How to Edit Body and Armor Meshes
This guide will cover how to edit body/armor meshes as well as how to import them back into Mass Effect. This guide is using LE3 as an example, but the general principle is the same for LE1 and LE2. You will need the following programs/add-ons for this guide:
Blender: https://www.blender.org/
PSK Export: https://github.com/DarklightGames/io_scene_psk_psa/releases/tag/1.1.0
PSK Import: https://github.com/Befzz/blender3d_import_psk_psa
ME3Tweaks: https://www.nexusmods.com/masseffectlegendaryedition/mods/2
Some experience with Blender is necessary.
First you need to locate where your meshes are, do this by using the Legendary Explorer Asset Database (AD). AD allows you to find every instance of a certain mesh, and it will be useful for when you need to import your meshes back into ME. In the meantime, search through AD until you find your desired mesh. As a general rule the meshes follow a naming pattern as follows:
- HMM_ARM meshes are body meshes for all male characters // HMF_ARM meshes are body meshes for female characters
- HMM_ARM_CTH are MShep casuals // HMF_ARM_CTH are FemShep casuals
- HMM_ARM_FBD are MShep full body armors // HMF_ARM_FBD are FemShep full body armors
- HMM_ARM_SHP are MShep individual armor parts // HMF_ARM_SHP are FemShep individual armor parts
Select the mesh you wish to edit, in the Usages tab right click on an instance of the mesh and choose 'Open in Meshplorer'. This will take you to the .pcc file (the actual game file) in Meshplorer that contains the mesh you want to edit.
Then, right click on the mesh on the left and choose 'Export Mesh to PSK.' This is what you will use to import into Blender.
Now import your .psk mesh into Blender; if you do not have experience with Blender, I suggest looking up tutorials to familiarize yourself with the program first.
Now comes the fun part; actually sculpting your mesh. Enter sculpt mode and enable the Y Symmetry option (unless you intentionally want your mesh to be uneven). I typically use the Elastic Deform tool for my meshes. You can sculpt your meshes however you’d like, but try to keep the mesh itself close to its original position, otherwise you may encounter messed up animations as a result of the mesh being moved away from its bones. This is mostly a problem for the hands and arms, so edit those areas carefully.
Once your mesh is sculpted to your liking, go back to Object mode and select your mesh and bones and shade the mesh smooth so it no longer has the blocky appearance to it (you can also do this sooner if you prefer).
Navigate to File → Export → Export as FBX. There are a couple of settings you need to mess with before exporting. Make sure you further smooth your mesh upon exporting, you can either choose Face or Edge smoothing. You also want to ensure that “Add Leaf Bones” is turned off. If this is not turned off, it will add an extra bone to your mesh and you will be unable to import the mesh back into Mass Effect.
Here are my export settings for reference:
You now want to take your fbx file from Blender and import it into UDK. Don’t touch any of the import settings in UDK, the default settings are okay. Do note that if your fbx file has a space in it’s name, UDK will tell you that your package has an invalid character. Just remove the space in the ‘Name’ section. Additionally, UDK may also tell you your fbx file is incompatible and out of date. Disregard the warning, I have not encountered any issues with importing an older version.
Now your mesh should appear in the program’s window. Click on it, right click, choose ‘Save,’ then name and save your mesh. It will now be a upk file and you can import it back into ME.
Now you want to go back to the .pcc file you extracted your mesh from. In my case, it is the BIOG_HMF_ARM_CTH_R.pcc file. Select the original mesh, right click, choose Replace from UDK, and then select the upk file you saved from UDK. For the SkeletalMesh, you should have only one option to choose from unless you exported from Blender with multiple meshes/armatures. Regardless, select the SkeletalMesh that is named the same as the mesh you saved from UDK.
More than likely you will get a notification saying “The rotation origin of this mesh has changed….These values may need to be adjusted to be accurate.” What this means is that your mesh is flipped on its Yaw axis. Fortunately, it is an easy fix. Right click on your mesh that is now highlighted in yellow and choose ‘Open in Package Editor.’ You will not be using most of the tools in here, but familiarizing yourself with package editor will be useful if you plan on frequently editing meshes.
Your mesh will automatically be selected, open up the Binary Interpreter tab and click Parse Binary. Click on the Rotation Origin row and to the left of it you will see a series of numbers and letters highlighted in yellow. This highlighted section represents the Rotation Origin, and you want all of the values to be set to 0. Simply click on the first non-0 value so it starts blinking in blue, and type a 0 into its place. Once you do that for each non-0 value, click ‘Save Hex Changes’ and the Binary Interpreter will close.
Navigate to File → Save, and then close out of Package Editor. Back in Meshplorer you will see that the Rotation Origin Yaw value is now set to 0. I suggest exporting your new mesh out of Meshplorer as a upk file so that you do not need to manually edit the Yaw value every single time you import your mesh into Meshplorer.
Depending on what mesh you are editing, you’re done! If your mesh appears in more than one pcc file (as determined through AD), you will need to repeat the process of replacing the original mesh with your new one. But if you are editing Shepard’s casuals or armors, you will only need to replace the mesh in 1 pcc file: BIOG_HMM_ARM_CTH_R.pcc or BIOG_HMM_ARM_SHP_R.pcc for MShep casuals or armor respectively, or BIOG_HMF_ARM_CTH_R.pcc or BIOG_HMF_ARM_SHP_R.pcc for FemShep.
Squadmate body/armor meshes, for instance, appear in several locations and you need to ensure that you are replacing all instances of that mesh, otherwise your changes will apply inconsistently. If you were to edit James’ casual outfit, you would need to ensure that you replace the mesh in all 8 files that it loads from. You can find all the pcc files that need to be replaced in Asset Database, you can see James’ casuals below as an example.
