SFM Noob, hair colour change

[Nykara]

Okay so..
Ive loaded in a model - in this case its a femshep model. I have shifted things around including her hair to make her more customised.. Now I want to change her hair colour and I am looking for some help on how to go about doing that. Thanks! :)

[TruBlu0014]

Originally posted by Ishka:

Okay so..
Ive loaded in a model - in this case its a femshep model. I have shifted things around including her hair to make her more customised.. Now I want to change her hair colour and I am looking for some help on how to go about doing that. Thanks! :)

You can either use material overrides or directly edit the texture:

1) Material Override:
-if you are familiar with material overrides, skip this.
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Right click the model in the ANIMATION SET EDITOR. Then select and click "Add Override Materials".
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In the Element Viewer, look for the hair part of the model. Once you have found it, right click and click "Add New Attribute". Select "COLOR" and name it "$color or $color2". A color bar should now appear. You can then adjust the color of the hair but keep in mind that it's only coloring the TINT of the original hair color of the model.

2) Editing the Texture:
-if you know how to edit textures, skip this.
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Using GIMP or Photoshop, change the color of the hair texture VTF file and save it as a VTF with a different name to the original. Then add it back into the SAME FOLDER WHERE the original is located.
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In the Element Viewer, look for the hair part of the model. Once you have found it, right click and click "Add New Attribute". Select "STRING" and name it "$basetexture". Your model should now have a purple-balc checkered pattern. This is normal. Now, where it says what texture the model will be using, type in the PATH TO the VTF file you named before.

[Nykara]

Thanks :) I found the tinting and yeah, I can change her hair from red to black using that - but thats about it. I think I shall have to try gimp and edit the tinting in the file itself - shouldn't be too difficult for me as I actually draw, so worth a shot. Thanks! :)

[Nykara]

GIMP says it can't open the .vtf file

[surfer171]

Yeah… you've to have VTF edit. Open the vtf file and export it as JPEG and edit the picture then open vtf edit again to save the picture as a vtf and then relocate it to where you want it

[Nykara]

Thanks :) I found a VTF plugin for GIMP thats way out of date so this program you mention should help! :)

[Zappy]

Originally posted by surfer171:

export it as JPEG

Firstly, JPGs (and thus also JPEGs) are compressed non-losslessly, resulting in bad texture quality, and secondly, JPGs don't support alpha (and I'll be surprised if the tinting is not done based on the alpha mask of the texture). PNGs (or a VTF plug-in for GIMP) are by far preferred, as they're losslessly compressed (with no quality loss) and also support alpha.

[TruBlu0014]

Originally posted by surfer171:

Yeah… you've to have VTF edit. Open the vtf file and export it as JPEG and edit the picture then open vtf edit again to save the picture as a vtf and then relocate it to where you want it

D'OH! That was the one thing I forgot to mention. I already have the VTF plugin, so I forget it first needs to be installed, lol. Good save.

Originally posted by Zappy:

Originally posted by surfer171:

export it as JPEG

Firstly, JPGs (and thus also JPEGs) are compressed non-losslessly, resulting in bad texture quality, and secondly, JPGs don't support alpha (and I'll be surprised if the tinting is not done based on the alpha mask of the texture). PNGs (or a VTF plug-in for GIMP) are by far preferred, as they're losslessly compressed (with no quality loss) and also support alpha.

Is there some condensed and simplified encyclopedia somewhere on the Internet that explains the advnatages and disadvnatges of using certain image file types? It amazes me how some of you know this stuff like it's nothing.

[Zappy]

Originally posted by TruBlu0014 misses SFM:

Is there some condensed and simplified encyclopedia somewhere on the Internet that explains the advnatages and disadvnatges of using certain image file types?

Not really, but for the most part:
PNG: 100% quality (good), supports alpha (good), widely supported, variable file-size.
JPG: Variable quality (bad), no alpha (bad), widely supported, low file-size.
BMP: I believe it's the same as PNG, except with a high file-size and maybe less supported.
GIF: 100% quality, but limited to 256 colours at most (bad), supports on/off alpha (okay), low file-size (I think), natively supports animation (but then you could just use multiple PNGs).

In short, just stick to PNG when possible, and never[imgur.com] use JPEG if you want crisp colours and details.

[surfer171]

And here I thought according to my introduction to multimedia class, JPEG is a vector image