Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 - The Modding Dungeon Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Modding General Dragon Revamp

Hello everyone,

This is my first post here; I joined up because I having an issue with something I have been trying to do with an adventure I am creating through the divinity 2 engine. Basically, I want to create an adventure that is heavily themed on many different types of dragons from the chromatic and metallic scale.

I have been trying to create new dragons using existing dragon assets and have attempted many perceivable solutions. Because I am strictly interested in changing the colors of the existing dragon assets (for instance, taking the frost dragon and making it white, or changing the black dragon to green or blue), I began by trying to change visual indices of the root templates for these respective assets. However, dragons seem to be the one thing in this game in which the visual indices cannot be changed by an substantial variant. I then tried creating new root templates for these assets and attempted to assign different visual properties to the new root templates. However, this doesn't alleviate my issue. I still cannot change the colors of the dragons.

Next, I attempted to create new visual resources and alter them myself; but I don't want to change the mesh or anything of that nature; I strictly want to alter the coloration (and maybe texture slightly later on, although much less important).

I have the ExportTool that Larian, themselves, have provided, and I wanted to use this to potentially try to convert the .gr2 files into .dae files to import into blender, to try to just repaint the asset and bring it back into the divinity engine; however, I have even encountered much difficulty converting the asset into .dae.

The following is an error code I have been receiving while attempting a batch file conversion of the dragon asset from .gr2 to .dae. This may be because I misunderstand how the process is supposed to work. The program seems to be asking for a directory of gr2 files as an input, but gr2 files don't actually appear when I am searching through directories. Perhaps this is because I am supposed to white a .bat file that allows me to export a compilation of gr2 files? This part I am confused about.

I really only want to convert two files to re-texture them, but apparently the exporttool does not support converting single file .gr2 into .dae, which doesn't make sense to me if this can "easily" be done with a batch. I stress easily because clearly I don't know how to do it.

Please let me know if you have any idea what I can do to alleviate these issues. Am I going about this completely wrong? Is there an easier way to do what I want to do? Can anyone tell me how to convert these files or write a .bat that might allow me to do this (I am an engineer, not really a programmer, so I do have somewhat limited knowledge on computer speak xD)

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide in this matter. I am spent much more time than I probably should have trying to figure this out on my own, so now I am coming to you guys for help.

P.S. I will be posting relevant screenshots of the ExportTool and the error code at a later time, as I believe I am unable to do this currently due to being a newly registered user.

[img]http://prntscr.com/hoivtk[/img]

The above image is a screenshot of the Export/tool conversion I am attempting.

[img]http://prntscr.com/hoiwa4[/img]

Here is a screenshot of the error code that I have been receiving from the conversion attempt.

This would be great. I wanted to do the same thing myself but couldn't even figure out where to start.

Once you get this working you might consider adding 2-3 different sizes for each dragon. That part is easy but I didn't bother finishing since I couldn't figure out how to change their colors.

I wanted to have several types of dragons in from young to ancient at different level brackets.

Wyrmling -- level 7 -- the little dragon already existing or scale the others to around 25%
Young -- level 12 -- 50% scale
Adult -- level 18 -- 75% scale
Ancient -- level 25 -- 100% scale

Add the different scales to the different colors and you have one sweet mod.

I certainly planned on creating different size/ages for them as well, so this is sound advice! You can definitely expect to see this in my add-on whenever I figure out how to resolve the issues I am having.

Hi,

The exporter you're using is not a Larian official tool. There is an official one as well, however it doesn't support converting models from the GR2 format, only exporting to GR2.

The conversion in your case failed because the GR2 file uses a proprietary compression format that can only be decompressed when using RAD tools (i.e. granny2.dll). However, as this is part of the Granny SDK, I can't redistribute it along with the tool as it'd violate RAD licensing. If you need to convert compressed GR2 files you'll need to copy granny2.dll to the folder of the export tool. I have a mirror available here: https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/nb-stor/dos/granny2.dll

Also, there is a newer (beta) version of the exporter that fixes some GR2 bugs that may affect you, so I recommend upgrading if you're working with models:
https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/nb-stor/dos/ExportTool/ExportTool-v1.9.0-beta.zip

Thanks a lot for this information Norbyte! I will try to mess around with it some more and see if I can get it to work now. Just to clarify, I need to put the granny2.dll in the ExportTool folder or in the folder with files I want to import?

[img]http://prntscr.com/hqoiuu[/img]

Wanted to keep anyone updated if they are interested. Thanks to Norbyte, I have managed to successfully acquire dae files for the meshes I want to change.

The image above is the texture resurface I have done after importing the mesh to blender. Suffice to say I have no idea if this is going to look good in game yet, or even if it will actually change anything. The imported mesh was a blank slate basically, so I am not sure if there is painting dome on top of the mesh, and if I am just repainting underneath it might just import into the engine as the same black dragon I was using with an invisible painted layer underneath.

I will post an update once I get the dragon into the engine and see if I have any problems with the way I am going about this.

I must say though, that this re-texture looks pretty great, and hopefully it comes out well in the engine, and I will just need to do minor adjustments to make it look better.

Waiting to subscribe.

I now have the gr2 files for the dragon assets I want to bring back into the divinity 2 engine. When I try to add these as resources or assets in the divniity engine, I cannot find them, even when I navigate to the folder. How do I add these to resource assets that I can use? Apparently it isn't as easy as copying over loose files or even creating a pak. I have tried creating a separate .pak.

Is there a way to use the extractor tool to add these files to the shared pak?

I feel like I am pretty close here, but I am still missing something, as I can't get the resource into the engine.

EDIT
When attempting to add a resource, I am able to find the gr2 file I want to use. Below is an image

[img]http://prntscr.com/hqs803[/img]

However, after selecting it, I cannot actually import the asset; below is another image showing the options I have when attempting to add the resource; the only option is to cancel.

[img]http://prntscr.com/hqs8pq[/img]

Changing Localized to "True" doesn't change anything.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Winters_Vex,

To import a resource you must first create a resource package. To do this, open the Resource Manager and click "Add Package" in the top left, it's one of the small buttons right above the explorer. Name your resource package and then you will be able to import resources to it.

You can also see the "Add Package" button here.

Note that if you used the Larian exporter, the expected file extension will be ".lsm".

Thank you Larian_JB! I have figured out from this information that I have been going about this wrong the entire time, which is okay because I have learned a ton about resources from this process! Now I simply need to edit a material. I have located the material editor in the divinity 2 engine. How would I go about getting a material loaded into the material editor? How do I unpack a material I want to edit? I don't think I got any of the materials from the shared and patch unpackings; or did I and I am simply looking in the wrong place?

EDIT
I actually figured out how to open a material in the editor. I just have no idea how to use this thing xD. Guess I will fool around with this for a bit and see what happens.

I HAVE DONE IT!

After 2 weeks of trying to figure this out, I have finally done it! It took me much longer than it should have, but, for the most part, a lot of time spent trial and error has not been in vain. I have finally made the dragons I wanted! I am posting a couple screen shots below so you can get hype! This is purely a visual update to the dragons and currently only includes standard size dragons! But coming this far and figuring this much out was, I think, the bulk of the work. Now that I better understand how to accomplish the task at hand, the rest is much more easy!

Now, I just need to figure out how to publish the add-on. I have never made a mod before, so this is my first time doing any of this.

Needless to say, I am quite proud, and I have a some people to thank for helping me out!

[img]http://prntscr.com/hr857q[/img]
This includes the Sunny atmosphere.

The next image is with a work atmosphere.
[img]http://prntscr.com/hr85jr[/img]

And lastly, just a few close-up shots of some of the dragons!

I want a fun little color patching on the brass so it stands out from the gold dragon; I figure red does nicely since brass dragons typically breath fire.
[img]http://prntscr.com/hr85vx[/img]

I like the little green patching for the copper as well, since copper dragons typically breath acid.
[img]http://prntscr.com/hr86a6[/img]

There is a nice sheen on the silver nd gold dragons specifically, as well.

Purple isn't typical for the DnD universe, but I made one anyway because I loved how it turned out, and maybe it feels like a good variant of shadow dragons or something fun.
[img]http://prntscr.com/hr86mx[/img]

Anyway, thanks for sticking this out with me guys; I will try to publish this to the steam workshop and also make edits to make these even better and more badass as time goes on!

I have officially posted an initial release of the add-on. It's in a pretty simple state currently. Feel free to check it out.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1240312046

I will certainly be adding and updating more to this.

So I do have some new questions that I would like to work on/update, if anyone is still paying attention to this thread.

Now that I have the dragon assets I want, how do I make it so that these assets are available to the GM without needing to go in and create a new GM level and save the dragons. Can I make these assets selectable from the creatures menu somehow?

Additionally, I need to do a lot of updating to skills and A.O.E. effects and animations and such. Does anyone know how to add an animation to a skill or change skill ranges or appearances?

I am doing some researching on my own time as well, but any information would be greatly appreciated.

Additionally, when I am updating stats; I am honestly really confused about what they mean and how they translate into the game.

[img]http://prntscr.com/hrk2ko[/img]

Here I see Act, Act part, and Act strength; what exactly do these represent? Also, I can only edit main attributes incrementally from 1 to 10; how do these trnslate into literal numbers in the game?

For changing skills, you can take a look at Baardvark's Skill creation page. It's got a listing for what the different entries in the skill do.

There's also a page about animations that may be useful for you if you'll be working with animations: https://docs.larian.game/Animation_resource_panel

The main attributes are on a scale of 1-10 for their current level (we call these 'levelmapped'), because we'd want a level 1 dragon to have lower attributes than e.g. a level 10 dragon, and that one to have lower attributes than a level 20 one, etc.
The engine's internal balancing logic determines the exact value for e.g. "a very high Str for level 7".

Here is a dragon breath mod

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1159452441

Awesome, thanks guys!

Also, can anyone tell me how to fix the issue of the new models not appearing to be selectable for a GM? Obviously the GM can save the models present in the add-on, but I would like for them to able to simply select the creatures from the list of available ones. How might I add them to this?

Check the GM component in your root template's sidebar. Specifically, it should appear in the list if there's a Spawn Section and a Spawn Subsection filled in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMp9Pg-Ejy4

15 minutes in

Awesome got it, thanks guys. It works now.