Show me those .dats!

[nikia]

Not home at the moment but it is the solid black with the colored borders from XI View. I use the one with the white border.

[Stromgarde]

I took a look into it but it seems like the transparency is handled somewhere other than the alpha layer. Additionally, I didn't see any backgrounds with a uniform level of transparency I could gut and swap in the other texture :/

[nikia]

I asked a few years ago and at the time was told it wasnt possible.
Thought I would ask again just incase things some how changed.

Is it possible to change the battle stance for Mithra to be the same as the Hume Female stance?

In general I like the way the Hume Female stands/casts/ uses JA, never really cared for the Mithra need to hunch over(but i get it since cats and all)
Thank you for your time.

[Spira]

yeah. its not possible.

[nikia]

Been doing ADL and I hate how big he is, the targeting annoys me. Any smaller versions of him or a good monster I can change out but still see everything like his clone summoning animations. Any help would be great thank you

Also if a dat change what location is it

[Vinedrai]

is there any jp site where i can find some custom dats? they might have an active community for mods. ever since the original ffxidats.com died years ago, i couldn't find an active modding community (not talking about 18+ stuff from neko or w/e).

[Kohan]

is there any jp site where i can find some custom dats? they might have an active community for mods. ever since the original ffxidats.com died years ago, i couldn't find an active modding community (not talking about 18+ stuff from neko or w/e).

Not everything on Neko Sentai is necessarily 18+, and you may find some mods to your liking by fishing around in there. Likewise, you could find things within this thread, though I agree that it is a bit dense, and would therefore require a lot of digging.

Here is one site I had heard of, though I do not check it, and I therefore don't know how robust it is: http://ffxidats.caarrie.com/

This is an older site, like FFXIDats—it hasn't been updated in ages, but it also obviously never went down: http://www.ffximc.com/

That's all I've got.

[ProjectA2O]

Hey dudes/dudettes,

Does anyone know if its possible to view dats with altanaview from a location other than the game directory, and if possible how? Been messing with dats for years but I dont have much experience with altanaview.

[Yugl]

You can add DATS to the list/game and view them. You edit the Altana Viewer list.

[ProjectA2O]

Any chance someone could give me a detailed crash course on how to do that exactly, or point me towards info on it if its already been posted?

[ProjectA2O]

Disregard that, I figured out what you meant, I can be super slow sometimes... well most times haha.

Another question though, any idea where the effect dats for the aura weapons(girru, ephemeron etc) are located? I cant find them in the viewer.

[Stromgarde]

The weapon aura effect information is embedded into the weapons directly. For more information, search the back end of the thread for posts by Mooshywooshy. I should warn you now though; while doing awesome stuff with them is possible, it has very, very little to do with normal DAT modding and requires an entirely different set of skills.

[ProjectA2O]

I read through the parts of the thread with you guys trying to figure it out and the more resent posts with the oats mob you did, thanks for that btw. Any idea if its possible to view the effects in the viewer and how?

Also I wouldnt mind learning an "entirely different set of skills" or at least trying, know any good beginners guides? I guess google would be a good place to start for a lot of it? or maybe school haha.

[Stromgarde]

Starting here and looking from posts around 2009 would probably be best, and you can follow the discussion on BG starting here. Try to not let your brain melt.

[JeanPaul]

Just curious, Stromgarde, when you made those Soul Calibur swords, how did you bypass the vertex limits? I've been looking to import weapon models from other games, but have been stopped by an incompatible .mcd file. Played around in VRS and looking at .mcd files in notepad++ to see if I could discover a method for expanding on the limit, but I wasn't successful. Haven't found anything through searching on various modding sites/threads either.

edit: After more thorough experimenting, I can see that you must've made the sword from scratch in VRS. Yeesh. Judging by VRS's inability to work with anything other than DATs, and how there's no other program to really handle a .mcd, there's really no easy way of implementing any model that isn't already established in the game.

edit edit: Ok, I discovered a way to import at least the vertices into VRS, which from there it might be possible to reconnect them all to match the .mqo file.

1) Load an existing file in VRS and add vertices along existing edges until you have the same amount as you want in your final product.
2) Export the file back into the ROM folder so you can open it with ModelViewer, and then export the .mqo file (which, as we know, exports the .mcd as well).
3) Replace the newly exported .mqo file with the .mqo of your finished product and import it back into a DAT through ModelViewer. It'll look like an ugly mess.
4) Load this newly modified DAT in VRS. If you view only the vertices, you'll see that each and every one of them is in the proper place, but the edges are all over the place.
5) Select all the edges of the model and delete them, leaving only the vertices behind.
6) Here's where it gets tricky, and I haven't gotten through it myself; Using your .mqo as a guide, redraw all the edges of the model. The finished product should work perfectly, in theory, as long as it's identical to the structure of the .mqo.

What seems to be the issue with the .mcd is which vertices are connected to which. This is why we can modify .mqo's all we want as long as we don't delete or add any vertices. I suppose the easiest way to expedite the process would be if you could rearrange the vertices while they're in .mqo format to be sort of lined up so the redrawing process is simpler.

[Vathris]

Where can i get mooshywooshy's katana dats???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz33IUyU7io
Sweet jesus theese are awesome

[Stromgarde]

Just curious, Stromgarde, when you made those Soul Calibur swords, how did you bypass the vertex limits? I've been looking to import weapon models from other games, but have been stopped by an incompatible .mcd file. Played around in VRS and looking at .mcd files in notepad++ to see if I could discover a method for expanding on the limit, but I wasn't successful. Haven't found anything through searching on various modding sites/threads either.

edit: After more thorough experimenting, I can see that you must've made the sword from scratch in VRS. Yeesh. Judging by VRS's inability to work with anything other than DATs, and how there's no other program to really handle a .mcd, there's really no easy way of implementing any model that isn't already established in the game.

edit edit: Ok, I discovered a way to import at least the vertices into VRS, which from there it might be possible to reconnect them all to match the .mqo file.

1) Load an existing file in VRS and add vertices along existing edges until you have the same amount as you want in your final product.
2) Export the file back into the ROM folder so you can open it with ModelViewer, and then export the .mqo file (which, as we know, exports the .mcd as well).
3) Replace the newly exported .mqo file with the .mqo of your finished product and import it back into a DAT through ModelViewer. It'll look like an ugly mess.
4) Load this newly modified DAT in VRS. If you view only the vertices, you'll see that each and every one of them is in the proper place, but the edges are all over the place.
5) Select all the edges of the model and delete them, leaving only the vertices behind.
6) Here's where it gets tricky, and I haven't gotten through it myself; Using your .mqo as a guide, redraw all the edges of the model. The finished product should work perfectly, in theory, as long as it's identical to the structure of the .mqo.

What seems to be the issue with the .mcd is which vertices are connected to which. This is why we can modify .mqo's all we want as long as we don't delete or add any vertices. I suppose the easiest way to expedite the process would be if you could rearrange the vertices while they're in .mqo format to be sort of lined up so the redrawing process is simpler.

Hi JeanPaul, welcome to BG. I actually do most of the body work from scratch, either starting from an existing weapon or using primatives all in VRS. VRS isn't the easiest thing to work with however so once I have a rough shape in place I export the file as a .DAT from VRS, then use Model Viewer to bounce it to Metasequoia and do the shape tuning and UV projection there. Once the time comes to add stuff to the mesh again, I import the MQO to DAT using model viewer, and then load up VRS again and repeat the process. If you're 'porting' an object, the most accurate way I've found to do so is to load a background image into MetaSeq and use Ortho projection to make sure things are aligned correctly vis-a-vis front/side/top ortho projections of said object in the model viewer of your choice.

You're on the right track, more or less; use VRS for sculpting, and MetaSeq for finishing. Most of my more complex models start life as a single vertex which gets duplicated in axis-lock mode to make the model, one polygon at a time. I've been working with Blender recently and I must say it's refreshing to not have to fight the program every step of the way.

[Sithel]

Hello you dat guru's!
Can someone take a stab at removing the glow effect from Cait Sith. I have an old dat pack of the other avatars with this removed and they look much better.

[Stromgarde]

Post a glowy and non-glowy version of the same avatar, as well as cait sith in a zip. I don't have XI installed at the moment so I can't test it but I'll take a look.

[Sithel]

Took me forever to find Cait Sith, but I did !
Here's the download with a few avatar originals and ones with the Glow removed, along with the original Cait Sith DAT.

When you look at the ones with the glow removed, they also look deeper/richer in color, I dunno why. But anyways here it is and thanks a bunch with whatever help you can provide!

http://www.mediafire.com/download/y6...+Cait+Sith.zip