How to create a mod

Make a mod from the character as the game draws her, and see each change in game as you save. If you have made mods with WWMI-Tools:

• Nothing to extract. One key copies her from the screen into your library as a mod that already draws.
• No export. Saving in Blender is all it takes; there is no ini to write.
• Names, not numbers. Switches name your pieces in a short settings file instead of hashes and buffer ranges.

An existing WWMI mod works the same way once Timbre has made it native (Add your mods): open it in Blender and skip step 1.

Words used here:

• Overtone is installed and the game starts with it (Getting started).
• Blender is installed (Edit a mod in Blender).
• The game shows each change a moment after you save it (Play with Overtone).

1. In game, bring the character close to the camera. A dump keeps the detail the game is drawing, and from far away that is a simpler model.
2. For a clean base, turn off every mod of that character, or press F8 to turn off all mods.
3. Dump her one of three ways:

Timbre's In game page also has Dump, and Who is this? for a character Overtone does not know.

A message says Dumping or Recording and her name. No known character on screen means Overtone recognised nobody: use the picker. Already capturing means a dump is still running. In the picker, her row reads Watching (or Recording), then Copying, then Dumped: and the folder, or Failed: and why. A dump takes a few seconds, longer while the game is still loading her textures.

Overtone works out the character's skeleton from how her bones move. Standing still, many bones never move, so their places are guesses. A recording watches her move for up to 3,600 frames, a minute at 60 FPS.

1. Press F12, or Record in the picker.

2. Move her: run, turn, jump, attack, crouch. A line at the top of the screen shows the time, the poses kept and how many bones have moved so far:

   REC 0:24    60 poses    151 of 180 bones moved
   

   no pose yet means none of her parts' bones has been read yet: keep her on screen.

3. Stop when most bones have moved: press F12 again, or open the overlay and press Stop on that line. It also stops on its own at 3,600 frames, or when its memory budget is full.

Each later dump or recording of her also improves her bones: Overtone reads up to eight of your earlier ones of her with the same parts.

It lands in her folder in your library (Where things are), or in character/others/ for anything Overtone cannot name as a character. A new dump starts off: open its tile in Timbre and turn on Wear. Untouched, it looks exactly like what was on screen.

A new dump of the same look or mod replaces the last one, folder and all. It stays on if that one was on. These are kept:

• A dump you opened in Blender, painted in Timbre's Paint or tuned in its Model: it moves aside, its name ending - Edited instead of - Vanilla or - Snapshot.
• A dump you renamed so its name no longer ends in - Vanilla or - Snapshot, or moved out of its character folder.

Changes to its description or textures alone do not keep it. Rename the folder before you edit it there.

Inside the folder:

1. In Timbre, open the mod and press Blender. Each part is a collection named by its number, such as Part 3 or Face · Part 2; the skeleton is Rig.
2. Reshape, add or delete vertices, weight-paint, or duplicate a piece (Shift+D) to add one.
3. Press Ctrl+S. Saving is exporting: Blender's status bar says whether the game took it, and the game shows it a moment later.

What each message means, adding pieces, bringing in meshes from elsewhere and hiding pieces are in Edit a mod in Blender.

1. In Blender, name the object, for example Straw hat, and save.

2. In Timbre, open the mod's Inside and click a row: its description opens beside it. Add:

   [option.Hat]
   key     = "5"
   default = "off"
   on.show = ["Straw hat"]

3. Press Save. In game, 5 puts the hat on and takes it off while the mod is on screen. In the overlay's Wardrobe, the mod's row now counts one switch: open it to see Hat.

A piece the description never mentions is always drawn. For more than on and off, give the switch choices (Switches).

To change how a texture looks, paint it in Timbre (Paint a mod's textures). To give a part another file, edit the description. The dump's description places each texture by part and role:

[part.3]
diffuse = "Textures/c3-diffuse.dds"

3 is the part's number (Part 3 in Blender). Point the role at a new file, or overwrite the file: check first which parts name it, as a shared texture changes on every one of them. A role also takes "game", the game's own texture, or a colour; every role and value is in Parts and textures. In a - Vanilla dump, delete the line of a texture you never changed: the part wears the game's own, the same picture, with one fewer file to load. Before you change a dump's description or textures without opening it in Blender, rename its folder, or the next dump of her replaces it, edits and all.

To switch textures with a key, let a choice wear them:

[option.Colour]
choices = ["Black", "Blue"]
key     = "6"
Blue.wear.3 = { diffuse = "Textures/Jacket_Blue.dds" }

To texture one piece rather than a whole part, name a material, a set of roles, and give it to the piece:

[material.metal]
diffuse = "Textures/Metal_D.dds"

[piece.Buttons]
material = "metal"

A texture you change under [part.3] shows only where no piece's material, and no wear table or rule, covers it (Which texture wins).

• Change what Blender cannot. New parts, bones or shape keys (Edit a mod in Blender).
• Dump an effect, or anything that does not bend with a skeleton. A character or look is dumped only while the game draws it.

• Edit a mod in Blender: add pieces and bring in meshes from other mods.
• Paint a mod's textures: tattoos, freckles and recolours, painted on the character.
• Write a description: every key a description takes.
• When a mod does not draw right.