Night Time Bloodgulch (PMI)

[Jay]

TUTORIAL MADE BY: JAY

We're going to take the sky from the 3rd level and then edit the lightmaps to give bloodgulch a night time effect.

1. We have to PMI the sky so create a folder on your desktop and name it PMI.

2. Inside this folder create 4 more called: Batch Extract, Build, New Items, VIB.

3. Now copy an un-modded copy of bloodgulch into the Build folder you just made.

4. Open up the map you just copied into the Build folder with HMT v3.5 and then go to Tools > Batch Extract. Check off the box titled Extract Metadata and then click the browse button and go to your Batch Extract folder inside the PMI folder. Once the Batch Extract folder is selected click OK and then click the button called Start Batch Extraction, select Yes when it asks if you want to extract the BSP.

5. Once that's go to Tools > Extract > BSP/Model Sections and navigate to your VIB folder inside the PMI folder. Make shure the VIB folder is selected and click OK.

6. We can now go and get the sky from Truth & Reconciliation so close out of bloodgulch and open up the map called a50.map.

7. In the Resource Browser scroll down until you see the [sky] tag. Open it up and then click on "sky\sky_a50\skynight1\skynight1" and then go to the Tag Information section and check off the box called Recursive. With that box checked of click the Save Meta button and go to your New Items folder inside the PMI folder. With the New Items folder selected click OK.

8. Now we need to get an offset list so go to Tools > Generate Raw Model Offset List (CSV File). Save this to your PMI folder.

9. Now go to Tools > Extract > Raw Model. Load the CSV file you just saved and then right near the top is "sky\sky_a50\skynight1\skynight1", select this and click the Extract button. Now navigate to your PMI folder and into the New Items folder. From here you have to go into the sky folder and then into the sky_a50 folder. In here is a folder called skynight1, select it and click OK.

10. The next step requires us to rebuild the model we just extracted so go to Tools > Model DeCrapper/BSP Builder. Right click anywhere in the box at the top of the window that pops up and click Add. Navigate into your PMI folder and then into the New Items folder. From here follow the same path as you did when saving the Model (PMI\New Items\sky\sky_a50\skynight1). Open up the skynight1 folder and inside will be a file called "skynight1.mod2.meta" Select this and click Open.

11a. Now we need get the existing vertex, index, and BSP.

11b. Lets start off with the Vertex. Click the Browse button for the Vertex Area and go to your VIB folder inside the PMI folder. Here will be a file called bloodgulch.vertices, select it and click Open.

11c. Click the Browse button for the Index Area and you will already be inside the VIB folder. Select the file called bloodgulch.indices and click Open.

11d. Click the Browse button for the BSP Block and you will already be inside the VIB folder. Select the file called bloodgulch.sbsp and click Open.

12. We can now click the button at the bottom called De-Crap These Models and Build a New BSP Chunk While We're At It.

13. Close out of HMT and manually go into your PMI folder and then into the VIB folder. Here is a file called bloodgulch.sbsp.meta. Copy this and paste it into the following place: PMI\Batch Extract\levels\test\bloodgulch select Yes when it asks you to overwrite the existing one.

14. We now have to copy all of the folders from the Batch Extract folder into the Build folder so go into your Batch Extract folder press CTRL+A to select all of the folders and press CTRL+C to copy them and then go into the Build folder and press CTRL+V to paste them all there.

15. Now go into the New Items folder and select all the folders there and make a copy of them just like we did last step. Then go into the Build folder and paste them there, select Yes to All when it asks you to overwrite the existing files.

16. Open HMT v3.5 back up and go to Tools > Rebuild Map. For the Original Map click the Browse button and go to your Build folder inside the PMI folder. Select the bloodgulch.map that should be in there and click Open (if there isn't a bloodgulch.map in there you MUST put one into the build folder before continuing). Click Yes when it asks you to auto-fill the required files.

17. Now click the add button in the bottom left corner and you will already be inside the Build folder. From here go into the sky folder and into the sky_a50 folder. Now go into the skynight1 folder and select the 2 files there and click Open.

18. You can now click the Build button.

19a. When it asks if any new vertices have been added, select Yes and go to the VIB folder. In here select the file called bloodgulch.vertices.new and click Open.

19b. Another box will come up asking if any new indices have been added, select Yes and you will already be inside the VIB folder so select the file called bloodgulch.indices.new and click Open.

20. The last box that comes up asks if you want to use a modified offset. Click Yes. The map will finish rebuilding, once it's done go to your Build folder and there will be a new file called bloodgulch.map.rebuild.map. Paste this into your Halo Maps directory and delete the old bloodgulch.map that's already there. Then you can rename bloodgulch.map.rebuild.map to bloodgulch.map.

21. Open the new map up in HMT v3.5 and scroll down to the [sky] tag and swap the meta of "levels\test\bloodgulch\bloodgulch" with "sky\sky_a50\skynight1\skynight1" and click Save and close out of the map file. Go and run the map in Halo to make shure everything is working fine.

22. Hopefully everything went fine for you anyways now we need to edit the lightmap which requires photoshop and the dds plugin. You can find these in our Modding Tools section of you need them.

23. Anyways open the map up in HMT v3.5 and click open up the [bitm] tag (Bitmaps). Scroll down until you reach one called levels\test\bloodgulch\bloodgulch. Select this and in the Tag Editor section there will be 15 separate files.

24. Extract all of them to your desktop or wherever you like by click on each one and then click the Save Texture button.

25. Open all of them up in Photoshop. Now individually edit each one and make it darker by going to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast... Change the brightness for each of the files to -100 and then press CTRL+S to save the file. Be sure to select 16 Bit in the dds plugin before saving them. Once you've got all 15 files properly saved Inject them back into the map with HMT by click the Inject Texture button for each corresponding file.

Here's the outcome of all our hard work :

[skull14]

I got an error when i clicked build on step 18

[skull14]

right here is a pic of the error on step 18

[cat809]

Thank you so much! I now know how to Pmi!