Importing custom models into New Leaf

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3a. Exporting the base villager & textures

Time to use CGFX converter! You can find the download in the prereqs, download the .ZIP file and unzip it somewhere (preferably where you keep your modding tools?)

Find your base villager’s .bcres file in extractedromfs->NPC->Normal->Model – for context, Pashmina is goa08.bcres. You can find villager IDs on Nookipedia. Copy this into the folder you unzipped CGFX converter to.

We want to open a command prompt now! I know they’re scary but it’s not that hard, promise.

If you’re less tech savvy, or lazy like me, you’ll probably want to copy the file path to the folder where CGFX converter is located as text (right click top folder nav->copy as text).

Open the command prompt however you wish – easiest for me on Windows 10 is by typing ‘cmd’ in search.

Navigate to the folder you placed CGFX converted in;

cd [either manually type the file path or ctrl+v the path you copied earlier]

Now, we want to convert the .bcres to something we can open;

CGFXConverter export goa08.bcres edited-goa08.ms3d

In your case, replace goa08 with whatever your file is. The second filename doesn’t have to have the edited- prefix, but it MUST be distinct from the original somehow.

Your folder should look something like this now!

If you did your textures earlier by exporting them through Ohana, you can skip the next few steps.

If you didn’t make sure you have textures for the body, all the eye states, and all the mouth states if your base has them.

The states usage is as follows;

Body is just b0.png

Eyes:

• Default (e.0.png)
• Half blink (e.1.png)
• Closed (e.2.png)
• Angry (e.3.png)
• Sad (e.4.png)
• Happy Closed (e.5.png)
• Surprised (e.6.png)
• >_< expression (e.7.png)

Mouth:

• Default (m.0.png)
• Halfway open (m.1.png)
• Fully open (m.2.png)
• Frown (m.3.png)
• Halfway open frown (m.4.png)
• Fully open frown (m.5.png)

You’re not required to match these prompts (i.e. if you want a villager who looks happy all the time?), but those are the situations the plates will generally be used in in-game.

Once you’re done, save all the textures with their corresponding names, and copy them into the CGFX converter folder, replacing the old ones.

4a. Milkshape (beloathed)

I’m forcing myself to not be profane here. I do not like milkshape. BUT it’s the only program that makes this method work, so we gotta suffer through it anyways.

Open milkshape and open the .ms3d that was exported earlier. By default, your viewport interface should look something like this;

You can find the controls to the right side by default.

Let’s merge in our new model!

Go to file->merge and open all the parts you exported from Blender.

As you can see, it shows up in the wireframe tabs, but not in the 3d preview tab. This is because the Chantal’s model’s material is blank.

Also take note that she appears to be rotated the wrong direction – in the upper left window, you can see she’s facing to the side.

Nothing we can’t fix!

Go to the groups tab, and you should see the base model’s groups, as well as your model’s imported groups.

Double-click each of your model’s groups to select them.

Go back to the tools tab, and select rotate. There, you can either use your mouse in one of the wireframe windows to rotate it, or enter an exact coordinate to be more precise.

Since Chantal is facing to the right, I can just make her rotate 90 degrees on the y axis.

There we go!

Next, we want to remove the base model’s groups and replace them with our own.

Press ctrl+shift+a to deselect everything, then go back to the groups tab – make sure to remember what groups are which! But generally…

Mat: b0 is the body

Mat: e.0 is the eyes

Mat: m.0 is the mouth (if your base has it)

No materials is the shirt

We’ll start with the body. Delete it! Once it’s deleted, rename your mesh’s body group to whatever the original body group was named, and then use the up/down buttons to put it into the same location of the hierarchy that the old group was in.

Next, double click the group to select it, then go to the ‘Materials’ tab. Click the old group’s material (in the body’s case, b0) and click ‘assign’.

You’ll see your model should show up in the viewport now!

Repeat this for the rest of the model groups. Make sure to delete the original materials that were imported with your model too!

If done correctly, you should have replaced the model!

…But what about the shirt?

If your model doesn’t use a shirt, you can’t just delete it or the importer will probably throw an error. It’s wishy washy workaround time!

Select 1-2 triangles from the shirt – then double click to select the body, eyes, and mouth (if there) groups.

Then, go to edit->select invert or simply press ctrl+i. Now only the shirt (minus 1-2 polygons) should be selected.

Press the delete key to delete it! Double click to select the shirt group again, this time only being the 1-2 polygons. Use the scale and move tools to make it small and move it inside the model so it won’t be seen. Profit!

Of course, if your model uses the shirt, you can just skip all that.

Next…

🔥rigging🔥

Rigging in milkshape is such a pain in the ass, but the auto-weight function will cause extreme distortion/parts not showing up in-game. So we gotta suffer for this one.

Make sure your select tool is your active tool, then move to the joints tab.

This is all confusing and it sucks but I’ll do my best to explain.

The top half is completely irrelevant, unless you want to double check what is and isn’t weighted to what.

What we care about is what’s below the ‘vertex weights’ header.

Check ‘draw vertex weights, and move the first slider (the one that goes from green to red) to the red side – or just enter 100.

Where it says none, click the dropdown and select ‘root’. Make sure the weight amount didn’t reset, and change it back to 100/red if needed.

Then, select your entire model and click ‘assign’ at the bottom.

Select ‘base’ in the same dropdown you selected ‘root’ in, and repeat.

Now this is where it may or may not be tricky, depending on how complex your model’s geometry is. Select ‘chest’ on the dropdown, and press ctrl+shift+a to deselect everything. Then, using the tools you have, select the chest of the model – it’s ok if things that are not the chest are included, as long as their bones will be re-weighted later (i.e. they’re lower down on the dropdown).

Continue to do this as you go down the list of bones, selecting then assigning.

Some notes:

• Like most programs, you can press shift while selecting to extend your existing selection!
• For legs and arms, directions are inverted from what you see. From the front view, the limbs to the visual left side are the right limbs, and the limbs to the visual right side are the left limbs.
• The ‘feel’ bone can be ignored, and the mouth and tail bones can be ignored if they don’t apply to your model.
• The Foot1 bone is the upper leg, foot2 is the lower leg, foot3 is the actual foot.

Once your model is finished, save it as something different than the original edited-[id] file. I named mine chantal1.ms3d, with a number in case I come back to make changes.

5a. Importing to .bcres and final steps

Now that your modified .ms3d is done, copy it and paste it into the folder with CGFX converter.

Open the command prompt, and navigate to the folder with the converter once again.

cd [either manually type the file path or ctrl+v the path you copied earlier]

Then, import the model.

CGFXConverter import goa08.bcres chantal1.ms3d goa08-new.bcres

As with last time, change ‘goa08’ to your villager’s id, and ‘chantal1’ to what you saved your modified milkshape model as.

You must include the -new on the edited .bcres, this is a failsafe to avoid accidental overwriting.

Quickly, let’s open Ohana to check things out! This is optional but can give some insight to if something may have messed up.

She’s so crunchy!

Now, let’s import her into the game, using Luma’s layeredFS!

Insert your SD card into your computer, and go to the Luma folder. If it doesn’t already exist, make a titles folder, and a folder for your game (for NA Welcome Amiibo, this will be called 0004000000198E00).

Then if it doesn’t exist already, create the following filepath within the game folder;

Romfs -> Npc -> Normal -> Model

Place your modified .bcres file in the Model folder!

Take your SD card out of your computer, and put it back in your 3DS.

Time for the moment of truth! Boot up whichever version of ACNL you have.

A surefire way to tell if everything worked is if your custom villager is the title screen camera focus. If not, the easiest way to test is by going to the Amiibo Camera and calling them in.

Hooray! Chantal is in the game 😀 As you can kind of see, I need to adjust the rig on her left arm a bit, but she’s real, baby!

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3b. Exporting the base villager and opening in Blender

Open the base villager’s .bcres file in CTR studio, then expand the hierarchy until you see this, marked with a box icon.

Right-click it, and export it as a .dae. This will also export the original textures in the same filepath!

Next, open up Blender 3.3. Obliterate the cube, and then go to file -> import -> .dae. The only special import option you need to select is ‘fix leaf bones’.

The model is going to be very large when imported, so press numpad . to view the full model.

4b. Merging in your model

If your model is a .blend file from the same version, open up another window of blender and simply copy and paste!

If your model is a .blend file from an older version, go to file -> append -> object and append your model’s parts (you can hold ctrl to select multiple!)

If your model is a .dae or otherwise external format, you can import as normal.

I will not go over rigging in this tutorial, because unlike milkshape, tutorials for rigging are much more widespread for blender (in addition to rigging in blender being less simplified).
All you need to know is you need to appropriately rig your model to the armature that was imported with the base model’s .dae.

YOU MUST USE THE ‘LIMIT TOTAL’ FUNCTION TO LIMIT EACH VERT TO 1 BONE OR YOUR MODEL WILL TURN INTO SPAGHETTI!

Go to the base model’s properties, and open up the UV map tab.

Copy this name, and rename your model’s respective part’s uv map to match. While you’re at it, make sure you replace your model’s materials with the ones used by the base model (b0, m, e, cloth) for each respective part.

Once all these are replaced, you can start merging!

Select a part of the base model and go into edit mode. Select all the verts, then hit the x key to delete them.

Go back to object mode, select your mesh’s respective part, then ctrl+click the mesh you just deleted, and hit ctrl+j. They should be merged now!

If you’d like to remove the shirt completely, go to edit mode and delete all but 1 of the shirt’s faces – then hide the remaining face inside your model.

Export your merged model as a .dae, preferably under a new name.

5b. Importing to bcres

Back in CTR studio, right-click the model and choose to replace it.

Copy these settings on import exactly! You will get crashing/weirdness if you do not.

Next, import your textures – you can do this either in bulk or 1 at a time. There are no special settings needed for this.

If done correctly, your model should look something like this! Don’t mind the grid, that’s the specular map not loading because it’s an external file.

Save as a new .bcres, do not overwrite the original.

Now, let’s import her into the game, using Luma’s layeredFS!

Insert your SD card into your computer, and go to the Luma folder. If it doesn’t already exist, make a titles folder, and a folder for your game (for NA Welcome Amiibo, this will be called 0004000000198E00).

Then if it doesn’t exist already, create the following filepath within the game folder;

Romfs -> Npc -> Normal -> Model

Place your modified .bcres file in the Model folder!

Take your SD card out of your computer, and put it back in your 3DS.

Time for the moment of truth! Boot up whichever version of ACNL you have.

A surefire way to tell if everything worked is if your custom villager is the title screen camera focus. If not, the easiest way to test is by going to the Amiibo Camera and calling them in.

Success! I have to reproportion her a bit later, but she’s ready to scam the town!