I have been asked a few times on the Dragon Age forums how to make the main character use the Qunari type that Sten has.
I chose to do it once the toolset came out because I thought it would look cool for my tank character.
The only prerequisites for this to work is that you have the toolset installed and that you can export to your local override correctly.
I will not cover that part of it in this tutorial. Here are the basic steps I used from that point:
Create a character. The only appearance choices that you are not going to overwrite later is the portrait and soundset. You will eventually use the portrait options such as pose and background color later, as well as the soundset choice. Note: I chose human, but I think any other race will work, but the cutscene animations will look sort of wonky.
The next step is to get to a point in the game where you can save, you will need the save file to be able to edit your character.
Usually this is after some initial dialogue. Tip: It helps if you make a regular save instead of a quick save, it will be easier to find later. I called mine “Initial”Exit Dragon Age and open up the toolset. Using the menu, select File->New->Morph.
- Select QM_UHM_BASa_0 in the drop-down menu for that is listed with [Choose_base]
- Here’s where you can use some creativity! Design your character however you want, I have mine pictured here.
Tip: You will have to choose an eye texture, AFAIK the regular eye colors do not work with Qunari eye models.
- Once you’re reasonably satisfied with the way your morph looks, save it with a name you know, like “myhead” or whatever.
Then, right-click on your morph’s preview pane and choose “Post to Local”. Your log window should start showing some lines, and the top one after it finishes should read “Export Summary, 1 Requested, 1 Success, 0 Skipped, 0 Failed. Please see below for more details…” This signals that it succeeded. If you get a failure, then something has gone wrong and you’ll need to try and find support on the forums.
- Verify that your file ended up in your local override, it should be in a directory named something like “C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age\packages\core\override\toolsetexport”. If you are using XP, you probably have “C:\Documents and Settings” instead of “C:\Users” but otherwise it should be similar. Check this directory, there should be a file named “qm_xxx.mor” where the xxx is the name of the morph you saved in step 6.
Now for some save game editing. While your mileage may vary, check your directory in step 7, my save games were in “C:\Users\MY_USER_NAME\Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age\Characters\MY_CHAR_NAME\Saves\Slot_1” Double check to be sure, there should be a .jpg file in that directory which should correspond to how your character looked when you saved your game in step 2. Make sure that the .das file in that directory corresponds to the name you chose when you saved, which in my case was “Initial”. Open that file with the toolset.
This is the tricky part. Using the editor, go through the file until you find an element named “SAVEGAME_PLAYERCHAR_CHAR”. Expand that, and go down and find an element named “SAVEGAME_APPEARANCE”. Expand that element. This is where we will be doing our changes. First, find the field named “SAVEGAME_APPEARANCE_MORPH_NAME”. This string value needs to correspond with the name of the .mor file you found in step 7. You can just paste it in when you have the field ready to edit. Tip: It doesn’t seem like you need the .mor extension in the field, so I recommend NOT using it, and if that doesn’t work, try again with the extension. After that, you need to change two other field, they are named “SAVEGAME_APPEARANCE_TYPE” and “SAVEGAME_APPEARANCE_ORIGINAL_TYPE”. Change both of these to 13. They should be 15 if you were starting with a human, and obviously would vary otherwise. Once you have made all these changes, save the file (toolset will make a backup automagically).
- Last but not least, close the toolset, and then start up Dragon Age proper. Go and load the game and voila, your character should now be using the Qunari model instead of the puny looking human one.
I hope that this tutorial will be useful for someone, hopefully I will have time to find some other interesting things to do with the toolset soon, but lately I have been really busy and with the holidays around the corner it isn’t looking good :(