Help with custom emblems

[CaptainPoopface]

I am trying to make some custom player emblems in my mainmenu and having poor results.

I extract the emblem foreground bitmap and manipulate it in bitmap form. However, Entity does not allow injection of the BMP format, so I convert to DDS A4R4G4B4 and inject that. I repeat this process for foreground_medium and foreground_small. Within Entity, the foreground and background colors are discombobulated on the injected image though - pink instead of green, and red instead of black, respectively.

In game, the background is not visible. It does not take on the color or pattern of the emblem background. On the player, the emblem is only visible at extremely close range; it quickly disappears as the camera gets only slightly farther away (I ticked the Generate MipMaps box though). The little emblem image that goes next to the player name also has no background showing, and the foreground is crammed into the upper left quadrant. It looks awful.

Can someone give me some help here? I've tried DotHalo and various versions of Entity. I only have MS Paint, DxtBMP, and Paint.Net.

[DemonicSandwich]

The Emblem bitmaps aren't actually green and pink. That just how many apps see them. In reality, they are blue and yellow.

Extract the bitmaps via the bitmap editor in Insolence. Insolence displays them scrambled but oddly extracts them perfect.

*I extracted submap #54 The 0*
It should look like this if you extracted via Insolence...


Edit the bitmap how you like, I made mine more like my Halo 3 emblem.
Make sure to save it as the correct format and make sure its alpha saves with the file, it appears to be needed for the Emblem toggle function.


Go into Entity, (any version works and assuming you already internalized), and open the foreground bitmap in the meta editor.
Scroll down to the "Bitmap Data" reflexive. Copy down the 3 "LOD Offset" values into notepad.


Now scroll through the chunks to the submap you wanted to edit, which in my case is chunk 54, the number 0 emblem, and copy its LOD Offset values as well.

My offset values:


Now take that second set of offset values and paste them over the offset values of chunk #0. Reload the bitmap tag by selecting another and switching back and your chosen emblem bitmap show be showing as the default bitmap.

Now inject your bitmap.
As you can see, your blue/yellow bitmap is now showing up as a pink/green bitmap.

Now paste the original chunk #0 offset values back over and reload the bitmap tag and the seventh column bitmap should now be showing as default once more.

Just to make sure, open the bitmap editor and select your edited chunk to see the change.


However Entity and all other apps only inject into the first LOD of a bitmap and so my changes only showed when I was about 5 feet away from my player.
You'll need to go back the meta editor and scroll to the chunk of the edited submap and fix its LODs.

Now change the "LOD2 Offset" and "LOD3 Offset" values to -1.

Now change the "LOD2 Size" and "LOD3 Size" values to 0.

For some odd reason, Entity seems to not handle the A4R4G4B4 format well and just dumps the mipmaps when you inject so your emblem would actually dissapear. Fix this by changing the "MipMap Count" to 0.

Proof:




Edit: Now that I have looked at this in its entirety, I will make some changes and submit it as a tutorial.

[CaptainPoopface]

Very nice. Thanks for putting the time in to elucidate all the steps.

I am almost there, but I'm still having the LOD problem. The custom emblem looks great, finally, but it is only visible when very close, and quickly disappears with increasing distance. For example, in your second proof pic, neither the sleeve nor the back emblem is visible for me at that distance. Your text says to set mip maps to 0, LOD 2 and 3 offsets to -1 and sizes to 0, whereas your picture shows that you copy the offset and size of LOD 1 to those of LOD 2 and 3 while leaving the mip map count at 7. I've tried both approaches, and neither works for me. Is there something else I'm doing wrong?

EDIT: Also, do you know what in the biped model indicates where the emblem should be, and what size? Would it be possible to add a small emblem to the elite helmet, or on one side of the chest? All a moot point if I can't get them to show, of course...

[DemonicSandwich]

Change the Mipmap to 0 like I stated in the text, the picture is before I found the solution.

And I will fix the picture to match. The text is correct so follow that.

*Done: Picture fixed*
Here is a patch to the map used in that info above.
http://files.filefront.com/Custom+Emble ... einfo.html

EDIT: Also, do you know what in the biped model indicates where the emblem should be, and what size? Would it be possible to add a small emblem to the elite helmet, or on one side of the chest? All a moot point if I can't get them to show, of course...

That emblem is a shader. Its location is determined by model visual mesh. Since the shader would not react as an attachment, you would have to inject a new charactor model but since we cannot inject bone information, your model would not animate.

You would not be able to add the emblem to other parts of the body via model edits. It may be possible with some very radical shader functions but I would not know how to get such a thing done.

[CaptainPoopface]

Before:


After:


At last, I can cast aside the brown happy face, that decrepit simulacrum of my namesake, and don the true Poopface.

As it turns out, I was trying to change the emblem in the main menu, thereby changing it in all my maps at once. It confuses me that that does not work except at very close range. It works exactly as described when internalized in the MP map though. Now the question is whether I feel like remodding all my mods to get a few custom emblems...

In any case, thank you for being so thorough. I would not have figured it out on my own.

[ehurmum]

Try clearing the caches on your xbox.

[DemonicSandwich]

As it turns out, I was trying to change the emblem in the main menu, thereby changing it in all my maps at once. It confuses me that that does not work except at very close range. It works exactly as described when internalized in the MP map though. Now the question is whether I feel like remodding all my mods to get a few custom emblems...

In any case, thank you for being so thorough. I would not have figured it out on my own.

The reason you were having LOD issue is because you were editing the mainmenu. Since the only part of the bitmap in the mainmenu that will be used is the bitmap RAW, the actual LOD settings rest within the MP map itself.

And your very welcome.

[CaptainPoopface]

Addendum:
Just to be clear, if you replace the bitmaps in the mainmenu, you only need to change the LOD sizes and offsets in each MP map. No need to internalize and inject the custom emblems into each map.

For consistency, follow the same process for the foreground_medium and foreground_small emblem bitmaps. The medium emblem is the one seen at the Choose Profile screen in the main menu. The small emblem is what appears beside your name in the lobby and in the lower right corner during the game.

One final question: In multiplayer, emblems on players are not rendered. Is there a way to change this? The LOD / cinematic options in Yelo don't work. I suspect it lies in the xbe.