characters for each slider, so they would in theory be copy-paste-able as long as you have CCO installed. I'll release documentation on how CCO facecodes can be reverted to vanilla. Do you take requests?If you have a suggestion, feel free to share but if it doesn't float my boat I'm unlikely to stick effort in. I won't be featuring any work by other mod authors. The beauty of CCO is that once these new meshes/textures are created, their new slots can all be modded onto. I'll never be able to please everyone so rather than trying, I'm gonna do me and give you all a nice base to potentially start from. You can 'plug into' this mod with your own complexions or meshes. I will link to them from CCO's project description and list them in this thread OP. ETA
Not a clue as of yet. As I'm doing this by myself, there's no telling. The hairs are the bulk of the work I suspect, so once that part is done we're getting somewhere.
Preview

I have more styles added that are not yet depicted here. Next update they'll be included. Also, any marked WIP are non-final additions. I'll judge if I can viably keep them in once I start to update/modify their meshes.
Compatibility issues
From what I can foresee now, these will obviously not be compatible with any mods that apply to BioP_Char.pcc, BIOG_HMF_HIR_PRO.pcc or BIOG_HMM_HIR_PRO.pcc That includes but is not limited to popular mods like - Character Texture Overhaul by ELE08 (compatibility pack will likely be created)
- Vanilla Hair Tweaks by ELE08 (compatibility pack will likely be created)
- Any and all other hair or complexion mods in their current form
I will look in to adding Genesis DLC compatibility.
Stay tuned =)
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sil
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Post by sil on Jan 30, 2017 1:08:47 GMT
Although I don't use the custom character generator (I know, boring boring, using default MaleShep), I think this idea is great. Would these custom character differences also be able to be added to NPCs? As I noticed the ME2 Mom hairstyle is there, and that would make Kelly look even closer to how she is meant to look.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 30, 2017 1:11:25 GMT
Will there be new presets? I'm really excited about this. It might actually get me to play femshep again.
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Post by ottemis on Jan 30, 2017 1:19:42 GMT
Although I don't use the custom character generator (I know, boring boring, using default MaleShep), I think this idea is great. Would these custom character differences also be able to be added to NPCs? As I noticed the ME2 Mom hairstyle is there, and that would make Kelly look even closer to how she is meant to look. This is being discussed between Giftfish and myself. The mesh for Kelly would not be applied to her through CCO itself, but might go into ME3Recalibrated as that Mod already features an overhaul for Kelly. As I don't change the vanilla options in CCO, these and thus NPC's will remain unaffected, but ELEs hair and complexion mod replace the vanilla options and I plan to create compatibility mods for those that can be applied to CCO so NPC's would be directly affected by that. ELE08 is a good friend, we discussed it a while ago. Will there be new presets? I'm really excited about this. It might actually get me to play femshep again. I plan to look into this, but I haven't found a way of doing it as of yet. I'm not a huge fan of the presets myself either. So maybe haha.
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Post by giftfish on Jan 30, 2017 15:05:05 GMT
Will there be new presets? I'm really excited about this. It might actually get me to play femshep again. New presets would be nice. There are some really, really nice Shepard's out there that have had their facial structure heavily-modified via gibbed. I think getting those backported into the game seems feasible but might be pretty tough. I think workflow would be something like...: 1. Export the custom headmorph for the Shepard in question (Umodel or whatnot). 2. Make any tweaks in Max 3. Clone an existing mesh for a preset 4. Port the edited mesh in, replacing the cloned mesh. I think the hard part is getting the headmorph exported since those edits with gibbed are stored in the save game and not in the game files. Otte likely knows more, though. Although I don't use the custom character generator (I know, boring boring, using default MaleShep), I think this idea is great. Would these custom character differences also be able to be added to NPCs? As I noticed the ME2 Mom hairstyle is there, and that would make Kelly look even closer to how she is meant to look. This is being discussed between Giftfish and myself. The mesh for Kelly would not be applied to her through CCO itself, but might go into ME3Recalibrated as that Mod already features an overhaul for Kelly. As I don't change the vanilla options in CCO, these and thus NPC's will remain unaffected, but ELEs hair and complexion mod replace the vanilla options and I plan to create compatibility mods for those that can be applied to CCO so NPC's would be directly affected by that. ELE08 is a good friend, we discussed it a while ago. Yeah, so ME2's Mom will definitely be ported to Kelly. Otte and I have had that in the works for a good bit. It's close to done... I think? Once it is, it'll be baked into both BO and ME3Re. I'll likely also make an alternate cabin photo for Kelly, so folks can swap out the texture if they want. When doing this, I'll probably also build in a new makeup mask for Kelly. This wasn't something I really considered previously, as Kelly was my first redux, but it's pretty easy to do. ME3's makeup mask is very different from ME2 and it's part of the reason that no matter how heavy I make Kelly's eye makeup, she doesn't look right. The other part, of course, are the changes to her eye shape and facial structure, but I can only do so much correction to that in the game. Custom mesh edits are an option, but, with eyes it's tough due to potential conflicts with animations. ---- Along with Kelly, I will likely also at that point release an optional set of files for Ashley with a redux of her looking more akin to ME1/ME2. I still need to iron out permissions for the various tidbits I want to use from different mods, but it will be a similar feel to Ashley Legacy Project.
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Post by ottemis on Jan 30, 2017 17:59:54 GMT
This is being discussed between Giftfish and myself. The mesh for Kelly would not be applied to her through CCO itself, but might go into ME3Recalibrated as that Mod already features an overhaul for Kelly. As I don't change the vanilla options in CCO, these and thus NPC's will remain unaffected, but ELEs hair and complexion mod replace the vanilla options and I plan to create compatibility mods for those that can be applied to CCO so NPC's would be directly affected by that. ELE08 is a good friend, we discussed it a while ago. Yeah, so ME2's Mom will definitely be ported to Kelly. Otte and I have had that in the works for a good bit. It's close to done... I think? Once it is, it'll be baked into both BO and ME3Re. I'll likely also make an alternate cabin photo for Kelly, so folks can swap out the texture if they want. Yes, close to done, just need to adjust some of the new stranding in the back of the mesh =)
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viper
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Post by viper on Jan 31, 2017 13:24:23 GMT
Fantastic ! Any previews for new male hair ?  Really looking forward to this.
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Post by ottemis on Jan 31, 2017 13:31:10 GMT
Fantastic ! Any previews for new male hair ?  Really looking forward to this. Hah not yet I'm afraid, but for what's on the picture atm, the Jack hair will be ported and so will the custom crewcut. I'll likely put in a variation on the Jessica hair as well (maybe a tiny bit shorter).
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 31, 2017 14:04:32 GMT
Are you going to use your own braided hair mod in this one?
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Post by ottemis on Jan 31, 2017 16:45:45 GMT
Are you going to use your own braided hair mod in this one? No, as that mesh is ported from Skyrim, and originally came from the Sims (I believe, top of head). Anything I add in the release version of CCO will either have asset roots in the trilogy or be completely custom work.
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Post by mgamerz on Feb 10, 2017 4:53:09 GMT
I am unsure if you will be able to add new objects to the interface SWF file for new sliders. I have worked pretty extensively in them and the character creation SWF is incredibly complex - I spent a lot of time making the controller mod work with it. I have never added new objects (such as a new slider vs just adding to an existing) because the decompilation tool (jpex) is not advanced enough. The sliders are defined in there rather than unreal. (Though they do cross platform calls).
I have found in mass effect SWF files everything must be done in actionscript assembly in order to work properly.
The genesis 2 one is almost identical but has 2 extra lines in it.
Also, this mod won't be compatible with the controller mod as biop_char is modified, using the correct version based on if genesis 2 is installed or not. It should be once the first save is created though.
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Post by ottemis on Feb 10, 2017 12:18:47 GMT
mgamerz --- Can't say I completely follow all the technical jargon you're using but completely new sliders were tested working ingame with the initial version of this mod (created back in 2013/4). That one applied directly to vanilla gamefiles. I'm rebuilding in a DLC mod using PackED cloning over manual cloning this time around, I'm pretty confident I can make this work again as it did before. These were all sliders controlling stuff that can already be set for characters through savegame editing.
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Post by mgamerz on Feb 10, 2017 20:43:40 GMT
Interesting. From my testing on that screen it seemed that the sliders were done in actionscript rather than unrealscript. Maybe you can call them from both. I'm surprised it works. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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sil
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Post by sil on Feb 10, 2017 21:34:09 GMT
Interesting. From my testing on that screen it seemed that the sliders were done in actionscript rather than unrealscript. Maybe you can call them from both. I'm surprised it works. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Does that mean it might work with SP Controller Mod?
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Post by mgamerz on Feb 11, 2017 18:42:55 GMT
Yes and No.
There is an SWF in biop_char that must be replaced to work. There's also some class name changes to force it to use the Xbox controls rather than the overriding PC ones.
The GUI transplanting tool will use the right UI (SWF replacement), but the classes won't be changed since that's too complicated to parse automatically. Because the PC ones aren't renamed (and thus not used) you won't be able to do things like turn your head with the controller mod installed. It would require a separate add on.
Or the user could just wait until after the character selection screen and then install the controller mod since the first save is already past that.
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