Tell me where I am messing up please...

I am new to patching, so far just doing faces. I am working on the University of Kentucky for my game and have about 5 faces completed so far. I am following a tutorial from this site and it has been very helpful. Although I am having one problem I can't figure out. Here is an example..

I used Luol Dengs fsh to create a cyberface for Kevin Galloway and it came out pretty well and looks pretty good in the game also. My problem though is after I add the face the body of the player in the game seems to lighten up and my face is darker than the body. Deng has a pretty dark skin color but like I said after adding the face the body seems to lighten.

Anyone have any idea where I am going wrong? Only thing I am changing in Appearance is the face id to -1. Thanks for any help in advance.

Perhaps it's an issue with the lighting? You need to add an alpha to any face file for NBA Live 07 and NBA Live 08, else they'll appear too shiny in the game when lighting is enabled.

Thanks for the reply Andrew. I have searched the site and found some information about the alpha layer but the stuff I have found hasn't helped a lot. Could you direct me to anything on here that could help a little more. I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 and the options are a lot different in it that the tutorial I found dealing with alphas. Thanks in advance!

Does Kevin Galloway have the same skintone as Luol Deng in the appearance.dbf file? If not, that is your problem.

yes, i believe if skintone doesn't match the face color.. dbf appearance change is necessary..

or if the exportation&importation of deng's bhed is wrong(no plug-ins), then even if you seemed to see the same complexion for deng and galloway.. the bhed which was not exported or imported properly will become darker..leaving a difference in face and body color

basically, it has something to do with the PHOTOSHOP unable to read .dds files clearly..

I don't know about that. Plenty of people have been releasing cyberface patches and I haven't heard of this problem before.

Why don't you show us some in-game pictures. Maybe a comparison of both Deng and Galloway. You can use F12 in NBA Live to take a screenshot in TGA format. It will end up in your My Documents\NBA Live 08\screenshots directory. Convert it to jpg in Photoshop, then upload it to a free image host and post the link in this thread. You can also use fraps to capture directly to JPG.

This is how Ryan explained the alphas to me for the purpose of converting faces from 06 for use with 07 (it also works for 08).

You'll need to use FSHLine for this.

Ok, it's pretty simple. All you have to do is get an 07 fsh (alpha files for bald players and players with hair are different for lighting purposes) and drag it onto the fshline.exe file. It will extract the fsh into a folder of the same name as the fsh. Inside there will be the bhed bitmap, an alpha file, and an index file. Now drag the 06 fsh onto the fshline.exe to extract that to a folder. Open up the 06 fsh folder that was created by fshline and copy the bitmap (256x256 named 0000) and past it into the 07 fsh folder created by fshline and overwrite that bitmap. Now open the 07 fsh folder and drag the index file onto the fshline.exe. Now rename the 07.fsh file to the playerpkg of you 06 fsh and drop it in the sgsm and that's it.

Also if you run into any errors with fshline when dragging the index file onto the fshline.exe make sure your fsh file and the folder created by fshline which contains the index, bitmap, and alpha are located in the same directory (I just use my desktop.)

Any questions just let me know.

Examples of the alpha files:

w/hair


bald

Thanks for the help guys. After reading some of the replies I've decided the tutorial I'm using isn't gonna work for 08 anyway. I was using the "Creating A Cyberface" tutorial from this site, but it doesn't mention fshline or alphas or the proper way to zip/unzip fsh files so I guess I'm trying to patch 08 with a tutorial that doesn't completely work for 08. Is there a tutorial out there anywhere for the 2008 game?

you can try GazuN's tutorial video.. search for it in the NBA Live 08 Patch Releases and Previews section..

Thanks for the help guys. After reading some of the replies I've decided the tutorial I'm using isn't gonna work for 08 anyway. I was using the "Creating A Cyberface" tutorial from this site, but it doesn't mention fshline or alphas or the proper way to zip/unzip fsh files so I guess I'm trying to patch 08 with a tutorial that doesn't completely work for 08. Is there a tutorial out there anywhere for the 2008 game?

I believe you should be able to follow that tutorial up until the end, then follow Ryan's instructions (from my previous post) to add the alpha files as necessary.

Okay, that's cool, Thanks Andrew!