Influencing other items

PartsOverrides, visual tags, and how to use them

Summary

Published: November 12 2022 by manavortex Last documented update: January 21 2024 by manavortex

This page will teach you how your clothing can influence other clothing items, for example hiding the sleeves under a jacket. You have to do this manually for every item that you want to affect, a much better way to address the problem is the game's Garment Support system.

Requirement: ArchiveXL >= 1.1.6

This guide will explain how to influence meshes by directly in the .app file, overriding whatever is defined for the components in the .ent file which loads them.

For even further customization options for wardrobe items, see EquipmentEx's readme.

GarmentSupport: Layering your item on top

Cyberpunk 2077 uses a clever system to layer clothes on top of each other while minimizing clipping. It's called GarmentSupport, and as of 2024, it's almost completely functional.

To use it with your clothing item, you need to change the component names to use the right prefixes. Check the Component prefixes section on Garment Support: How does it work? for details.

PartsOverrides: Changing other meshes

To learn how to hide things via PartsOverrides, check Chunkmasks: partially hiding meshes

You can't use PartsOverrides on components defined in the same .app file. Either use components from other files, or load them Mesh/Component entity (simple entity)

In the .app file, each appearance lets you define partsOverrides, which — as the name implies — let you override previously defined components. An entry looks as follows:

Overwrite the component "kimono" and "kimono_filler", which are defined in the file "kimono_meshentity.ent" This is the reason why Cyberpunk has all the player components stored in .ent files!

Where partsValues lets you define the individual entity files that you'll load, partsOverrides lets you assign properties which take precedence over those defined in the .ent file:

componentsOverride > .ent file

Components need to be unambiguously identified by their name as defined in the .ent file. For that reason, it's good practice to have globally unique identifiers.

You can make use of ArchiveXL: Suffixes and Substitutions for your components.

Arms

Due to cyberware, V has more arms than Shiva the Destroyer (although not at the same time). Arms are why we can't have nice things.

You can find arm component names on Cheat Sheet: Body -> Arms. Alternatively, you can browse the corresponding entity files in the Asset Browser by searching for base\characters\common\player_base_bodies > .ent, the file names will start with a0_.

Body

The player base body component name is

t0_000_pwa_base__full
t0_000_pma_base__full

ArchiveXL

Normally, you can override only components from .ent files that you include via partsValues in the same appearance. ArchiveXL expands this by letting you manipulate any components that are loaded as part of the player.ent:

This is hiding a submesh of the default body, which isn't part of the referenced pants_leggins.ent. This is only possible because of ArchiveXL!

To delete an already existing reference, set the numeric value to the right of the depot path to 0:

VisualTags: GarmentSupport

These can be used in addition to PartsOverrides and will let you influence your item even further. To learn more about Garment Support: How does it work?, read The algorithm.

This mechanism is how e.g. your sunglasses disappear when you put on a helmet.

Visual tags in the root entity will get applied to every appearance in the app.

However: Due to technical limitations, any visual tags that hide parts of the mesh must go into the .app file to take effect. File Validation will warn you about this.

ArchiveXL

The following tags are used by the base game; however, to make use of them, you require ArchiveXL.

With visual tags, you can force-show hair, hide an item in first person, or turn body parts on and off. Find the full list under ArchiveXL: Tags

Custom tags: un-hiding chunks

If you want to un-hide chunks rather than hiding them, you need to define a custom tag via ArchiveXL. See Adding custom tags for details.