Changing the material in Meshplorer is not having an effect

[realsurvivor686]

Problem:
Altering the materials for Ashley's helmet (in Ashley_01 and Ashley_01_Explore, which currently reside in a custom DLC folder) does not have any noticeable effect. The eye slits continue to exhibit their usual visor texture and material with no noticeable change.

Context:
Am currently creating a new armour mod for Ashley, one that incorporates the Death Mask in her armour. I want to select a material that replicates the 'glow' that is normally associated with Death Mask's eye-slits, but am altering the materials (via meshplorer) does not have any noticeable effect

I have determined the eye slits are controlled via the materials, instead of the 'usual' spec, diff and norm textures.

Attempted Solutions:
I have selected multiple material-entries via meshplorer to no avail. I have swapped the VSR_Norm texture from the Death Mask to the targeted PCCs but cannot report any noticeable changes.

Questions:
1. Currently, my method consists of clicking on "material 1", navigating to the drop-down bar and selecting any other material (Have attempted with "CombinedEffectsHologram", with no success. Utilized the "Marksman_FB_Mat" to see if anything would take effect). IS this the wrong method to change the material for a mesh?

2. I understand that meshplorer was recently altered (Am currently utilizing "ME3Explorer Stable Release v3.0-409-3-0-0"), has this turned off changing the material ability?

3. The PCCs are residing in a custom DLC folder ("DLC_CON_AshWar"). Would this have anything to do with my current situation?

I would be grateful for anything assistance in this situation.

Much Appreciated

survivor686

Pictures:
Current meshplorer view of the PCC File (Note the highlighted section)

What I Want (Focus on the Death Mask Helmet):


What I currently deal with:

[ottemis]

You hit set as material and then manually save changes to the PCC when done I assume?

[realsurvivor686]

Feb 7, 2017 2:06:54 GMT ottemis said:

You hit set as material and then manually save changes to the PCC when done I assume?

Indeed. I even reload the pcc to double check if the entry has been modified and it does reflect the changes.

[ottemis]

I don't know, I've done this plenty using 3.0.1
While it's possible you wouldn't see much change depending on the material selected, as long as a texture is associated with it, you should still be able to tell it changed.

Are there any other visor materials in that PCC to choose from?

[realsurvivor686]

Thanks for responding.

I strongly believe that the meshplorer's material change function is not working: I went to another Ashley PCC and altered the material for the visor section (4140 HMM_VSR_SHPa_MAT_1a to 2300 CombinedEffect_Hologram_CRB) only to find the same results - The Visor material did not change at all.

Am currently following WV's method (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViYOQZ2NX98). However, I have noticed that there is NO confirmation box that states "Done" (see 0:24). Could that be an indication that something has gone wrong?

For what it's worth: Changing the materials by section seems to be working (I altered the visor section for each LOD Model to "2" only to get the 'non-valid' texture placeholder result), so at least we know the meshplorer knows what section the visor is in. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem eager to change it.

EDIT: Also the only Visor material is the "HMM_VSR_SHPa_MAT_1a" option.

[ottemis]

I've had issues with the 'Done' dialogue not popping up at one time where I was forced to reboot to resolve the issue.
In my case, I was replacing LODs for a certain mesh and it would not update saying this was done until after I'd closed the UPK import window.

However, I've been adding a bunch of new materials and changing various meshes to use it with no issues, so I'd say it's not so much broken as it is slightly buggy. I should note though, I've only tried this with the latest release on meshes that have a single material assigned to them.
Maybe CombinedEffect_Hologram_CRB is simply not a valid material to change to as well. Have you tried switching to that other available visor material? I'd try rebooting before tyring though, to see if that resolves the issues with the confimation box.

[realsurvivor686]

I rebooted my machine and then restarting me3explorer. Went to the offending PCC and altered its material to anything else, just to induce a change. No visible change. No "Done" dialogue box showing up as well.

As far as bugs go, this one is pretty frustrating. II have been able to alter materials before (It was with Ashley_02) for imported meshes in the past. Am a little concerned that this feature has become bugged in this instance.

Is there any way I can escalate to the meshplorer developer?

[kinkojiro]

To get around the "Done" bug, just click on a different mesh than the one you are editing.  For some reason (probably to do with the rendering window) that allows the import to complete.

Materials are tricky.  Not sure what could be causing that unless there really is only 1 material.

[ottemis]

You can post the issue on ME3Explorer's github. Otherwise maybe try using one of the slightly older versions to see if this problem also exists for you there. The older versions have different issues obviously, but for the sake of it you might as well try. Say 2.0.15 for example.

[realsurvivor686]

Tried it with the Version 2.015. Same symptoms. Same damn, symptoms.

Tried swapping the material indexes with each other (i.e. swapped the materials "Materials 0" and "Materials 1"), no change. The damnable mesh has a mind of its own.

What does provoke a change:
1. Altering the "Material Index" via "LOD #/Sections/Section #/Material Index" (Got the surreal result, which can be seen below). Even then, only material changes for the 'eye-slits' take hold. Everything else just stays the same.

Guess Ashley won't be getting the Death Mask then.

Thank you all for your patience and assistance.

Side Note: Intriguingly, all 'glowing' lights for visors (At least for Squadmates) are controlled via the texture maps (versus the 'materials'), I'll try creating at new texture map, but only time will tell.

As promised the 'surreal' image:

[kinkojiro]

All the glow lights are usually controlled by the alpha channel of the spec.

Nice terminator 2 version!

[benji]

Feb 7, 2017 12:58:52 GMT kinkojiro said:

To get around the "Done" bug, just click on a different mesh than the one you are editing.  For some reason (probably to do with the rendering window) that allows the import to complete.

If it really does have something to do with the viewport, you could try using my new viewport code (github.com/epicabsol/ME3Explorer/releases/).

Is there any way I can escalate to the meshplorer developer?

From what I can tell there isn't an active Meshplorer developer. However, I have been messing about in the code for a while and if you send me a mesh and instructions on how to reproduce your issue, I would be happy to do some preliminary looking.

[ottemis]

Might be a good idea for realsurvivor686 to open a github issue for this then you can pick it up from there benji?

[realsurvivor686]

benji

What I did:
1. I extracted the Defender and Death Mask meshes from the relevant PCCs, skin-wrapped them for Ashley, exported these new meshes to UDK, converted them to UPK and then imported these UPKs into meshplorer for Ashley_01 and Ashley_01_Explore (see: drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9B7qOn_7YyWOEF1ZFJFMFFfY0k?usp=sharing)

2. I encountered no dialog box that said "Done" when I changed the materials, via meshplorer (only when I hit the "Save PCC" button). No matter what material I changed in "Materials 1" nothing was seen in the game. Only changes with regards to "Material 0" had an effect in the game.

[ottemis]

Please move this issue to GitHub, benji can pick it up from there. Locking thread.