Hello to anyone reading this,
I’m very new at Romhacking, and one thing I wanted to do was doing a graphical mod in Phantom Hourglass where Tetra’s model replaces Link’s model and vice-versa, which would make it a playable Tetra mod. I use a Macbook Pro, which means I need to open all the required programs for NDS romhacking through WineBottler. I use Tinke 0.9.2. for opening the files of the ROM and use Blender for editing whatever 3D stuff I need to do (I am very new with Blender).
I downloaded Link and Tetra’s model from TheVGRessource and was able to fix up their models on Blender by mirroring the textures, but now I am faced with a new issue. I have no idea how to give Tetra Link’s animations (and vice-versa) and how to import it back into Tinke. I exported the Link animations from Noesis, turning them into a Collada file) and imported them into Blender.
When I parent the Link animation rig with Link, there’s no problem here. I believe I parented the rig to the model, and it fits like a glove, which makes sense since the rig was made for it.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Tetra model. The Link animation rigs would not parent to the Tetra model, so I followed the instructions of this comment:
Which basically boils down to separating the mesh parts, parenting the rigs back together, then joining back all the mesh together. This however leads to this monstrosity:
Another attempt I tried was copying the Tetra NSBMD model from the ROM file and pasting it into the place of Link’s NSBMD model and vice-versa. This however led to another monstrosity:
Also, another problem I realized is that unlike Tetra’s file in the ROM, Link isn’t in a bin file, which means I can’t “pack it” to save the file and progress. This actually led to an issue where the modified ROM, where I copy pasted Tetra’s NSBMD file onto Link’s, crashed the game and made it unable to open. It was stuck on the white screen of death (I tested it and only copypasting Link's NSBMD file onto Tetra's made the game not crash at launching on Desmume, so that's why I believe this is the issue). You can see the lack of a bin file for Link on the left image:
I know model swaps mods are possible in Phantom Hourglass, since someone made a mod where you can play as Mario in the game,
but I have no idea how they did it. I would love to do additional details such as switching voice lines as well as modifying texts to reflect the changes, but right now, all I really want is to learn how to a 3D model swap romhack of a NDS game. I try doing my best looking for resources and tutorials online, but the only ones that I found was most comprehensible were Pokemon romhacks or making custom Mario Kart tracks, which doesn’t really help me all that much.
Sorry for the very long message, I'm more than happy to discuss more details if necessary!
I’m very new at Romhacking, and one thing I wanted to do was doing a graphical mod in Phantom Hourglass where Tetra’s model replaces Link’s model and vice-versa, which would make it a playable Tetra mod. I use a Macbook Pro, which means I need to open all the required programs for NDS romhacking through WineBottler. I use Tinke 0.9.2. for opening the files of the ROM and use Blender for editing whatever 3D stuff I need to do (I am very new with Blender).
I downloaded Link and Tetra’s model from TheVGRessource and was able to fix up their models on Blender by mirroring the textures, but now I am faced with a new issue. I have no idea how to give Tetra Link’s animations (and vice-versa) and how to import it back into Tinke. I exported the Link animations from Noesis, turning them into a Collada file) and imported them into Blender.
When I parent the Link animation rig with Link, there’s no problem here. I believe I parented the rig to the model, and it fits like a glove, which makes sense since the rig was made for it.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Tetra model. The Link animation rigs would not parent to the Tetra model, so I followed the instructions of this comment:
Which basically boils down to separating the mesh parts, parenting the rigs back together, then joining back all the mesh together. This however leads to this monstrosity:
Another attempt I tried was copying the Tetra NSBMD model from the ROM file and pasting it into the place of Link’s NSBMD model and vice-versa. This however led to another monstrosity:
Also, another problem I realized is that unlike Tetra’s file in the ROM, Link isn’t in a bin file, which means I can’t “pack it” to save the file and progress. This actually led to an issue where the modified ROM, where I copy pasted Tetra’s NSBMD file onto Link’s, crashed the game and made it unable to open. It was stuck on the white screen of death (I tested it and only copypasting Link's NSBMD file onto Tetra's made the game not crash at launching on Desmume, so that's why I believe this is the issue). You can see the lack of a bin file for Link on the left image:
I know model swaps mods are possible in Phantom Hourglass, since someone made a mod where you can play as Mario in the game,
but I have no idea how they did it. I would love to do additional details such as switching voice lines as well as modifying texts to reflect the changes, but right now, all I really want is to learn how to a 3D model swap romhack of a NDS game. I try doing my best looking for resources and tutorials online, but the only ones that I found was most comprehensible were Pokemon romhacks or making custom Mario Kart tracks, which doesn’t really help me all that much.
Sorry for the very long message, I'm more than happy to discuss more details if necessary!
