Dragon Age: Modding

A blog about modifying the Dragon Age: Origins game, featuring a number of basic tutorials and walkthroughs.

[modding-dao]

(Single Player and Core Resource Source File) The BioWare website is no longer up. Is there any other way to get these resources?

Did a search, it looks like a copy of them has been posted on the Nexus - https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/4537?tab=files

[modding-dao]

Tutorial - Retexturing A Mesh Part 1c - Rendering a UV Unwrap (Optional)

Pre-Reqs:

Extract the necessary files to work with (link)

Basic understanding of using 3D editing software

A way to import DA:O meshes into your 3D software, such as the "DAO Model and Animation Import and Export" (link)

Embiggen: To view larger versions of the images below, see here.

This is an entirely optional step, but is one of those things that if you have the ability to do it, makes editing textures much easier. What we're going to do is use some 3D modelling software to load the textured mesh we've extracted from the game, and render out what is known as a "UV Unwrap". This is a map that shows how the 3D polygons of the mesh are mapped to the 2D space of the texture. If you can remember mapping out a cube into a flat drawing of six edge-joined squares in school, this is essentially the same thing, except for a much more complex shape made entirely out of triangles.

In this case, since it's what I have on hand and am familiar with, I'm going to use 3DS Max for this step. Most modern 3D editing tools have the capability to do this; it's all a question of you learning how to do it with whatever tool you have available and are comfortable using. Or skipping it entirely; it is, as I say, optional.

The first step is to go to our importer, and load any of the female versions of the mesh.

All of them will use the same mapping to the texture. The size and shape of the mesh polygons in 3D space has changed to reflect the size and shape of that race, but how each polygon maps to the texture to be applied is the same.

The default import settings are fine for what we want to do, so once the mesh has been chosen, all I need to select is the Import button under the "Import Meshes" and "Import Collision" check boxes:

And then I can see this mesh (and its simplified collision representation) in my editor.

In the stack menu on the right I can see I'm currently at a "Skin" parameter (which is where 3DS Max attaches a mesh to the invisible bones that animations drive). Underneath "Skin" is the paramter I need; "Unwrap". If there was no "Unwrap" in the stack, I could temporarily add one. In this case, all I need to do is click on the "Unwrap" paramter, ignore the warning message that pops up becasue there are things above it in the stack, and then click on the "Edit" button that appears under "Parameters" further down in the right-hand menu:

3DS Max will now open a floating window that shows how the mesh is mapped to the texture space.

We don't want to touch anything here; all we want to do is save this out as a usable texture. To do this, we go to the "Tools -> Render UVW Template" option.

We'll next be shown a dialog where we have some options we can set. Most of the default settings are fine, but we should uncheck "Show overlap" and "Seam Edges" as these are both things we don't need to see, and which will add unnecessary colours to our UV Unwrap texture.

Click on the "Render UV Template" button at the bottom of the dialog window, and a new floating window will pop up, containing a white-on-black rendering of the polygons:

Clicking on the little diskette icon at upper left of the window will allow us to save it out to our hard drive. I usually prefer to save to a non-lossy format such as BMP or TIF, so that we don't have things happening like JPGing artifacts blurring the lines.

This texture can then be layered over top of our diffuse texture in our texture editing software, so we can see where the lines of the mesh fall.

Notice how much of the detailing in the texture follows along the lines of the mesh; the edges of the bracer, the belt, where sewn seams are, etc. This gives crisper edges and usually less distortion. Note that in the majority of the texture, the colour extends some distance outside of the mesh lines; this allows for the fact that there will pretty much always be some minor variance between what we see here and how it will actually get applied in game (due to rounding errors with the values, if nothing else). Ever noticed a mesh in game where you could pick out a seam because there was a fuzzy intrusion of a wrong colour along it? That's a spot where the colour didn't extend far enough beyond the edges, and rounding errors/blurring are causing bleed through from the surrounding texture.

Note - I've included the unwraps for both the male and female versions of the clothing mesh as part of the photoset here, so even if you don't have access to 3D editing software, you can grab the textures from the photoset to use.

Last Modified: April 6, 2013

[modding-dao]

Tutorial - Retexturing a Mesh Part 1b - The Texture Files

Pre-Reqs:

Extract the necessary files to work with (link)

What files make up the textures for a mesh in Dragon Age: Origins? For most meshes, there are four separate textures in use. And for any given set of textures, we'll notice that the file names all start off the same, and then end in a letter indicating which type of texture that one is:

D - The first, and simplest, of these is what's known as the "diffuse" texture. This is the texture that gives the surface of the mesh its appearance. In the simplest cases, it controls the colour of the surface without any additional variance.

N - There is also a texture in use called a "normal" texture. This is a special texture whose purpose is to fool our eye into thinking there's more shape to the mesh than is really there, by encoding information into a texture which makes a flat polygon look like a shaped surface by changing how it's lit. Basically, it's a method of lighting a flat surface as if it was a curved surface or a rough surface, so our eye sees "curved" or an appearance of rough texture even though that bit of mesh is still nothing more than a flat polygon.

Origins, being an older game, is using an old greyscale version of normal mapping where the only information being encoded in the map is the height variance of the pixels; more recent versions, which you'd see if you extracted a set of textures from DA2, encode not just the height but the tilt of the pixel, and tend to look either blue-purple or orange-red, depending on which version of several different encoding methods is being used. Such normal maps are only rarely hand-generated, and are normally automated output from 3D modelling or 3D painting programs such as 3DS Max, Maya, ZBrush, Mudbox and so forth. In our case we'll be having to fake the normals in order to get it to roughly match our retexture, so we're lucky that all we have to deal with is the greyscale version.

S - The third texture in use is the "specular" texture, or shininess. The blacker the texture, the more matte the output; the lighter, the glossier. We can also control the colour of the shininess by having colour in the specular; for example, in an area that was going to be gold, the specular map might be tinted yellow; for copper, tinted red. For silver or steel, a pale blue. Since this is mostly just a very darkened version of our diffuse texture, mocking up an edited version of this will be comparatively easy.

T - And the fourth and final texture is what's called a "tint map". It's called a map because it's a guide to the game as to where an additional thing is to go. The additional thing being a tint, or an additional layer of colour that's applied over top the underlying diffuse colour.

In the above example, for instance, we can see that the reddish plaid parts of the female outfit and the reddish-brown leather parts of the male outfit are mapped to the red channel of the tint map. The skirt of the female outfit and the sleeves and leggings of the male one are mapped to green. There's a bunch of detail pieces in both outfits that are mapped to blue. And finally, though we can't see it in these JPG versions of the textures, there's a fourth channel, known as an alpha channel (transparency information is usually stored there) which maps any visible skin, so that a skintone tint can be applied.

The way the tint map works is that there'll be a separate file which defines a colour for each channel of the tint map. So three different colours plus the skintone can be mapped over top of the diffuse texture, and modify it to a differently coloured look that is otherwise identical in pattern, normals and specular. For example if we applied a green-blue-purple tint to this particular pair of diffuse textures, the female would be in a greenish plaid top with a blueish skirt and purplish detailing, while the male would be in a greenish leather top over bluish sleeves and leggings with purplish detailing. And if the female had a dark-skinned head morph and the male a pale one, any visible bits of skin in the texture would be tinted to match.

Note that I say "-ish" on the colours. That's because there is already colour in the diffuse pattern, so the final colour isn't just our tint colour, but is underlying colour + tint colour. If we're making a retexture that we'd like to be very compatible to things like the Universal Dye Kit, then we should give thought to making the diffuse texture greyscale in any areas that will be tintable, and only colouring the non-tintable areas.

Last Modified: April 5, 2013

[modding-dao]

Tutorial - Retexturing A Mesh Part 1a - Extracting the Necessary Files

Pre-Reqs:

Download and install the DATool from BSN.

Some degree of familiarity with using image editing software such as PhotoShop or Gimp. Software must be capable of working with DDS files (see the Getting Started page for links to DDS utilities and plug-ins).

Embiggen: To view larger versions of the images below, see here.

In this multi-part tutorial we're going to look at extracting and retexturing a mesh, and then making it available for in-game use by the player. In order to recolour the mesh, we need to extract a number of files from the game; the mesh, its textures, and the material definition files that link the two. Thankfully there's a tool that does that easily for us, called "DATool".

When we run the tool, it will complain that it's not the most current version; sadly this is a lie, there is no more current version, so just ignore the error message.

This tool works as a mesh-viewing program. The first step is to tell it what kind of mesh we want to look at. We'll start off in the first available "Characters" category, as characters is where clothing and armour pieces are stored (also hair, beards, eyeballs, and eyelashes). So File -> Browse Models -> Characters -> Dwarf Female, as shown below:

A set of armour - or at least the torso of such a set - will appear on screen. To switch to the next mesh in the category, you need to press CTRL-→ while to scroll backwards to one you've already passed you use CTRL-←. Scroll forward past the armour and boots and so on until you reach the clothing, the first item of which is the "Commoner A" retexturing of the clothing mesh:

Now we want to extract that mesh and all its associated files to an easily relocatable location. Thankfully, DATool makes that simple; just click on File -> Save As. A folder-selection tool will pop up; create a named directory somewhere to save the files into. In my case, I'm going to put them in a named subdirectory of my "D:\Dragon Age" folder that I keep all my working files in.

Once the folder has been created and selected, I can click "OK", and the DATool will extract all of the files relevant to this mesh and place them in my new folder.

With very few exceptions, most meshes and textures are available in linked pairs for both sexes, so the next thing I need to do is to repeat all of these steps for the dwarf male version of the Commoner A mesh. Instead of creating a new folder, I'll tell the tool to "Save As" all the files into the same folder as the female version.

And then I go through all the steps again for the female and male elf, and female and male human versions of the mesh. Bonus points if you extract the Qunari male version as well!

Once all of this extracting is done, I can go to my file folder, and there are all the files I need in order to modify the textures of this mesh and have it be available for all races and both sexes.

But what is this mess of files? What are they all for?

PHY - this is the physics file for the mesh, which contains collision information for it (an approximation of the shape of the physical surface, reduced to geometric objects such as cylinders and spheres).

DDS - Direct Draw Surface texture files, a format from nVidia that is a way of optimizing textures for graphics/gaming application use. If our OS has the ability to view DDS files (a utility for which is linked to in the Getting Started page), we can see them in thumbnail view:

MAO - Material Object file, this is a small text file that esstentially tells the game "these DDS files are the ones to be used with this mesh to create this particular texture variation". Note that in this case there's only two of them; the "pf" and "pm" at the start of their file names means that one if the definition for all female versions of this mesh, and one is the definition for all male versions of the mesh. Or to put it another way, the dwarf female, elf female, and human female versions of the mesh all use the same material object definition, and therefore the set of textures used is applied in the exact same way to all. And then all male version of the mesh do likewise with a second set of textures.

MMH - model mesh hierarchy - how the mesh hooks up to the invisible skeleton that drives animations of the mesh. If we were going to modify the mesh itself, and not just the texture on it, this would be important.

MSH - mesh file - the shape of the actual mesh, ie where vertices are and the triangular polygons that link them all together to form a visible surface. If we were going to modify the mesh itself, and not just the texture on it, this would be important.

Last Modified: April 5, 2013

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Tutorial - Replacing A Player Character Head

Pre-Reqs:

Install Siramod's face replacer (link)

Have a basic understanding of how to load, edit, and export head morphs (link)

Embiggen: To view larger versions of the images below, see here.

Player character heads are not as easy to replace as NPC heads, as the warden's appearance is saved as part of the game save files, not as a separate MOR file.

Replacing an existing warden's head with a new one used to be a moderately tricky process that involved copying arcane information from one game save file to another manually. There are now third party tools available that do all the arcane bits for us. For this tutorial, we're going to look at using Siramod's Face Replacer from the Dragon Age Nexus to replace my warden's head.

Our dashing test subject for today is a random mercenary!Alistair Cousland I have floating around on my hard drive.

The first step is to create the replacement head morph I want to use as a replacement. In this case, I'm going to use a head I already have available in the toolset, a clean-up version of Oswyn, Bann Sighard's son.

All I really need to do in this case is load the head, right-click, and "Post to Local", to make the MOR version of it available for me to use in the face replacer tool.

Now, the tool does automatically backup the files when it modifies them, but I like to go into the game beforehand and make a specific named backup save anyway. That way I can very easily revert to it if I'm unhappy with the end results.

After I make the named save, I do a quicksave. It's the quicksave I'll be using the tool to modify. This way my named save is not touched, and reverting to the original head just requires reloading the named save instead of the quicksave.

So I load up the tool:

Then I click on the first "Browse" button. The tool navigates automatically to my characters folder, so all I have to do is click on the right character name, then the quicksave folder, and then select the quicksave file:

After that I click on the second "Browse" button, navigate to my packages/core/override/toolsetexport directory, tell the tool I want to see the *.mor files, and select the one I want to use as a head replacement:

With both files selected, all that remains is to click on the "Import" button at the bottom. The tool automatically takes the head in the second item and swaps it into the save game in the first.

I then exit the face replacer, and reload my quick save. My player character has changed to his new appearance:

Tip: If you've played for a while and then decide you want to revert to the original head, you don't have to revert to the named save and replay; just use the tool with your current place in the game as the save game to be modified, and the named save (or any earlier save) as the source for the replacement head.

Tip: If you like the idea of being able to have your character change their appearance over the course of the game, then the best way to accomplish this is to start by creating your character's head morph in the toolset (which has tons of extra editing options), then export it to the game as a preset (link) which you then use to create your new character. As you play, you can use the toolset to edit your character's MRH file in order to evolve their appearance, and replace the in-game head morph whenever desired.

Note: There is unfortunately no way to go backwards from an in-game MOR file to an in-toolset MRH file. If you want to use the toolset to edit a MRH for a character that you originally created using the in-game character creator, you're going to have to start off by attempting to duplicating their appearance in the toolset.

Last Modified: April 3, 2013

[modding-dao]

Tutorial - Turning A Head Into A Preset

Pre-Reqs:

Install the head morphs from the Core and Single Player Game Resource Files (link)

Have a basic understanding of how to load, edit, and export a head morph (link)

Embiggen: To view larger versions of the images below, see here.

Character presets are head morphs that will show up on the "Preset" slider bar in the character creator. There are several reasons why you might want to make one; the two most common are that you might want to play through as if one of the canon NPCs had become the warden, or you might want to create a custom warden in the toolset (where you have much greater control over appearance) and then get it into the game.

In this case we're going to take an existing head morph and turn it into a playable character preset. Let's go with Shianni, the city elf. The first step is to locate her among the head morphs files. The earliest place she can be found in the game is the City Elf origin, so that's the logical place to check first. And there she is:

We need to load her file, then do a File -> Save As, close the tab, and reload it from the new location before we're able to edit it. Once that's done, go to the "Export Settings" tab in the Object Inspector.

There's just a single setting there, with a true/false setting. By default it is false, and the toolset will export heads to MOR format, which is the in-game head morph format. We want to change this setting to true instead, which tells it to export to MOP, the format for character preset heads. Once it is true, then right-click on the head and "Post to Local".

The final step is done outside of the toolset. We need to navigate to the directory the head morph was exported to - packages/core/override/toolsetexport - and find the MOP file with Shianni in the filename:

And then we need to rename it to match the file naming convention for character presets, which is as follows:

a single letter prefix to indicate the race of the preset - d, e or h for dwarf, elf or human

a single letter prefix to indicate the sex of the preset - f or m

the character pre-set code "_cps_p"

a two-digit suffix which indicates which character preset slot the preset is to appear in, from 01 to 08

So for Shianni's file, we want to change the name to ef_cps_p0? were ? is a number from 1 to 8. I've already got a few presets in use in my toolset, so I'll set her to one I haven't used yet, and make her the sixth preset:

And finally, I go in-game, start a new campaign, and go to any of the places where I can make an elven female (the game will not care if I make Shianni a Dalish or mage elf instead of a city one). Drag the preset slider over, and there she is:

Last Modifed: April 3, 2013

[modding-dao]

Tutorial - Editing An Existing Head Morph

Pre-Reqs: Install the head morphs from the Core and Single Player Game Resource Files (link) Embiggen: To view larger versions of the images below, see here.

One of the easiest modifications to make to the game is to edit an existing head morph.

We will begin by loading one of the existing head morph files downloaded and installed earlier. Click on File -> Open and then navigate to where you unzipped the head morphs earlier. You'll see a bunch of subdirectories, as follows:

Most heads are organized into folders based on what section of the game we first encounter that character in, and/or which major quest line that they're a part of. Usually this is fairly intuitive, but there are a handful of characters who were originally created for one area and then ended up elsewhere, or who show up in multiple parts of the game and may require a little hunting to find.

We'll start with an easy to locate head. All of our followers are in the Global subdirectory. Let's edit Alistair!

When we first open his file, you'll note that there's a red bar underneath his tab in the preview window, letting us know we can't currently edit him. See how all the entries in the Object Inspector are also greyed out and uneditable. All of the head morph files have been set to Read Only by default so that we don't accidentally overwrite them; so we'll always have the unmodified head MRH files available.

What we need to do is do a File -> Save As and save this head elsewhere. Put it somewhere you can easily relocate it, and don't change the filename. For example, any time I work on a head morph I save it in a named subdirectory of my D:\Dragon Age\Faces directory.

Once you've saved it, the bar will turn green but the Object Inspector entries will still be greyed out; we still can't edit him. Right-click on the tab, close it, then File -> Open and open the file from its new location. The editor will now have a green bar and the Object Inspector entries will be active. We're now ready to begin editing his appearance.

Let's go to the "Part Selection" tab in the Object Inspector, where we can make a couple of very minor changes. This is where we can change things like eye colour, hair colour, facial hair colour, hair style, etc.

Click on the like marked "Hair". You'll see that a square with three dots on it appears at the end of the line:

This indicates that we can bring up a menu of choices. Click on the three dots; the game will pop open a file dialog that lists all available hairs. The file names are pretty arcane; we can either try randomly to find one we like, or look at the Morph page of the toolset wiki to see previews of each (link).

I've now selected a different hair for Alistair:

Let's also give him some extra stubble. Drag down the slider at the right side of the Object Inspector until the goatee/soul patch/moustache/pork chops options appear. He already has values in the first two, let's also give him some of the others. We can either drag the slider bar back and forth to set values, or click where the numbers are and type in values manually. The higher the value, the more opaque (darker) the stubble will be.

Click on File -> Save. We're now ready to export our modified Alistair to the game. To do so, right-click within the preview window and select "Post to Local".

The editor will automatically put the head in our packages/core/override/toolsetexport directory, with the right filename to replace the default Alistair head (hm_genfl_alistair.mor). The Log Window will report back to us about this to let us know where it put it, and that the export was successful.

And then the last thing left to do is to load the game and admire modified Alistair in all his glory!

Note: To get rid of the modified Alistair, go to your packages/core/override/toolsetexport directory and delete the hm_genfl_alistair.mor file

Tip: When modifying a head, you can have both the game and the toolset open. Every time you reload the game, it will reload the heads as well, so for fast testing iterations you can put yourself by the character you're modifying, do a quick save, and then do a reload after each time that you post the edited head to local. Especially useful when trying out custom hairs, which tend to show up in the editor as a blue polygonal mess instead of being properly textured.

Last Modified: April 2, 2013

[modding-dao]

Welcome to the toolset! Assuming you managed to get it installed and running correctly, you should be looking at a screen similar to the above.

I'm not going to attempt to give an in-depth explanation of what you're looking at, as there's already a quite thorough overview on the Toolset Wiki.

But in precis, we've got a preview window (the large grey area) where we can have multiple tabs of resources open. We also have a log window at the bottom left which will sometimes show us information we need to see, usually when we're either doing some sort of processing on a resource or are posting it into the game for use.

To the right is the "Palette" window which is an organized view of the thousands upon thousands of resources needed to construct the game. You'll note that the resources are presented in a foldered view, with the folders named after different major chunks of the game. This usually makes it easier to locate specific items; you just have to be able to remember what area/quest line they were part of. There are, of course, exceptions, but thankfully that text box in the palette window allows us to put in some text that will be used to filter the results. So if we're not sure where something might be found, we can try sticking in bits of its name to try and narrow it down.

Underneath the palette window is the Object Inspector, where detailed information about the item we currently have selected in either the palette or our preview tabs will be displayed. This information will be greyed out, as shown above, when we're in a mode where we can't edit what is shown. Individual lines of it can also be greyed out if that line of information cannot be edited from this particular view.

And now that we have some basic idea of what we're looking at, it's time to move on to attempting to make a very simple modification to the game.

Last Modified: April 2, 2013

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These are very useful things for modders to have on hand. They're the uncompiled versions of a number of game resources used to create the original single player game, such as head morphs and level layouts. Their use is entirely optional, however, so feel free to skip downloading these.

The list looks rather intimidating, so we'll start by getting organized. You'll want to create an easily re-locatable place to store these files. It should not be within the directory structure of the game and/or toolset itself, unless otherwise specified. In my case, I created a D:\Dragon Age directory to store all these sorts of miscellaneous files in.

Now, on to which files of these core resources you'll want to download!

If you plan to do things such as edit your companion's heads, or make a playable character who is the twin of one of the game characters, then you'll want to be sure to grab the Core and single player head morphs.zip file.

If you plan to create custom level layouts, and would like to have access to the base game's level layouts to use as bases (or to grab bits and pieces of already-arranged decor from) then all the *layouts.rar files are ones you'll want to have as well.

There are also files available for working with making your own sound effects, visual effects, and animations; these are entirely optional and are not within the scope of the modding tutorials I plan to include here.

Once you have downloaded and extracted the files you are ready to proceed!

Last Modified: April 2, 2013

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Vocabulary

A list of common terms used in modding Dragon Age, and what they mean. Where possible I have provided links to the main Wiki page about each, where much more thorough explanations are given.

I will also be adding links to tutorials I have written about them as such tutorials get posted.

Area List - A list of separate areas that should be loaded by the game engine as if it was one area. For example, if you made a building with three separate areas (a basement, a ground floor, and a top floor) you can tell the game to load all three together. Optimizes area-to-area transitions of the areas within the list.

Character - An in-toolset resource for organizing information related to specific characters, meant to help with tasks like localization for voice overs and art department design.

Conversation - A file in which the lines spoken by player characters, companions, and NPCs are mapped out. The audio files, facial effects files (lip syncing), camera angles, and many other resources come together here.

Creature - An animal or person, including both visual appearance (race, sex, clothing, weapons) and a considerable variety of AI-related information.

Cutscene - An in-game cinematic segment, rendered on-the-fly.

Diffuse Texture - A texture that gives the surface of a mesh its colour and pattern.

Head Morph - A character's head and face, including information such as skintone, eye colour, hair colour, hair style, facial shape, and more. There are three versions of these; the in-toolset uncompiled definition (mrh) which can be modified in-toolset, the compiled version to use in-game (mor) which cannot be modified easily, and a third version set up to be use as a character pre-set in the character creator (mop) which can be further modified in the character creator.

Items - Clothing, armour, weapons, potions, spells, basically anything the player or other creatures might carry in inventory or use as abilities.

Level - a collection of meshes for terrain, water, walls, floors, ceiling, and non-interactive decorative objects that creates a place setting (either indoors or outdoors). These must be be compiled before they are usable to create Areas from.

Maps - Any 2D representation of the larger game world, such as the Map of Denerim or the World Map.

Merchant - A specialized invisible object in which a merchant's inventory and information related to the store's buy/sell policy is organized.

Models - textured meshes. These includes level building items (floors, walls, decor) and creature parts (bodies, clothing, armour, weapons).

Module - a set of related game resources. This might be a single new item to add to the game, or the equivalent of an entire DLC.

Normal Texture - a texture that adds the appearance of curving or roughness to a flat polygon by the use of fool-the-eye lighting.

Placeables - Items with which the player can interact, such as clickable doors, chests, books, cocoons, and so forth. These may perform actions (open a door, transition the player to a new area), be informational (display text or add a codex/journal entry), or be containers from which the player can obtain items.

Plots - A collection of true/false flags related to specific events, quests, stories, etc.

Script - Code that tells the game how to handle events. Written in a language similar to C. Most common game functions have pre-existing generic scripts that can be used to drive events such as transitioning from one area to another or making creatures wander between a set of waypoints, but for more complex events you must be able to write custom scripts. Script writing is largely outside the scope of this blog. (Blood magic!)

Sounds - Non-speech sounds, such as music or ambient looping sounds (water flowing, wind, birds), etc. that can be heard either as a result of a trigger, during a cutscene, or while travelling around in the world.

Specular Texture - a texture that controls the glossiness of the surface of a mesh, including what colour the shiny parts will seem to be reflecting.

Stages - a collection of predefined places (positions) and cameras than can be used in cutscenes and conversations.

Tint Map Texture - a texture where each colour channel is used to record what parts of the texture a tint will apply to. It encodes three possible tints (RGB channels) plus where the skintone tint is applied (alpha channel).

Trigger - a marker placed in an Area that executes a script when the player enters it. These are used to cause events such a cutscene playing when a player enters an area, forcing the player into conversation with someone when they move close to them, or spawning a group of enemies for the player to fight. Most common events have pre-existing scripts that can be used.

UV Unwrap - a visual representation of how the 3D triangular polygons of a mesh map to 2D texture space.

Waypoint - a marked location within an area. Used to set up things such as where the player spawns within the area, or a patrol route for NPCs to follow.

Last Modifed: April 7, 2013

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Getting Started

Before you can begin to modify Dragon Age, you need two things: a working installation of Dragon Age: Origins, and a working installation of the DA:O toolset.

Dragon Age Toolset

Installing the toolset can be difficult. I cannot, unfortunately, provide any great deal of help with it, as the problems that can occur in getting it installed vary widely from machine to machine and operating system to operating system. There are also different problems that can crop up depending on whether or not you have it installed through Steam or via some other method. All I can really say is, Google is your friend.

However, that aside, the following links may help with some common problems:

Download the toolset from here (BSN)

Instructions on installing the toolset (Toolset Wiki)

Installation troubleshooting (Toolset Wiki)

DDS Texture Utilities

Legacy Texture Tools (nVidia) - depending on the age of your OS, and whether or not you plan to do any work with textures (DDS file format, specifically) you may require some of the tools from nVidia's Developer Zone.

Texture Tools for PhotoShop (nVidia) - if you plan to use Photoshop to work with texture files (DDS file format) you should make sure you have the most recent version of the nVidia plugin for decoding and encoding the DDS format.

Other Utilities, Tools and Plug-Ins

Once you have the toolset downloaded and installed, there are some additional files and utilities that will be of use in modifying the game. Most of these are optional, but highly useful.

Single Player and Core Resource Files (BSN) - this is a collection of uncompiled game resources, including character head morphs and level layouts for all areas in the original single player campaign of Origins. Sadly no similar collection of files has ever been released for the Origins DLC.

DA Tool (BSN) - a program for viewing game models and for making retextures of same. Useful if you want to get into retexturing game meshes, or for looking up the toolset file names when doing things such as level building.

DA:O Model and Animation Import/Export (BSN) - an import/export tool to use in working with Dragon Age models in 3DS Max or GMax. Only advanced users who are already familiar with 3DS Max/GMax will require this.

Siramod's Face Replacer (DA Nexus) - allows you to replace the head of your player character with a new one.

GFF Editor (BSN) - A tool for doing minor editing and extracting of game resource files. Especially useful if you want to peer inside and extract things from the files for DLC content.

Last Modified: April 5, 2013