CCXL Theory: Scopes and extensions

Summary

Published: March 12 2025 by manavortex Last documented edit: March 12 2025 by manavortex

This page explains how ArchiveXL expansions work in the context of the character creator. It is currently a work in progress.

Hair materials

The full list of hair style materials as supported by CCXL extension:

material for chunkmask	parameter name in @context
@beard	BeardBaseMaterial
@braid	BraidBaseMaterial
@cap	CapBaseMaterial
@cap01	CapBaseMaterial
@curls	CurlsBaseMaterial
@dread	DreadBaseMaterial
@long	LongBaseMaterial
@short	ShortBaseMaterial
@brows	BrowsBaseMaterial
@lashes	LashesBaseMaterial

While @cap01 falls back to CapBaseMaterial, this is how you can define an extra hair cap texture for cyberware_01.

Material colour extensions

Material colour extension makes use of both Mesh appearance auto expansion and ArchiveXL: Resource patching.

First, you require an intermediary layer of .mi files that define individual properties, for example colours. All of these need to derive from a common ancestor, which defines all other properties.

You can make use of Mesh appearance auto expansion to use the correct .mi files, while allowing auto-extendability for future patching via the @context.

You can find another example for this under CCXL: Hairs

Defining multiple make-up styles in one mesh will break extensibility (read below). To be extensible, you need one mesh per style.

To define multiple different make-up stypes in one mesh, you can put the textures directly into the local material - e.g. @makeup, @makeup_02.