[Outdated] Palette Swapping 101

An early guide for your palette swapping needs
Note: This is now fairly old, please check out the LLB Mod Manager and TextureMod for an easier way to get texture mods working!

To Note

N.B. Edit 25/07/2021 - This slightly convoluted method is now pretty outdated as an easier solution in the LLB Mod Manager has been available for a while. Links are available in a post down in the comments!

Since the game's only been out a day since this has been posted, this might not be the most efficient or ideal way to go about palette swapping/modding this game in general and something might come in the future that might be a much better way.
This guide is based off of a reddit post found on r/Shadowverse that goes a bit more into detail about modding with Unity - the post can be found here. The process for replacing textures is the same, but I'll be giving examples using files from LL Blaze.
I would heavily recommend backing up the files in the LL Blaze folder that you might be touching e.g the characters folder in LLBlaze>Bundles ESPECIALLY EVERY CHARACTER FILE.

What you'll need

• Some kind of photo editing software like GIMP, Paintdotnet or Photoshop - It's also possible to use something like 3D Coat, which might be useful for those who prefer painting directly onto the model.
  
• The character textures found here[drive.google.com] - Big thanks to Hang Boy for ripping these and more! For purely palette swapping/texture modding you'll be looking for the Textures folder in each character folder to find the textures.
  
• The Unity_Assets_Files folder from Hang Boy's rips.
  
• UnityEX - please also go to Hang Boy's rips to find it.
  
• Pin your the LL Blaze folder from steamapps/common onto Quick Access if you can - Not exactly necessary but incredibly useful for navigating to it, especially if you might be doing a lot of palette swapping.

Editing the texture

Go to the character google drive folder and find the character and colour that you want to change - Keep note of the name of the files - They show the codename of the character in the game files and which number that colour is. The original colour can be found as [codename]Tex, while alternate colours will be found as [codename]Tex_Alt[number].
The texture itself might be a little bit confusing to look at - If you have a program with a paint bucket that can fill any pixel of the same colour, then that will help a lot with filling in both the textures and block colours that you wish to be the same.
Once you're done tinkering with colours, convert the .png to a .dds - you can do this with sites like https://online-converting.com/image/convert2dds/, however I would highly recommend using something like Nvidia's Photoshop DDS Plugin rather than any online converters as compression can kill the quality of the textures. You can get Photoshop CS2 for free off of the site as it's legacy software. If you use paintdotnet, that can convert .png to .dds itself.
When converting, if you have the option to choose the Texture2D id that the .dds gets saved as, I'd recommend using RGBA8888 (might be listed as A8R8G8B8 or 8.8.8.8 or otherwise in different software) and turning off Mip Map generation (For some reason, mip maps greatly blur the texture in game). Example shown here:



After converting, rename/keep the filename as what the original texture name was with .tex after it. In this example, I'm replacing Latch's 2nd colour (or 1st alternate colour depending on how you see it), so the renamed .dds will be crocTex_Alt00.tex.dds

Installing Custom Textures - Using UnityEX

Once you download the .zip file for UnityEX, extract the .exe and run it - you'll be met with this.



Go to Hang Boy's google drive and download Unity_Assets_Files and drag that folder into steamapps>common>LLBlaze>Bundles>characters. This will become clearer later down if you haven't modded before the recent change in structure.
Then click the Open Unity Archive button and direct to steamapps>common>LLBlaze>Bundles>characters and then select the file of the character whose textures you want to edit.

Note: make sure to search for ALL file types and not just unity archives.
Note 2: The "_game" variants are just the sound files.


The list for character names goes:

• Boss = Doombox
  
• Boom = Sonata
  
• Robot = Switch
  
• Kid = Raptor
  
• Candy = Candyman
  
• Croc = Latch
  
• Electro = Grid
  
• Cop = Nitro
  
• Skate = Jet
  
• Pong = Dice
  
• Graf = Toxic

You'll then see this whole list of assets load up - Do not close UnityEX after this.



Put Hang Boy's Unity_Assets_Files preset folder into the characters folder. Go into the Unity_Assets_Files Folder and go to the folders of the character you're modding for until you find a "Textures" folder



Note: A fresh download of Hang Boy's folder will not include all these .tex files initially.



Place your edited texture file in this Textures folder



Finally, go back to UnityEX press the "Import All Files" button. Once it's done it should be safe to close UnityEX - if you want to check immediately, just boot up LL Blaze and check!



Note: When updating mods or running quick tests while making your own, make sure to:

• Re-open the character file if you are re-installing a mod you've just installed (and thus still had UnityEX open)
  
• Exactly match the name of your custom texture to what the .tex asset is (except it should have .dds at the end as its file type)

If you don't do these, it's likely that the file being edited may get a bit screwed up (you'll see models won't load or things go completely white). If this happens, use the backup of the respective file that you should have to replace it.

The Fun Part - Sharing!

Want to see what others have made? Want to share you own creations? We now have a gamebanana page up so go crazy! Check it out here![gamebanana.com]
There's also the Color Vault discord server where you can submit your creations - Go here[discord.gg] to check it out!

[Pretty good joooob]

While I try to import files, UnityEX just freezes and not responding. I can even try to import non changed files (export and immadietely import) and it still freezes. Can someone help?

[gigaiDX]

@CameraID Unfortunately this guide is pretty outdated by now as it was a bit of a bodge day one solution. If I'm honest, I haven't been in the loop for texture modding in a long, long bit but AFAIK there's a far more elegant solution out there in the LL Blaze Mod Manager [github.com] and TextureMod [github.com]. A video guide's been put up here and if you need any more help/details, you'll be able to find that on the Team Reptile discord server under the modding channel. Hope you manage to get your mods working soon and apologies for the inconvenience! ^^

On that note, I'll be slapping a quick edit to this guide to point out it's fairly outdated as far as injecting the textures go.

[JuneBug]

alright, so i have followed all the steps and yet i still cannot get this to work, can i ask for help?

[Exquizik]

Update on how to palette swap DLC skins?

[no dice]

Most likely whats wrong is that you need to put the unityEX program into the characters folder. but if you cant walk me though it i can totally make one and ask op to post it

[no dice]

define trouble, before anyone will go through the trouble.

possibly me, of making a video

[M3m3God]

Is there a video of some sort that I can follow because I'm really trying to follow this but it really isn't working out. Could anyone help me out?

[gigaiDX]

@Wake you've forgotten the ".tex" before the .dds

[Wake]

I'm getting a "File not found in archive: kid\CAB-2dd09f81196578474b8af891b9c375\kidTex_Alt00.dds And it will be skipped" message when I try to import all files on a Raptor skin with the file name of kidTex_Alt00.dds

[gigaiDX]

I've been told from the Team Reptile discord that the UnityEX download has been updated at some point since the first release of this guide, and now contains adware. If you have recently gone through this guide and downloaded UnityEX through the link I gave, please delete it and find the one uploaded by Hang Boy. Sincere apologies if any harm has been done due to this.