Summary

Published: November 05 2022 by manavortex Last documented edit: Jun 29 by manavortex

This guide will teach you how to edit an item's material, changing its appearance.

Wait, this is not what I want!

• For a step-by-step walkthrough for a recolour of the Netrunner suit, check R&R: Colour Editing

• If you want to edit emissive (glowing) material, check R&R: Emissive -> Changing the presets

• For an overview of base materials and example files, you can check here.

• If you want to learn how mesh material assignment works in general, you can check the corresponding page.

• For details on changing materials, check Changing materials, colors and textures.

  • If you just want to use a textured material, check Using a textured material

• You can find a video guide on youtube (It's also embedded below)

Prerequisites

• Wolvenkit's most recent version (Nightly | Stable — guide has been written with 8.11)

• A Wolvenkit Project

• Most likely MLSetupBuilder >= 1.6.7 (get the latest release)

• If you are editing a basegame material, you need to install Material and Texture Override from Nexus.

Overview

Estimated time

For a complete noob, including setup of the tool(s): ~1h Once you know what you're doing: <5 minutes and as much time for fine tuning as you want

Steps

This guide will take you through the following steps:

Video guide

Please keep in mind that video guides might be outdated, as they are much more difficult to update than a wiki page. Refer to the written guide below if you run into any troubles!

Step 0: Finding the .mesh and the appearance

Estimated time: ~5 minutes for total noobs, unless you get side-tracked badly

Find the item's mesh file path and appearance in the .app file:

mesh.DepotPath:

One per body gender (m/w), this is shared by all appearances (basic_01, basic_02, rich_01, rich_02). For the female vest, it's

base\characters\garment\player_equipment\torso\t2_002_vest__puffy\t2_002_pwa_vest__puffy.mesh

meshAppearance:

This picks the appearance from the mesh file, which you'll need for the next step. Here's how they connect:

Add the mesh to your project

1. Find the file from mesh.DepotPath in your Asset Browser.

2. Add it to your Wolvenkit Project (double-click or right-click -> Add to Project)

We will now edit the mesh's material. Stay tuned!

Step 1: Finding the correct material name

1. Open your mesh file in Wolvenkit by double-clicking it.

2. Find the array appearances at the very top, and expand it.

3. Find the appearance by the name that you found in Step 0 (example: bwstripes), and expand it

4. Find the chunk material names. These define the material:

1. Starting with Wolvenkit 8.15, you can right-click on a chunk and click on "Select Material" from the context menu. For earlier versions, you have to find the material yourself - proceed to the next step.

Step 2: Finding the material instance

Depending on your mesh, the material instance will be in one of two places: either under localMaterialBuffer.materials, or under preloadLocalMaterialInstances.

(If you don't see preloadLocalMaterialInstances, that means it's empty and has been hidden.)

Inside the array, find your material by name:

Step 4: Changing the material properties

You will (hopefully) see a material with three entries in values (order doesn't matter):

Exporting the .mlsetup

First, add the .mlsetup to your project. You can either expand the CKeyValuePair and click the yellow button, or copy the depot path and use the Asset Browser.

1. In the project explorer under Wolvenkit's archive folder, right-click on the mlsetup file This folder will only be visible in the "source" or "archive" tab of your project explorer

2. Select "Convert to JSON"

Step 3: Editing the .mlsetup file

1. Optional: If you don't see an mlsetup.json in your project, switch the Project Explorer to source or raw.

2. Right-click on the file and open it in MLSetupBuilder.

1. Draw the rest of the owl and edit the mlsetup.

2. Export the file, overwriting the original .mlsetup.json

3. Switch back to Wolvenkit

4. Right-click on the .mlsetup.json and import it from json.

Step 4: Being done

Congratulations! You modded an item! If that's all you wanted, you can now go and do whatever you want. You can even delete the mesh from your mod and pack only the .mlsetup!

Of course you have only changed an in-game texture, which may cause side effects — especially if other mods do the same. To change that, keep reading!

Step 5: Custompathing

Instead of changing an in-game file, you can also replace it with your own.

1. Rename your file to something nobody else will touch, e.g. manavortex\mlsetups\my_custom_vest_appearance.mlsetup

2. Copy the new relative path (right-click), and update your mesh:

Step 6: Renaming materials

You can rename a material by changing the "name" property inside the CMeshMaterialEntry in the materials array:

Step 6 (optional): adding new materials

To add a new material to a mesh, you can simply right-click on the materials array:

Summary

Published: Jun 29 2022 by manavortex Last documented edit: Jun 29 by manavortex

This guide will teach you how to use a textured (also called PBR, which is a subtype of textured and will work) material in Cyberpunk. It is a part of Changing materials, colors and textures — if you are missing information, check the parent page.

Prerequisite

You have a CMaterialInstance that can use your textured material.

If you don't have one yet, follow the steps under Changing materials, colors and textures, or skip to Finding example material configurations and copy the entire material.

The textures material

The default textured material in Cyberpunk can be found under

engine\materials\metal_base.remt

By setting it as the baseMaterial, you're telling your item to load anything you configure under the values array.

Which properties can I use?

Some of the most common properties for metal_base are:

But I have a texture for...

Tough luck, this is the only textured shader we have. Time to get converting :)

Finding example material configurations

Search for metal_base in your asset browser:

engine\materials\metal_base.remt

Right-click on the entry, and select "find files using this". That will get you every base item with a textured material.

With what you now know, you can dig through their material instances and find example parameters.