Changing chrome trim on a vehicle?

tyquez74

I want to change the chrome trim on the Coil Raiden to black to resemble the Model S Plaid. As I have absolutely no experience in GTA modding, I have no idea where to start. Could someone explain to me where to start and how to achieve what I want? Thanks!

ItsJustCurtis

You would need to edit the model to change the material. In order to do so you need the latest version of Zmodeler3. With that, you can import the .yft of the vehicle and its relevant textures, modify the chrome bits to refer to a different material and export the new model.

a63nt-5m1th

@tyquez74
It can be done using CodeWalker & a texture editing program (Photoshop etc) as well (most vehicle shader/texture issues can be edited that way)

Try the '.yft' & '.ytd' files in this '.zip'. Make a backup first & then replace the originals (in your 'mods' folder, don't replace the vanilla game folder versions) using OpenIV.

raiden 'mods' folder location:
...\Grand Theft Auto V\mods\update\x64\dlcpacks\mpchristmas2017\dlc.rpf\x64\levels\gta5\vehicles\mpchristmas2017.rpf\ files go here

Note:
If you don't have a 'mods' folder set up already, you want to look into doing that first.

It looks like this in my game:

Raiden 01

Raiden 02

Probably information overkill, but if you want to know, I basically did this:

I exported the '.yft's to XML using CodeWalker (always get it from <that discord link, the v.29 on here (gta5-mods) is way out of date & missing features).
Opened the '.yft.xml' files with a text editor & used the 'DiffuseSampler' lines to give me a shortlist of textures to check (16 total).
I then found those textures, either in the 'raiden.ytd' or in 'vehshare.ytd', & placed them all in the 'raiden.ytd', so that they would be loaded by the game over the duplicate ones in 'vehshare.ytd' (handy trick to know if you want a texture to be unique to a certain vehicle . The textures in 'vehshare.ytd' usually affect all vehicles etc)
I then replaced them one by one with textures of a pure colour (neon pink/green etc), saved the '.ytd' & opened the '.yft' files with OpenIV's Model Viewer (double-click '.yft' file in OpenIV), until I found the one that controls the trim:

Diffuse (ie the visual colour texture) = 'vehicle_generic_detail2'
Specular (ie the reflection shinyness texture) = 'vehicle_generic_detail_spec'

I then used another texture with lots of different coloured squares on it to find the locations within the 'vehicle_generic_detail2/vehicle_generic_detail_spec' texture/s that were being used for the trim parts.
I edited the 'vehicle_generic_detail_spec' texture in that location within it to reduce the shinyness (grey block, top leftish, see below) & also reduced the 'reflectivePower' value for the texture as a whole in the '.yft.xml' files:

    <Item>
     <Name>vehicle_mesh</Name>
     <FileName>vehicle_mesh.sps</FileName>
     <RenderBucket value="0" />
     <Parameters>
      <Item name="DiffuseSampler" type="Texture">
       <Name>vehicle_generic_detail2</Name> <!-- diffuse texture name -->
      </Item>
      <Item name="DamageSampler" type="Texture" />
      <Item name="DirtSampler" type="Texture">
       <Name>vehicle_genericmud_car</Name> <!-- dirt texture name -->
      </Item>
      <Item name="BumpSampler" type="Texture">
       <Name>vehicle_generic_detail2_normal</Name> <!-- bump/normal texture name -->
      </Item>
      <Item name="SpecSampler" type="Texture">
       <Name>vehicle_generic_detail_spec</Name> <!-- specular/reflection shinyness texture name -->
      </Item>
      <Item name="envEffTexTileUV" type="Vector" x="8" y="0" z="0" w="0" />
      <Item name="envEffScale" type="Vector" x="1" y="0.001" z="0" w="0" />
      <Item name="envEffThickness" type="Vector" x="25" y="0" z="0" w="0" />
      <Item name="reflectivePower" type="Vector" x="0" y="0" z="0" w="0" /> <!-- I reduced the 'x' value here to zero to reduce whole texture shinyness -->
      <Item name="specular2Color_DirLerp" type="Vector" x="0" y="0.5" z="0" w="0" />
      <Item name="dirtColor" type="Vector" x="0.231372" y="0.223529" z="0.203921" w="0" />
      <Item name="dirtLevelMod" type="Vector" x="1" y="1" z="1" w="1" />
      <Item name="matDiffuseColor" type="Vector" x="2" y="5" z="5" w="0" />
      <Item name="DamagedWheelOffsets" type="Array">
       <Value x="0" y="0" z="0" w="0" />
       <Value x="0" y="0" z="0" w="0" />
      </Item>
      <Item name="DamageTextureOffset" type="Vector" x="0" y="0" z="0" w="0" />
      <Item name="DamageMultiplier" type="Vector" x="0" y="0" z="0" w="0" />
      <Item name="BoundRadius" type="Vector" x="0" y="0" z="0" w="0" />
     </Parameters>
    </Item>

If you want to edit the shinyness of the trim you can either, export the '.yft's to XML using CodeWalker's RPF Explorer & increase the 'reflectivePower' 'x' value, or easier, just edit the grey area in the top leftish of the 'vehicle_generic_detail_spec' texture (darker = less shiny, lighter = more shiny) highlighted in red box below (same location in 'vehicle_generic_detail2' if you want to edit the colour, but you'll have to move 'vehicle_generic_detail2' from 'vehshare.ytd' & import it into the 'raiden.ytd' first as I didn't move/include that texture in the uploaded 'raiden.ytd' as it wasn't needed):

spec

It's a bit convoluted & it does take a while sometimes, depending on how the texture you want to edit is set up, but do-able if you don't have access to/unwilling to pay for ZModeler3 & want to do it for free etc.

Edit:

Just so you know, if you use ENB & happen to want to darken the chrome on every vehicle in the game all at the same time, you can do that by lowering these values in the '[VEHICLE]' section of 'enbseries.ini':

ChromeSpecularAmount=1.0
ChromeReflectionAmount=1.0