RE Engine Modding Tutorial - Custom Character Models (Blender workflow)

I've been meaning to make this tutorial for a lot of time but only got the time to do it recently. In this tutorial I'm modding Resident Evil 2 Remake, but the process can also be used to mod any of the other RE Engine games.

Some notes:

- BEFORE importing Claire's model or any other model you want to replace, please download and use the improved FBX Importer here: https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/6118

- If your model is high poly and you make an UV2 for it, Noesis is most probably going to import your FBX with a corrupted UV2. You will notice it when you'll try your model in-game, because the game is going to stutter everytime you shoot enemies (because the game is calculating where to throw the blood on the model, and if UV2 is corrupted the game is going to be a little confused). I haven't found fixes for this problem yet, so if you really want the bloodmask of your model to look good, you're gonna need to create the UV2 with 3DS Max and use RE Engine's MESH maxscript.

- If your custom model's eyes do not quite match the skeleton, you can move the eye bones to a better position. If you export with -rewrite (like I do in this tutorial), the skeleton is going to be wrote from scratch, so the game will use your custom bone positions instead. Unfortunately, if you do this, the eyes in the model viewer will act crazy and will move to a different position. To fix this issue, you can replace the model viewer's face animation motlist to a blank one. REMEMBER: You can only move certain kind of bones. This includes physics bones, eye bones and weapon bones. If you try to move bones tied to animations (legs, arms, spine), they will go back to their original position.

- This process is also valuable for modding static objects. The process is exactly the same, you just have to skip the step about weight painting.

- Your Blender version doesn't matter. I'm using 3.1 in this video, but the process should work even if you use 2.79 or below.

RETool + game's filelists by FluffyQuack: https://residentevilmodding.boards.net/thread/10567/pak-tex-editing-tool

Noesis by Rich Whitehouse: https://richwhitehouse.com/index.php?content=inc_projects.php&showproject=91

RE Engine Noesis plugin by alphaZomega: https://residentevilmodding.boards.net/thread/14726/re8-mhrise-modding-tools

RE Engine MESH Tool maxscript by Shigu + alphaZomega: https://residentevilmodding.boards.net/thread/11868/engine-mesh-tool-maxscript-updated

MDF Manager by Silvris: https://github.com/Silvris/MDF-Manager

Fluffy's Mod Manager by FluffyQuack: https://www.fluffyquack.com/

RE2 Ultimate File List by JTeghius Kittius: https://residentevilmodding.boards.net/thread/9862/re2-ultimate-file-list

^ this is a very useful thread in the RE Modding Forums where you can find the names of the folders where characters/enemies/weapons/items are stored.



If you need futher help, clarifications, or if you just want to see what modders are working on right now, you can join the Modding Haven Discord server: https://discord.gg/9Vr2SJ3


0:00 Introduction
1:24 Extracting the content from the PAK files
3:56 Installing the RE Engine Noesis plugin
9:06 Exporting Claire's model to FBX including textures
10:56 Importing Claire's model in Blender
15:50 Posing our custom model to Claire's pose
27:10 Transferring Claire's weights to our custom model
29:22 Fixing deformation inconsistencies with sculpting/proportional editing
34:46 Explaining the problem with UV2
41:10 Me doing some shit that I forgot to cut from the video but I don't care, I'm not going to re-render this for the 5th time
43:50 Exporting our custom model from Blender to FBX
44:20 Exporting our custom model's FBX to MESH
46:15 Testing our model ingame
48:00 Explaining the textures of this engine
52:10 Exporting our textures to TGA
58:00 Exporting our TGA textures to TEX
1:00:25 Installing the MDF Manager
1:00:50 Using the MDF Manager
1:08:00 Testing the textures ingame
1:10:48 Body done, passing on the head mesh
1:35:00 It's not possible to export a mesh with 256 bones, need to remove at least one
1:47:35 Head finished, testing ingame
1:55:35 Modding the hair
2:04:30 Moving hair bones
2:11:55 Testing hair ingame
2:22:00 Showing backpack collision in the AoD project
2:28:13 Ending