Edit a mod in Blender

Open a mod in Blender, change it, press Ctrl+S, and the game shows the change a moment later. If you have made mods with WWMI-Tools, three chores are gone:

• No export. Saving is exporting: no ini to write, no buffer files, no F10.
• No vertex group numbers. The skeleton's bones have names such as upper arm.L, and any piece may use any of them.
• Meshes from anywhere. Put a mesh from another mod into a part and save: Overtone keeps it where you placed it, bends it with the character and weights it for you.

• Blender is installed. Timbre finds it on Windows and a Mac; if not, and always on Linux, press Choose under Settings → Folders → Blender and pick Blender's program.
• The mod is native: a dump you made (How to create a mod), or a WWMI mod you added through Timbre, which makes it native as it lands (What native means).
• To see each save in game, start the game with Overtone (See your changes in game).

In Blender	What it is
The top collection	The mod, named after it.
Part 0, Face · Part 2, …	One collection for each section the game draws, such as hair, body or a jacket, named by what it is where Overtone knows the character. Part 3 is the game's part 3, the one WWMI-Tools calls Component 3. A collection you rename keeps your name.
An object inside a Part	A piece: one mesh of the mod. Its name is the name the mod's switches use.
Rig	The character's skeleton. Every piece bends with it through an Armature modifier.
Rig's bones	Named for what they are, such as upper arm.L, hand.R or hair 3.2.L, and sorted into bone collections (Body, Fingers, Face, Hair, Skirt, Cloth). A bone Overtone could not name keeps a number, such as c3.b17.
model Part 0, weapon Rig, …	A mod the game shows as several models, such as an outfit and its weapon: a collection for each model file, its parts and skeleton named after it, such as model Part 0 for the outfit and weapon Rig for the weapon.

Each piece wears its part's colours, so you can see what you are editing. Those colours are only a preview.

1. In Timbre, open the mod and press Blender.
2. Edit it: move, add or delete vertices, weight-paint, sculpt, add modifiers.
3. Press Ctrl+S. Saving is all it takes.

The status bar at the bottom of Blender says what happened:

Status bar	Means
taken; the game draws it at its next reload	Done. The game shows it a moment later.
written, N pieces exported	Saved. taken follows once Overtone has read it.
saved; the game or Timbre rebuilds the mod when it next reads it	Saved while the game is closed. You see it the next time you play or open Timbre.
unchanged	Nothing changed since the last save.
not taken: and why, with a popup	The game keeps showing your last good save. Fix what it says and save again (When a save is not taken).
was not written: and why, with a popup	Nothing was saved. Usually a piece's UV maps were renamed or reordered: put them back as the message lists them.
meshes not skinned to an armature left out	Those meshes are not in a Part collection and do not bend with Rig, so they stay out of the mod.

Timbre's mod page also shows Last Blender save not applied: and the reason.

Save as often as you like: each save sends only the pieces you changed. Posing Rig to check your work changes nothing in the mod. Modifiers are applied as you save, and stay editable in Blender.

The quickest way is to copy a piece that already bends right.

1. Click a piece in the part the new one belongs to, and press Shift+D to duplicate it.
2. Edit the copy into what you want: a strap, a longer skirt, a hat.
3. Rename it in the outliner (F2). The name is how switches find it.
4. Press Ctrl+S.

The copy keeps its part, its Armature modifier and its weights, so it bends with the character at once. A new piece is always drawn until a switch says otherwise (Make a piece switchable).

To move a piece to another part, press M and pick that part's collection. The next save says moved to Part 4. A piece still in Edit Mode as you save is not moved until the next save; the status bar says left as it was while in Edit Mode.

A hat from another mod, a model you made, a mesh from a WWMI-Tools project.

1. Bring it into the scene: File → Append from another .blend, or File → Import.
2. Press M and move it into the Part collection whose look it should have: a part of the body for skin, of the clothes for cloth. A new piece is drawn the way its part is drawn.
3. Make sure it has a UV map (Object Data Properties → UV Maps). Its first UV map is the one textures use.
4. Leave Edit Mode, and press Ctrl+S.

The status bar says taken into Part 3 with the mesh's name. As it saves, Overtone:

• keeps it where you placed it, and makes it bend with the character;
• swaps the skeleton it came with for Rig (delete the old skeleton when you like);
• copies weights from the nearest surface of the character, unless every vertex already weighs on Rig's bones, and the status bar adds weighted from the pieces under it. Weights it had on Rig's bones are then replaced.

Pose a bone of Rig and watch the mesh follow. This happens once, on the save that brings the mesh in: after that it is a piece like any other, and your weight painting is kept.

Copied weights follow the skin under the mesh. That suits clothing, not everything:

The mesh	Copied weights	Do this
Lies on the body: a top, straps, stockings	Follow the body well	Pose Rig to check, and touch up
Hangs away from the body: long hair, a loose skirt, a cape	Take the weights of the thigh or back it hangs near	Weight-paint it on the hair, skirt or cloth bones
Should not bend: a hat, a badge, a weapon	Bend with the skin or hair under it	Give every vertex full weight on one bone, such as the head

Paint with Rig selected and Blender names each vertex group after its bone for you. Overtone keeps the strongest four or eight weights on each vertex, as the character has, so you need not limit or normalize them. To skip the copy, weight every vertex on Rig's bones before the first save: one vertex with none, and the whole mesh is weighted again. Bone numbers such as c3.b17 from another mod mean a different bone there, so they are not counted.

Its own textures do not come with it: it wears its part's textures until you give it its own.

Textures you set up in Blender change only Blender's preview. To give a piece textures of its own:

1. Put its textures in the mod's folder, for example under Textures/.

2. In Timbre, open the mod's Inside and click a row: its description opens beside it. Add a material, then give it to the piece by name:

   [material.hat]
   diffuse = "Textures/Hat_D.dds"
   
   [piece."Straw hat"]
   material = "hat"

3. Press Save.

The roles a material takes are listed in Parts and textures.

• Hidden in Blender is hidden in game. Hide a piece with its eye, its monitor icon or its collection's, and it draws nothing. Hide or delete every piece of a part, and that part of the character is gone.
• A piece a switch shows is the exception. The switch decides, whatever Blender shows. To see what each choice of a switch shows, open the sidebar (N), then Overtone → State, and set each option's list to a choice.
• Renaming a piece a switch names. The next save is not taken until the description uses the new name too.

Button on the mod's page	What it does
Reset	Opens the model fresh from model.glb, dropping what only Blender holds: modifiers (their result stays), helper objects and the like. One backup is kept. Its tip says when the model changed outside Blender.
Re-derive	Builds the mod again from the WWMI files it came with. Your Blender changes go to the Recycle Bin (the Trash on a Mac). Shown only for a WWMI mod you have edited. Close Blender and the game first.

Task	WWMI-Tools	Overtone
Start from	A frame dump, and objects extracted from it	A dump (F11), or any mod Timbre added
Put a mesh on the character	Move it into Component 3 and rename it to match	Move it into the Part 3 collection (M), under any name
Line it up with the character	Apply its transforms by hand	Done as you save, where you placed it
Remove the skeleton it came with	By hand	Done as you save
Weights	Transfer them by hand	Copied as you save, unless every vertex already weighs on Rig's bones
Vertex group names	Must match the character's numbers exactly, often per component	The bones' names, such as upper arm.L; any bone, even another part's
Four weights a vertex, normalized	By hand, or at export	Not needed
See it in game	Export Mod, then F10	Ctrl+S
Switches and textures	Written into the ini	The mod's description (Write a description)

What stays yours, as in WWMI: making the weights right for hair, skirts and things that should not bend (When to paint weights yourself).

To move a mod you made with WWMI-Tools to Overtone:

1. Export it from WWMI-Tools as usual.
2. Drop the exported folder on Timbre's window and press Import. Timbre makes it native.
3. Press Blender on it. Each Component N is the Part N collection, and its objects are pieces named as your WWMI-Tools objects were.
4. Keep editing it here from now on. WWMI-Tools does not open Overtone's files, and a WWMI export does not carry what you saved here.

To bring over one mesh from a WWMI-Tools .blend, use File → Append, then follow Bring in a mesh from elsewhere. Its numbered vertex groups are left alone, and it is weighted from the character.

The message says	Do this
belongs to no part	Move the object into a Part collection (M).
has no UV map	Give the object one (Object Data Properties → UV Maps, then unwrap it).
has no weights	Weight-paint it on Rig's bones.
saved without normals and tangents	In Blender without Timbre, tick Tangents on export.
saved without its vertex colours	In Blender without Timbre, tick Attributes on export.
one part draws with at most 256	Weight the part to fewer of Rig's bones.
is not the character's, or weighted to … a part the mesh does not have	Weight it only to Rig's own bones. A bone you add is not taken.
A shape key the game does not have	Delete it. You can reshape the character's own shape keys, not add new ones.
A piece name that no longer resolves	Rename the piece back, or rename it in the description too.

To	Press
Save, and see it in game	Ctrl+S
Duplicate a piece	Shift+D
Rename a piece	F2
Move a piece to another part	M
Open the sidebar, for Overtone → State	N

• Add a part. A mod replaces parts the game draws. A new piece is drawn with its part's shader.
• Add bones. Weights go only to Rig's bones, at most 256 bones a part. Hair and skirt bones keep the game's own physics.
• Add shape keys. Edit the character's own instead.
• Use Blender materials in game. Use the description (Give a piece its own textures).
• See glow maps, or an outline colour of the mod's own, in game. Neither is drawn yet.

• Make a piece switchable and swap a texture.
• Paint a mod's textures: change the look on the character, in Timbre.
• Write a description: every key a description takes.
• When a mod does not draw right.

Use File → Import → glTF 2.0 (.glb/.gltf) and File → Export → glTF 2.0 (.glb/.gltf) on model.glb. On export, tick Data → Mesh → Tangents and Attributes, Data → Armature → Include All Bone Influences, and Include → Custom Properties. Without Tangents or Attributes the save is not taken, and the message names them. Without Include All Bone Influences, weights past four a vertex are lost without a warning. A new object also needs the custom property overtone_part set to its part's number, which Timbre's Blender sets from its collection.

File	What it is
model.glb	The model. A mod of several meshes has a .glb for each. Saving rewrites it.
.overtone/blender/model.blend	Your Blender scene, kept between sessions. A mod opens in one Blender at a time.
.overtone/built/	What the game draws, made from each save. Never edit it.
.overtone/legacy/	The WWMI files a mod came with, which Re-derive builds from.