here i am again, with another hopefully helpful guide. this time, using bone edits in conjunction with rigging to achieve better results and cool effects. this is meant for people who are confident in their rigging skills, and as such, i assume you know the basics of rigging before you start reading this. i can answer rigging questions, but there's at least 2 or 3 guides for learning the basics of rigging. if you need ideas or help with bone edits, or clarifications on something as i'm not exactly the best at explaining the first time around, just ask. i'll eventually make a list of bones that you should be able to use from each character to move around and make the edits with.
also keep in mind, bone edits should be more of a last resort type thing. if you can make the model fit the bone structure you want with very minimal edits, then just stick with that.
and as with other bone edits, i think they'll cause de-sync issues on wifi, although i'm not too sure if it only happens when bones are renamed. i never play with hacks on wifi, so i'm not sure.
to start off with, here's the terminology you should know for bones, and how they're organized. Parent - the bone above the one you are looking at. example: the YRotN is the parent of the HipN bone, and the XRotN is the parent of the YRotN, and the TransN is the parent of the XRotN. Child - the bone(s) below the bone you are looking at. there can be multiple children bones to one parent bone. example: the TopN bone has the TransN and EyeYellowM bones as children, but the TransN only has the XRotN as a child. Sibling - bones that have the same parent bone, or are all on one level of the structure. example: the TransN and EyeYellowM bones are siblings. BB refers to these as Next and Previous.
the next important thing to know is how to make bones static. if you rename a bone, it will no longer have any movements applied and it'll stay exactly where it is, only being affected by the parent bone's movements. it's the same theory for how the one slot resizes work, except we aren't going to mess with the MotionEtc file. this is useful for many situations, if you need to extend or bring in the arms or legs, or you want to move a bone chain to affect a different part of the model. i'll give examples shortly.
2 Easy Edits
now the important part, how to move bones around. it's rather simple, actually. just find a bone you want to move, right click it, and BB will show you how that bone can be moved. remember though, it only moves one spot at a time, so it can take a few clicks to get a bone into position. so here's the options. Move Up - moves the bone above the sibling bone in front of it. Move Down - moves the bone below the sibling bone behind it. Add To Parent - makes the bone a sibling to its current parent bone. Add To Next Up - makes the bone a child to the sibling bone above it. Add To Next Down - makes the bone a child to the sibling bone below it. Add New Child - adds a new bone to the structure, making it the child of the right clicked bone.
of course, the immediate question you're probably thinking of is 'well, what bones should i move then?' the basic answer is any bones you know you won't be rigging anything to. you can use any bones you want, as long as they're renamed. some characters have a lot of extra bones you can use, while others have very few extra. for example, Sonic has about 8 - 10 bones used for his quills that you could very easily use, because not many other characters would actually need them. but other characters, like the Ice Climbers, have almost no extra bones you can use (yeah, they still do have some, but you'd have to use semi important bones, like the Mouth bones).
oh, and try to make any bone edits in BrawlBox BEFORE grabbing the bone structure that you would use to rig the model to. that way, Max doesn't freak out later that the bones are in different positions, which could then make it export incorrectly, which then screws it up when importing it into BrawlBox, which then just creates a mess. it's happened to me a few times. with the newest BrawlBox versions, you can load more than 1 model in the previewer, so you can match up the bones even before exporting them to Max.
as an example, i'm rigging Ridley to Charizard's bones, but Char's legs are very wide apart, and Ridley's aren't. Char happens to have 2 unused tail bones, DummyHipN and TailJCon. i moved them up and attached them to the top of the legs, RLegJ and LLegJ. then in BrawlBox, before exporting the .dae to get the bone structure from, i positioned them so that the legs are much closer together, an X Translation of 3 for the bones.
it really just depends on how many bones you need, and which ones you won't be rigging to anything. you shouldn't use any bones above the HipN, because they're all important, and if you move them, you'll throw the indexes of the important bones off which will cause all sorts of other glitches to happen. and that actually reminds be, be careful about where you move bones from, you may end up causing issues. make sure the RHaveN (or just HaveN for Pikachu, Squirtle, and Ivysaur) stays in the same index as it started, otherwise your rig will hold items incorrectly. this shouldn't happen too often, as the right arm is usually about the last part of the bone structure. the LHaveN doesn't matter (except for Samus, because that's the one she uses for items), so don't worry about messing it up. and besides the ThrowN, and the HipN and above, the rest shouldn't matter if the index is changed.
an example of this would be my Dixie. i moved Diddy's tail bones to the NeckN, thus letting me rig Dixie's hair to those bones. the problem was that the tail bones were after everything else. before i realized it, i had tried her in game, and she was holding items with her arm. thus, i had to move the RHaveN up a few bones to get it back to the proper index so that she would hold items with her hand again.
again, this doesn't happen too often, but do watch out for it.
3 Tricky Edits
now what could i mean by tricky edits? well, moving bones around to match a model, without renaming the bones (unless you need a few for adjustments from what i explained above). yes, this goes against what all the basic rigging guides tell you to do, which is to match the model to the bones, but it isn't completely necessary to do so. it does make it a lot easier that way, which is why it's the suggested way for rigging. the reason it works is because the bones aren't renamed. once the animations are applied in Brawl, the bones will revert back to the way they were, taking the skin with it, and acting as though they were never moved. if done properly, you can get decent results.
for example, my Ridley on Charizard again. besides the bone edits to move the legs closer together, i also moved many of the other bones around to better fit Ridley. the advantage of this is that i can make the rig better by not having to distort the model to make it fit the bones. the disadvantage is that some oddities can come up because of it (although i'm pretty certain it's because Char was not made overly well), and the distortion comes in once the animations are applied. this pic shows what i'm talking about.
the bones are fit to Ridley's model, but once the animations are applied, they move right back to position.
4 Testing
because testing a rig is always important. and i don't mean just taking one bone and bending around in Max, i mean exporting it into BrawlBox, and applying the animations to it. this way, you can see if the animations will screw up how the model is supposed to look or not, and if you think it's good enough to continue rigging. i'd suggest testing right after you apply the skin modifier, but after a few quick edits, like making sure that the TopN and similar bones don't affect the rig, and that the head is fully rigged to the HeadN bone, even if there's mouth bones. the idea is to get a basic feel for if the bone edits will work before spending hours rigging only to find out that you need to change something and have to re-rig the entire model. if it doesn't work, make the changes you need and try again. if you feel like it's fine, then continue rigging as normal.
5 Examples
so you can see what kinds of edits can work, here's everything i've made bone edits for all in one spot. i do this mainly so you can see a few examples of how to take advantage of bone edits, and to help you think of a few ideas for what you can use them for. you don't have to just use them to only adjust arm and leg positions. look what i did with Dixie and Klonoa, for example. had i not used bone edits for those two, the hair for both and Klonoa's ears would have been stiff, just rigged to the HeadN bone, no movement at all. basically what i'm saying is, get creative.
and if you need a closer look at any of these, they're all on the Vault so you can download them and see exactly what i changed. these are more of a quick look type of thing.
Pacman: edits - Sonic's quill bones to adjust the arms and legs, and to rig the mouth to open and close (for an eventual PSA that this model was specifically made for).
Dixie: edits - Diddy's tail bones have been reconnected to the NeckN, renamed the first tail bone and positioned it, then rigged the rest to Dixie's hair. because Diddy's tail bones are at the end of the structure, i had to adjust the RHaveN to ensure that Dixie held items with her hand, not her arm.
Klonoa: edits - Sonic's quill bones were reconnected so that the upper set have 3 each, but the base quill bones renamed and positioned. the rest retain their original name, so that the ears and hair have some movement.
Ridley: edits - most of the structure has been shifted to fit Ridley's model. used Charizard's 2 unused tail bones (DummyHipN and TailJCon) and added them to the top of the legs, then moved them in to slim the leg base width.
so i'm doing this tutorial because there aren't many people that know how to do this (i could be wrong), but it's always a good reference. this will show you how to make polygons always show, even if they usually don't or only occasionally show (extra faces a character has, Olimar's eyes, Kirby's extra body, etc.).
first off, there is a little bit of hexing involved, but it's really easy to do.
and it really only involves moving bone indexes, so here’s how you hex bones. yeah, i copied and pasted from my other guide, but with some edits. lazy, yes, but it'd be the same info if i re-typed it extract the model you want to edit from the FitCharacter0X.pac/.pcs, and open the model in a hex editor. i use HxD, just because it's free. if you need to, open the model in BrawlBox and find the bone you want to re-index, check it's model offset, convert it to hex (decimal to hex converter, the Windows calculator works just fine), and go to the offset in the hex editor. once you find it, this is how the bone will look.
Key: black = the whole bone, blue = beginning of bone, red = bone index number, yellow = NodeId number, purple = flags, green = bone hierarchy, the very left hand numbers outside the box = offset number (if it ends on a number besides 0, just go that many bytes in).
For those of you who care, here's a list of all the bone properties. i listed the more important ones, but here's the rest of them
Here's every byte set that's used for bones (4 bytes each):
0x00 - Header Length (Usually 00D0) 0x04 - MDL0 Offset 0x08 - String Offset 0x0C - Bone Index 0x10 - Node ID 0x14 - Flags 0x18 - Pad 1 0x1C - Pad 2 0x20 - Scale X 0x24 - Scale Y 0x28 - Scale Z 0x2C - Rotation X 0x30 - Rotation Y 0x34 - Rotation Z 0x38 - Translation X 0x3C - Translation Y 0x40 - Translation Z 0x44 - Box Min. X 0x48 - Box Min. Y 0x4C - Box Min. Z 0x50 - Box Max. X 0x54 - Box Max. Y 0x58 - Box Max. Z 0x5C - Parent Offset 0x60 - First Child Offset 0x64 - Next Offset 0x68 - Previous Offset 0x6C - Bone Strings/Properties Offset 0x70 - FrameMatrix Set 1 Float 1 0x74 - FrameMatrix Set 2 Float 1 0x78 - FrameMatrix Set 3 Float 1 0x7C - FrameMatrix Set 4 Float 1 0x80 - FrameMatrix Set 1 Float 2 0x84 - FrameMatrix Set 2 Float 2 0x88 - FrameMatrix Set 3 Float 2 0x8C - FrameMatrix Set 4 Float 2 0x90 - FrameMatrix Set 1 Float 3 0x94 - FrameMatrix Set 2 Float 3 0x98 - FrameMatrix Set 3 Float 3 0x9C - FrameMatrix Set 4 Float 3 0xA0 - InverseBindMatrix Set 1 Float 1 0xA4 - InverseBindMatrix Set 2 Float 1 0xA8 - InverseBindMatrix Set 3 Float 1 0xAC - InverseBindMatrix Set 4 Float 1 0xB0 - InverseBindMatrix Set 1 Float 2 0xB4 - InverseBindMatrix Set 2 Float 2 0xB8 - InverseBindMatrix Set 3 Float 2 0xBC - InverseBindMatrix Set 4 Float 2 0xC0 - InverseBindMatrix Set 1 Float 3 0xC4 - InverseBindMatrix Set 2 Float 3 0xC8 - InverseBindMatrix Set 3 Float 3 0xCC - InverseBindMatrix Set 4 Float 3
just don't ask me what they all do.
Basically, Brawl bones are always 13 rows long, and the bone index number is always at the end of the first row. and in case you don’t know anything about hexadecimal coding, it’s rather simple to understand how it works. Decimal has 0-9, while hex has 0-9 and A-F, adding up to 16 numbers before repeating. So in decimal, you may have 11, but in hex you would have B.
So to change the index number (in red), all you have to do is find out what index number you want it to have, and change the last bit (in the pic, it would be the 02) to what you want it to be (in hex numbers). Simple, right?
And that’s the basics of bone hexing.
and here's a few examples of why this is needed.
this first pic is when you just replace the models with the fighters, no hexing. the Mario Bros are missing their hats, only Lyn's legs and sword appear, and Tails' tails appear. they all have a model bone over the EyeYellowM of the replaced characters.
this second pic is the after shot, when the Model bones are moved. old pics are old, but still applicable. with all 3 of them, if they all had a smash ball, they'd all look like the second pic.
since that's an older example, lets go over a better one now.
say you want Sonic to have one of his other faces always showing, and not switch between the others. all you would have to do is change the bone index of the face to a bone that's after the TransN, and it will always show. you'll still have to remove the other faces, though, either through Materials1 editing (changing the Type to 3, making it invisible in game, but not BrawlBox) or through shrinking the other faces (vertex editing, or hex editing (finding the polygon you want to shrink, and filling everything after the header with 00 bytes))
as a note, if a bone isn't directly attached to the model, then it can be moved wherever you want it to be. to see which bones are attached to the model, just preview your model in BrawlBox, choose the bone you want to move, and then increase the translations of the bone. you will quickly see if it is or isn't based on if anything on the model moves besides the little lines that represent the bone, that's supposed to move when you do this. Examples of unattached bones would be the BodyM, ThrowN, and the HaveN bones. the reason i bring this up is some bones don't want to be re-indexed, especially if they're directly connected to the model, like an arm or leg bone. it may cause some animation issues in game.
And another note, bones can share the same index number. Just make sure the bone isn’t attached to the model first. and from what i can tell, it's okay if a bunch of bones share the same index, as in having 7 bones all with the index that the TransN has.
easy, right? just one simple change. as one last note/warning, sometimes bones won't like where you move them. you may experience some odd things, like the polygons you want always showing could float way above the character, or maybe the entire character is in the ground for certain animations. if that's the case, just re-index the bone you moved to a different index. it may take a few tries, but it will eventually work.
and as always, if you have any questions or need help, just ask and i'll do what i can to help.
Max (from Bomberman) on TL updates to my first few vertexes (Bomberman and Adeline)
Previews
Bomberman V2
the main thing to notice is the head is much less square. that was the main thing i wanted to fix in the V2, along with the texture, which isn't completed.
wifi safe. i edited all the faces, so he doesn't have just one static face. i didn't edit the sword handle, because it exploded worse with each patch i did. i even tried hand hexing the vertices into place, but still nothing.
so after a few exporting issues, and finally getting over my laziness of putting it off, GIR is finally released. has 2 versions, regular GIR and serious GIR.
i would have included pigs over the Pikmin, but the game lagged every time i tried replacing them. so GIR has just regular Pikmin. and don't mind the legs so much, there was some major polygon stretching if i renamed the leg bones. on the positive side, GIR should actually be wifi safe, since i didn't do any bone edits.
i figured that having him just be on Little Mac may not please everyone, so i did a quick port to put him on Sheik as well so you can actually play with him, since it’s been done for a few other Little Mac vertexes before. it is a bit glitchy, but it is a one slot swap. both are included in the download.
i had planned to vertex the Pikmin as well, but DasDonkeyBox kept giving me an error when trying to do so, so i figured i'd make 2 versions of each instead. Joe Cool's glasses move around a little bit, but that's because of how i made the glasses. for Dexter and Joe Cool both, i made the glasses out of Olimar's eyes, so i had to hex the eye bones to a different index so that the glasses would always be showing. the problem is that i couldn't find a good bone to use so the glasses would sit still, but i found one that Dexter could use, but Joe Cool couldn't (the bone that attaches to Olimar's bag, since i used the bag as Snoopy's back spot).
V2 of Snoopy includes the Flying Ace and Woodstocks vertexed from the Yellow Pikmin on all the Pikmin in all 3 of the Snoopy files.
Adeline has been on a few people's to-do lists, but never gets done. so i got tired of waiting, and made her myself. i wish i could actually texture decently, because the face still seems a bit Toon Link-ish to me. but i've worked on her long enough, and want to move on. i'll probably update her later, but she's good for now. has renamed bones, so it will desync wifi.
so enjoy, and expect more to come. i'll try to keep my vertexes wifi safe, because i know a lot of people play on wifi. i don't (lack of a usable wireless connection), so i don't care, but i'll try to avoid bone edits. i'm obviously not doing a good job so far...
oh, and check my Vault for other stuff i've done (it's not much, and it's all old, but it's still good in my opinion).
well, last update i'll probably have to do, but i really don't know. model swapping popularity has obviously dropped, but the info can still be helpful. the new guide is completely re-written to fully utilize BrawlBox .67, but expect a lot of copy paste action. it may be a re-write, but not everything is different. i'll keep the old guide as a separate file you can download, all 21 pages of it, if you really need it, not sure why you would though.
dang, i really cut a lot of it out... probably only 15 pages instead of 21 now
As a note, if you're using BrawlBox to edit the FitCharacter.pac file, make sure you use a version between .67 and .68b, later versions have removed being able to edit anything to do with the Moveset data, including bone indices.
Sections: -1 Stuff to know before everything else 0 Step by Step guide 1 Basic Model Swapping 2 Important Bones 3 Glitch Fixing 4 Bone Index Moving 5 FAQ’s 6 Lists
-1 Stuff to know before everything else
This guide is aimed towards character model swapping and fixing. And if you already know how to import and replace models, feel free to skip to section 2. Also, I have a full list of the important bones towards the bottom of this guide, so you know. It has bone totals, TransN index, HaveN index, and EyeYellowM index numbers.
Also, before I begin, here are some important links to programs and such that you might need.
http://forums.kc-mm.com/index.php?topic=17547.0 – BrawlBox, but if you didn’t already have it by now, why are you reading a thread about model swapping that requires BrawlBox? besides, it's the only program you'll need. seriously. used to be 4 or 5 different ones you'd need, now it's all done in BB.
And one more thing, some basic terminology, so you know what I’m talking about. BB = BrawlBox. because i'm not typing it completely out every single time i mention it. Bone index number – the number it shows in BrawlBox for bone index. Should be obvious, but the first bone is index 0, so just be aware. Model importing = model rigging = model swapping = model replacing, basically. Model = character = fighter, I interchange between them, but they are all the same, except that fighter is kind of aimed towards the actual fighters, and character is any character. New Model = the model you want to put over a character Replaced Character = the replaced character As I think of a few others, I’ll put them here. But for now, let the guide begin.
0 Step by Step guide
because apparently some people have a difficult time following a guide unless it has a step by step portion, here you go.
step 1; get the model of the character you want to put over another (either the .mdl0, or the .pac/.pcs file).
step 2; get the FitCharacter00.pac/.pcs file for the character you want to replace.
step 3; open the FitCharacter00.pac/.pcs in BrawlBox, go to the .mdl0 file, right click, click replace, and replace it with the model you want. also, replace the textures using the same method.
and you're done! with the model swap, at least. the rest of what you'll need to do is purely glitch fixing. here's the basic order of what glitches to check for and fix as you go along. try doing all of these before testing in Brawl. that way, you will most likely have it work perfectly fine the first try. and you won't have nearly as many freezing issues.
glitch 1; does your new model have the same (or more) bones than the replaced character? if no, add bones by right clicking a bone (probably the last bone, so you don't screw anything up) in BB, and click 'Add New Child'.
glitch 2; does your new model have the TransN bone in the same place as the replaced character? if not (or if your new model doesn't have a TransN bone), then you'll have to A) if one slot swap: rename the bone in the same index as the replaced character (i have a list for those in Section 7) B) if full character project: edit the TransN Bone Reference in BB.
glitch 3; does your new model have the HipN bone in the same place as the replaced character? if not, then refer to glitch 2 to see how to fix it.
glitch 4; does your character have a Model bone over the replaced character's EyeYellowM bone? if so, then you'll have to edit the bone index by hexing it. i have a mini guide for bone hexing in Section 4. this one may also be a little tricky to notice at first, especially if your new model isn't from Brawl. if it is from Brawl, then all Model bones end with M.
these are the main glitches that you can pick out even before you try testing the new model in Brawl for the first time. there are a few others to watch out for, like not holding items properly (or at all) and being able to be hit from across the stage (hurtbox issues). for those, you'll just have to play around with the new model in Brawl before knowing if you even need to fix them.
as for the Sections, Section 1 is if you want a little more info on the steps i have listed above. Section 2 has more details about why the glitches happen. Section 3 is more detail on how to fix the individual glitches. Section 4 is about bone index hexing, and how to hex in general. Section 5 is a mini guide on using Tabuu. Section 6 is a very incomplete FAQ. Section 7 has a ton of lists, all bone index info for the important bones for all the Brawl characters (the fighters, not every single model).
so happy swapping! and remember, if you have any questions, just ask. this is a ton of info, and it can get a bit confusing if you don't know what you're doing.
1 Basic Model Swapping
This is the easy part. Make sure you keep unedited files somewhere as well, in case you mess up and wan to start over. Find the file you want, open it in BrawlBox, expand the ModelData[0], right click the MDL0 file (should be gray), click export, save it to an easy to find area, open the file you want the model to replace, go back to the MDL0 file, right click, click replace, select the file you exported, and that’s it. You should probably do the same with the TextureData[0], simply because that has all the textures the model will need. Also, don’t bother to mess around with the ModelData[10], because that’s just the character’s shadow and isn’t that big of a deal if you don’t have it, but feel free to replace it as well if you want.
2 Important Bones
Brawl makes a lot of assumptions when it comes to bone matching, hence why you can get some pretty weird looking characters. If the bones don’t match up enough, then the new model will be t-posed. Why? Because Brawl still assumes it’s loading the original character, therefore causing certain bone requirements before the new model will function properly. This is the list of those required bones, so far as I’ve been able to find and test as necessary. So before I go into glitch fixing, I want to explain why the glitches occur. I’ll go in order of obvious need to fix to unnoticeable.
2a Overall bone count. Basically, your model should have the same (or more) number of bones as the character being replaced. Having fewer bones will cause the game to freeze just after you select a stage, but before the fight starts. The new model can have about 2-3 bones less than the replaced character, but having fewer bones will cause the game to freeze when you shield.
2b TransN. The TransN bone is the bone that controls movement while on the ground. Not having a TransN bone, or having it misplaced will cause the model to run but not move. This is why the model itself may move, but the tracker (the P1 or the thing that’s always over the fighter) will stay in one place, or that the model stays in one place and doesn’t move. This is also referred to as the ‘Snap Back’ glitch.
2c EyeYellowM. This bone is only present in Brawl fighters, and only shows up when the fighter has a smash ball. Have you noticed some models only showing up when they have a smash ball? That’s because they have a Model bone (bones that end in M, like BodyM) over the replaced characters EyeYellowM. Most of the fighters have it as their second bone (bone index 1), which sometimes correlates with other characters BodyM bone (the BodyM bone is basically just a bone connected to the entire model, or just a portion of the model, hence why the model wont show up if it’s over the EyeYellowM).
2d HipN. The HipN bone is a little deceiving, because not having one or having a misplaced one will cause the grab and throwing glitches (yes, two separate glitches). The ThrowN bone also connects with throwing, but the HipN is the cause of the being grabbed glitch, because the grab animation grabs the HipN bone. how you can tell you have this glitch is when the new model is thrown, the model basically explodes into a bajillion polygons.
2e ThrowN. As mentioned above, the ThrowN connects to the grab and throw glitches. the ThrowN bone is what the character grabbing uses to grab another character, and it controls the shield. The ThrowN bone is almost always last for Brawl characters, and having a different bone in the replaced characters ThrowN index will cause a random body part to grow really big and then shrink with the shield, simply because of the way they decided to animate the shield, or if it’s on an added bone, the shield will be really tiny and at the character’s feet (this is because the added bones all reference the TopN bone, which is located at the bottom of the model).
2f HaveN. As obvious as the name implies, the HaveN is where the character holds items. Most of the characters have 2, all but Samus (because of her gun), Mario (I guess he’s special that way), Ivysaur and Pikachu (they hold items in their mouths), and Squirtle (he has 3, but the 2 in his hands are dummied out, but still there, so he uses the one in his mouth), and the Alloys (they have none, because they can’t pick up items). If the character doesn’t have enough original bones (bones in the model before adding any in), then the game will freeze when trying to hold items. Some items will work, it’s just the smaller items that a character holds that will freeze.
2g Hurtboxes. have you ever played as a new character, but could get hit from across the stage? Then that model has a hurtbox problem. Just a little terminology first: hurtbox = where a character can be hit, hitbox = where a character hits from. Hurtbox problems are incredibly annoying, mostly because of how random they are. I think I’ve seen almost all variations: an infinite horizontal line from where the character is standing, an infinite vertical line from where the character is, anywhere behind the character, anywhere in front of the character, a big circle around the character, and literally anywhere on the stage. If the new model has more original bones, then usually this isn’t as big of a problem.
There are a many other bones that are shared between all the characters, but those aren’t necessary (to model swapping and glitch fixing, at least), but the bones that are more important are the TopN, XRotN, and YRotN. The TopN is the bone that basically tells Brawl ‘this is the model you are looking for’, and will always be the first bone, even if named differently. XRotN and YRotN are both used for moving the model in animations, like the TransN and HipN. The difference is that the X and YRotN bones are rarely used. The XRotN is usually set for how high the model is in an animation, so if your character is in the ground for an animation, reset the XRotN for the animation and it will work. And I’ve never really seen the YRotN used, but is does tell Brawl where the player tag goes (the P1 or whatever tag that floats above the character), and you can use it for one-slot resizings (covered in other tutorials).
3 glitch fixes
And now for the fixes to the glitches. I’ll go in order of the previous section. I have lists towards the bottom for all of these. and if your model doesn't have these (non-Brawl models), then you'll just have to rename certain bones. what i mean by that is that most models have most of these bones already, just not named correctly. An example is that the HipN is usually 'hip' or 'hips' on non-Brawl models, but the rest just depend on the game you got the model from, but are usually within the first few bones (although I have seen some models with them at almost the end of the bone structure).
3a Overall bone count. This one is now super easy, thanks to BB. Just find how many bones the character you want to replace has, then how many bones your model has, and add enough bones to match. Simple, right? and with the way that BB works, you can add bones anywhere in the structure, not just at the end. the way you add bones in BB is to right click a bone, then click 'Add New Child'. it then adds a bone to the structure, using the bone you right clicked on as the parent bone. don't worry too much about the bone terminology, i'll go into depth on that later. if you plan to add a large amount of bones, then you'll probably want to put them all at the end of the structure, to avoid potential problems.
3b TransN, or the Walking and/or Running glitch. This can be a tricky one to fix, because the TransN of the new model MUST be in the same spot as the replaced model, but there’s 2 ways to fix it, a one slot swap, and full character fix. One Slot Swap: Example - you want to replace Mario, he has a TransN of 7, therefore to avoid the walking glitch the new model's 7th bone must also be TransN. The easiest way to fix it is to find a character that has the same TransN index and replace that one. If you can’t or don’t want to replace those characters, then you can either rename the bone that is in the TransN index of the replaced character, but this might cause issues later on, because Brawl is referencing a random bone thinking it’s the TransN when it really isn’t. you could also add a bone or 2 to the top bone until one of the new bones are in the TransN index. Full Character Fix: you can edit the TransN Bone Reference in BB, but since you have to edit the FitCharacter.pac (the PSA file), the change will affect all costume slots. TransN bones still have to match up, but with BB, you can tell Brawl where to look for it, instead of Brawl telling you where to put it. the section in BB that has the reference is FitCharacter > MoveDef_FitCharacter > Sections > data > Misc Section > [10] Bone References. the 5th one down is the TransN index.
3c EyeYellowM bone, or ‘why does my model only show when I have a smash ball?’ As I explained above, this bone is only active when you have a smash ball. Look at it this way, are Metaknight’s wings always out? No. Is his cape always out? No. The EyeYellowM works the same way, except when you have a smash ball. This is also why, say, Mario’s hat not appearing when over most other fighters, because Mario’s HatM bone is bone index 1, while most others’ EyeYellowM is also index 1. So how do you make the model show up then? Find where your new model’s BodyM bone is. Then, the easiest way to fix it is by moving the bone up or down in the structure. in BB, right click the bone, then select 'Move Up' or 'Move Down'. the problem is that there has to be another bone on the same level for it to work. Either that, or you can put the model over Olimar, Yoshi, or ROB, because they don’t have an EyeYellowM bone. Or hope that the BodyM is lower in the bone structure. as a note also, there are other bones that only show during certain times. There’s also a way to fix the EyeYellowM Reference in the FitCharacter.pac, but this will affect every costume slot. In BB, there’s a section called Model Visibility. it's at FitCharacter > MoveDef_FitCharacter > Sections > data > Model Visibility. there's a few extra folders, but they have the index where the model bone is. edit to what you want it to be.
3d HipN, or the grabbing and throwing glitches. Yes, two different glitches from one bone, and the HipN has to be treated like the TransN, as in the HipN MUST be in the same index as the replaced character’s HipN index. Fixed in a similar manner as the TransN, though simply renaming may not work, it just depends on the model. But remember, if you put your character over a fighter that has identical TransN indexes, then the HipN indexes will usually match, because the HipN is ALWAYS 3 bones after the TransN, for Brawl models at least (BB can change the reference, and it’s exactly as I explained with the TransN, it affects all the costume slots, and it's the 2nd index down).
3e ThrowN, or ‘why such a deceiving name?’ So basically, the ThrowN has little to do with throwing (it's used to grab another character), but it actually controls the shielding glitch. The way to avoid it is by having the same number (or more) of bones as the model being replaced. At least this is an easy one to fix and avoid. and there's 2 ways to fix this, the one slot method, or the full character replacement method. One Slot: if there's fewer bones than the replaced model, just add more bones in BB, and it should work by itself. if there's more bones than the replaced character, it's a bit trickier. basically, the bone in the ThrowN index should be a bone added by BB, so that it isn't attached to any part of the model. and make sure it doesn't have child bones that are attached to the model, otherwise a random part of your model will grow and shrink with the shield. Full Character: open the FitCharacter.pac in BB, then go to FitCharacter > MoveDef_FitCharacter > Sections > data > Misc Section > [10] Bone References. the 1st one down is the ThrowN index. change it to what you want, making sure it's a good bone to use (not attached to the model, preferably an added bone).
3f HaveN, or the item grab glitch. This one took me a while to pin down, but to avoid it, the new model MUST have more original bones than the replaced character’s first HaveN bone (original being bones that the model had before adding bones). Most of the first HaveN bones are around 33, I have a full list lower. And by more, I mean a few more, at least 2 or 3. So how do you fix it if it happens to your model? For one slot swaps, add bones. that's pretty much it. but make sure you add one to the end of the hands, that way the new model can hold items in its hands, instead of elsewhere.
For full character projects, the section in BB that has the reference is FitCharacter > MoveDef_FitCharacter > Sections > data > Hand Bones. the index numbers that you need to change are in there, but on the folder itself. the folder has 4 slots for the HandN that can be changed. then inside it, the first index is the HaveN, and the second is another HandN. also, there's another section in the Misc Section (same level as the Hand Bones) that has the rest of the index numbers to change, called the Misc Item Bones. this one has the actual HaveN references and the ThrowN reference. like the Hand Bones folder, it's the folder itself that you change the references on. change them to what you want them to be.
and for your own reference, even your model does have the item grab glitch, it can still pick up and use some items. here's a list of what.
Smash Ball Sandbag Soccer Ball Heavy Items (Barrel, Crates, Blast Box, Party Ball) Mushrooms Starman Lightning Timer Healing Items (Food, Max Tomato, Heart Container) Super Spicy Curry Metal Box Screw Attack Franklin Badge Bunny Hood Warpstar Dragoon Parts
basically everything that you don't have to hold.
3g. Hurtboxes, or ‘why does my character get hit from across the stage?’ glitch. i'd like to say that this still works, but you can use BB instead of Tabuu. i really don't feel like re-writing this to work with BB, and i don't have anything that needs to have this applied, so i'm eaving this alone for now…
this is quite the annoying glitch to fix, but we now have a way to fix it! Again, this will only apply to full character replacements, because it requires PSA editing, so one slot replacements can’t be fixed this way (if they have it, then they’re out of luck, no way to fix it). So to fix it, go here [url=http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=284044]http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=284044[/URL] and download Tabuu. Then, get a clean FitCharacter.pac, it has to be an unedited one for now (unedited ones always open, edited ones might not). Open it in Tabuu, then go to FitCharacter/MiscData[0] -> Sections -> Data -> Misc. the hurtboxes are labeled as Hurtboxes. Under the Hurtboxes section, it will bring up all the hurtboxes that the replaced character has and what bones they’re attached to. You can change the size and location of them, but we want to re-link them to bones you’re new model has. Click the hurtbox you want to change, change the BoneIndex to where you want (it helps to have the new model open in BrawlBox to see which bones you want), then right click the hurtbox you just edited (in the left window), click ‘Open Hex View’, then at the bottom of the window in the box labeled ‘As Int’ put the same index number you just put in, then close the window. And that’s how you fix the hurtboxes! Just a warning, it will fix the problem for one player, but the hurtboxes may still be weird if there’s more than one of the new models fighting, it happened a few times to me. After you’re done editing, go back up to the top, right click FitCharacter/MiscData[0], and hit save file. A message will pop up saying that it will replace the file, so just hit yes. About a minute later, an error message will pop up saying that Tabuu had some problem and must close. Don’t worry, though, it did save. Tabuu is still in development, so that will be fixed soon.
But sometimes even this isn’t enough. If you still get random hurtbox problems, then this is what you’ll have to do.
First, open the FitCharacter.pac in Tabuu, then go to FitCharacter/MiscData[0] -> Sections -> Data -> Misc. the section we want is called UnknownT, just under the Hurtbox tab. Open it, and click on the first UnknownType1. What we care about is the Flags. The Flags contain data that points to bone indexes, and at least one of them is pointing to an ExtraBone, which is why the hurtbox problem is still there. And about the Flags, if you just look at it in the right hand window, they aren’t displayed correctly. From what I’ve seen, they show ‘1234’, when it should be ‘3412’. If you’re unsure, just right click the UnknownType1, click ‘Open Hex View’, and the Flags is the last set of bytes shown.
Now that you have the Flags, you need to convert them into binary. Use this list (Toomai made the list)
+----------------+-----------+-------------+ |Number (decimal)|Digit (hex)|String (bits)| +----------------+-----------+-------------+ | 0 | 0 | 0000 | | 1 | 1 | 0001 | | 2 | 2 | 0010 | | 3 | 3 | 0011 | | 4 | 4 | 0100 | | 5 | 5 | 0101 | | 6 | 6 | 0110 | | 7 | 7 | 0111 | | 8 | 8 | 1000 | | 9 | 9 | 1001 | | 10 | A | 1010 | | 11 | B | 1011 | | 12 | C | 1100 | | 13 | D | 1101 | | 14 | E | 1110 | | 15 | F | 1111 | +----------------+-----------+-------------+ The rest of the explanation is from Eternal Yoshi (because I can’t really explain it much clearer. It’s just one of those things that it’s easy once you do it).
Example Flag: 24E10000
To Binary:
0010 0100 1110 0001 0000 0000 0000 0000
Then you take the first 9 bits(colored lime for you) and interpet them as a number.
You do this by copying the bits highlighted in green, opening this:
and Pasting it in the lower section in the slot: Binary number to convert.
BE SURE TO REMOVE THE SPACES, VERY IMPORTANT.
Click Convert to decimal and that's the bone it's attached to(in decimal not hex).
If you want a new bone to attach it to, look at the top of that window, and type the bone index you want in decimal number to convert.
Let's say I want bone index 20, the program gives me 10100
Then copy the number and paste it so that the last bit is the 9th one.
1010 0110 0001 0000 0000 0000 0000
Now fill the rest to the left with zeroes.
00001010 0110 0001 0000 0000 0000 0000
Now we convert this to hex.
0A610000
(back to my explanation) Once you get the flag back, right click the UnknownType1, and edit the Flags bytes accordingly (the last set of bytes out of the 8 sets). Once you change the Flags you need, go back to the top tab (the FitCharacter/MiscData[0]),right click it and save it. The random hurtboxes should no longer be a problem. And remember, you only need to change the Flags that have a higher bone index reference than the new model has for original bones. So if only 1 Flags is over the new model’s original bone count, then you only need to change that one. If 5 of them are over, then only those 5.
If you have any questions, just ask.
4 Bone Index Moving
alright, first new section! no copy paste for me unfortunately…
to start off with, here's the terminology you should know for bones, and how they're organized. Parent - the bone above the one you are looking at. example: the YRotN is the parent of the HipN bone, and the XRotN is the parent of the YRotN, and the TransN is the parent of the XRotN. Child - the bone(s) below the bone you are looking at. there can be multiple children bones to one parent bone. example: the TopN bone has the TransN and EyeYellowM bones as children, but the TransN only has the XRotN as a child. Sibling - bones that have the same parent bone, or are all on one level of the structure. example: the TransN and EyeYellowM bones are siblings. BB refers to these as Next and Previous.
now the important part, how to move them around. it's rather simple, actually. just find a bone you want to move, right click it, and BB will show you how that bone can be moved. remember though, it only moves one spot at a time, so it can take a few clicks to get a bone into position. so here's the options. Move Up - moves the bone above the sibling bone in front of it. Move Down - moves the bone below the sibling bone behind it. Add To Parent - makes the bone a sibling to its current parent bone. Add To Next Up - makes the bone a child to the sibling bone above it. Add To Next Down - makes the bone a child to the sibling bone below it. Add New Child - adds a new bone to the structure, making it the child of the right clicked bone.
so how can this help? well, it mainly helps with adding bones where you want them to go, or in editing a fighters bone structure to fit a different model for rigging. but this isn't a rigging guide, so it's basically here in case you need to move bones around. not too sure what else to say. there's a lot of tricks you can do with moving bones around, but it's mainly for re-rigging models.
5 FAQ
I’ll probably add some later as more questions are asked. But feel free to ask, just remember, provide as much detail as possible, it’s kind of hard to diagnose a problem you have when all you say is ‘the (blank) bone isn’t working for me’, and that’s all you say.
Q: what character is the best to replace? A: at this point, it depends on who you don’t like and think never should have been in Brawl to begin with. But I would advise avoiding Peach, Zelda and ROB, because they have 103, 105 and 163 bones, respectively, unless your new model has a lot of bones to begin with (probably over 80).
Q: where do I find a good hex editor? A: Google. I've used hex workshop, but it was only a trial version. I recommend HxD, because it's free (if it’s free, it’s for me), and it does what we need it to do.
Q: I can't find the offset number. A: in BrawlBox, when you click the bone you want to change, look in the window on the right hand side. that is where you'll find the offset, it's labelled as MDL0 Ofset. remember, in BrawlBox, the offset is in decimal form, and no, that's not a negative sign, it's BrawlBox's way of saying that the number is in decimal form. so take that number and convert it to hexidecimal. then open the .MDL0 in a hex editor, and go to where the offset tells you. on the left hand side, you'll see offset numbers, but many times yours is in the row. say the offset you get is AF8, but the left hand numbers go from AF0 to B00. this means you go in 8 bytes from the first of the AF0 row, and there's the offset you're looking for.
Q: My new character freezes when I choose it in the Subspace Emissary. Why? A: …I'm working on it.
6 lists
I’ll separate the lists into individual bones, but I may combine all of them into one list, so you can see everything for one character together. And keep in mind that these are index numbers, so the first bone is actually indexed as 0. Also, the lists will be in order of how they appear in alphabetical order before their names are changed, as in Koopa is Bowser and that’s why he’s not at the top of the list. Also also, I didn’t include the Pokemon Trainer himself, but his bone structure is almost identical to Olimar. One last also, I’m including the Alloys, but excluding Giga Bowser and Wario Man, because the Alloys are used more than the other two.
Total bone count
C. Falcon – 64 Dedede – 63 Diddy – 70 DK – 62 Falco – 71 Fox – 67 G+W – 97 Ganondorf – 69 Ike – 73 Kirby – 60 Bowser – 76 Link – 79 Lucario – 55 Lucas – 64 Luigi – 62 Mario – 62 Marth – 70 Metaknight – 76 Ness – 66 Peach – 105 Pikachu – 47 Olimar – 45 Pit – 91 Ivysaur – 54 Charizard – 57 Squirtle – 46 Ice Climbers – 45 Jigglypuff – 63 ROB – 162 Samus – 47 Sheik – 62 Snake – 69 Sonic – 82 Zero Suit Samus – 66 Toon Link – 82 Wario – 78, 59 Wolf – 72 Yoshi – 77 Zelda – 103 Red, Yellow, Green Alloy – 33 Blue Alloy – 38 Basically, unless your model already has a ton of bones, don’t even bother trying to replace ROB. And the reason Wario has 2 numbers, his WarioWare costume has more bones than his overalls costume.
TransN
C. Falcon – 3 Dedede – 5 Diddy – 3 DK – 2 Falco – 3 Fox – 8 G+W – 11 Ganondorf – 3 Ike – 9 Kirby – 5 Bowser – 4 Link – 3 Lucario – 7 Lucas – 2 Luigi – 6 Mario – 7 Marth – 8 Metaknight – 2 Ness – 4 Peach – 4 Pikachu – 2 Olimar – 1 Pit – 9 Ivysaur – 2 Charizard – 2 Squirtle – 2 Ice Climbers – 2 Jigglypuff – 2 ROB – 1 Samus – 2 Sheik – 2 Snake – 10 Sonic – 18 Zero Suit Samus – 8 Toon Link – 2 Wario – 2 Wolf – 8 Yoshi – 1 Zelda – 7 Red, Yellow, Blue Alloy – 3 Green Alloy – 2 Sonic was always an over-achiever, he literally has 15 face bones, so don’t bother replacing Sonic if you don’t want the walking glitch, or worse, depending on the model.
EyeYellowM
C. Falcon – none Dedede – 2 Diddy – 2 DK – 1 Falco – 2 Fox – 2 G+W – none Ganondorf – 1 Ike – 1 Kirby – 3 and 4 Bowser – 1 Link – 1 Lucario – 1 Lucas – 1 Luigi – 2 Mario – 2 Marth – 1 Metaknight – none Ness – 2 Peach – 2 Pikachu – 1 Olimar – none Pit – 1 Ivysaur – 1 Charizard – 1 Squirtle – 1 Ice Climbers – 1 Jigglypuff – 1 ROB – not sure Samus – 1 Sheik – 1 Snake – 1 Sonic – 2 Zero Suit Samus – 1 Toon Link – 1 Wario – 1 Wolf – 2 Yoshi – none Zelda – 1 All Alloys – none Kirby has 2 because he has different polygons for when he’s big (inflated or while someone is swallowed), hence the second set. I couldn’t find one on ROB, and his bone structure is literally a maze to navigate. A few of the characters may also have other Model bones that only show during certain actions, just a warning. And the Alloys don’t have one because of the obvious lack of a final smash for them. Why have a bone if you don’t need it?
HipN – just add 3 to the TransN number.
ThrowN – almost always the last bone.
HaveN
C. Falcon – 32, 55 Dedede – 32, 54 Diddy – 34, 57 DK – 30, 54 Falco – 41, 65 Fox – 41, 63 G+W – 29, 59 Ganondorf – 41, 65 Ike – 48, 69 Kirby – 33, 40 Bowser – 44, 70 Link – 39, 67 Lucario – 31, 53 Lucas – 34, 57 Luigi – 34, 57 Mario – 57 Marth – 48, 64 Metaknight – 15, 40 Ness – 37, 59 Peach – 72, 101 Pikachu – 34 Olimar – 19, 41 Pit – 43, 72 Ivysaur – 23 Charizard – 29, 42 Squirtle – 8 (17 and 27 also, but these 2 aren’t used) Ice Climbers – 22, 39 Jigglypuff – 36, 43 ROB – 35, 55 Samus – 32 Sheik – 30, 57 Snake – 29, 57 Sonic – 45, 76 Zero Suit Samus – 27, 54 Toon Link – 36, 70 Wario – 37, 67 Wolf – 39, 60 Yoshi – 34, 73 Zelda – 69, 99 All Alloys – none Again, most characters have 2, but to avoid the item grab glitch, you only have to have more original bones than the replaced character. And since the Alloys can’t grab items to begin with, they don’t have any.
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