Troubleshooting - Havens-Night/REEngine-Modding-Documentation GitHub Wiki

This page will include some common issues/mistakes that might give you some trouble while working on a mod.

I exported custom assets to the game, but I don't see any changes, everything looks vanilla. What am I doing wrong?

Make sure the folder paths of your mod look correct, and make sure the file you're editing truly is the asset the game is using. Games often contain duplicate leftover assets (especially UI textures), so you might have to do some more digging to find what you really need.

I exported a custom model to the game, but all I see is a bunch of orange and white squares on it. What happened?

Checkerboard pattern (The proper name for those orange and white squares) happens because the material count and material names need to match on both the MESH and MDF files. It is not possible to have less or more material references in either files. If your MDF contains 8 materials, the MESH will also need to have 8 materials. Material names are also case sensitive, so make sure you don't have things like Jeans_Mat on your MESH file, and then JEANS_Mat on your MDF file, or vice versa.

This can also happen during certain situations in-game. For example, the game might suddenly use a different MDF file for a specific scene in a cutscene. If your model has a different material count and/or material names from the original model and you didn't replace that MDF, you will suddenly see your model getting that checkerboard pattern again. Make sure that all the MDF files used by the game asset are replaced. Alternatively, you can edit the PFB (prefab) file that has a reference to that MDF file, to simply reference the one you've already replaced. This can be done to reduce the file size of your mod, or if you simply want your mod to be more organized, or if your mod is still in a W.I.P state, so you won't have to replace every single MDF file used by the game when you make changes.

I've installed my mod, and the game loads infinitely. What's going on?

This happens when the game can't find certain assets. For example, you might have forgotten to include a texture file you've referenced in the MDF, or you might have miscalled it. For example, your texture reference might look like jacet_albd.tex, but your actual texture file is jacket_albd.tex. Notice the missing k.

Remember that the .tex extension always needs to be written in texture paths. Do NOT include the "second" file extension (the one with a bunch of numbers). The game won't read the texture if you include that. Also make sure to not include the two starting folders of your extracted game files. "natives/stm" or "natives/x64" need to be excluded from your texture paths.

There could also be mismatching paths in a .PFB or .USER files. Make sure any and all file references match with the actual filenames.

Another reason why your game might be infinitely loading is outdated files. If you're modding .PFB or .USER files, make sure the files you're editing have been extracted from the last patch pak included in the game files.

I've modified the skeleton of the model I'm replacing to adapt it to the proportions of my model, but the result looks distorted in the game. What am I doing wrong?

In order for skeleton edits to work, you also need to mod the matching FBXSKEL to the character you're replacing. FBXSKEL is the "true" skeleton used by the character, of which edits actually affect the proportions of your model. Keep in mind that editing skeletons is often bound to issues, be it visual or functional. For example, if you make the arms smaller, you'll see that the character is not going to properly reach for objects in cutscenes, resulting awkward.

Editing face bones is going to result in distorting character faces no matter what. The solution to this would be to retarget the character's face bones to your new positions, and re-export every single game animation for that character's face. Depending on the game and/or character, this can be a very tedious process. Eye bones, however, can have any position you wish in most cases.

My character mod causes huge stutters when shooting enemies close-up or going into water. What's going on?

This is something that you'll definitely encounter if you're using a Blender-Noesis workflow. This happens because of Blender's original FBX Exporter. To properly understand this issue, we need to understand that RE Engine uses the models' second UV Layout to spread blood/wet effects. When importing an FBX exported with Blender's vanilla FBX Exporter into Noesis, we can actually visualize the issue by going into Tools > Data Viewer > Model > Meshes > Select UV2 of any mesh. There you'll see that the vertex data of your UV is distorted.

The main suggestion would be to ditch the Noesis workflow entirely, and use RE Mesh Editor instead, which fixes the issue, is actively maintained, and comes with tons of other quality of life improvements to the workflow as well. If you really want to use Noesis for a particular reason, you can fix the issue by exporting your FBX with the Better FBX Exporter addon. Another solution is to delete the second UV layout from all of your meshes. The Noesis plugin will automatically add the second UV layout to all of them during export anyway - directly copying them from UV1. This will fix the stutter, however blood effects won't look good, since the second UV layout is meant to have the entire model unwrapped.

Do I need to mod the textures in the "streaming" folder?

No. The games store low-resolution textures in the "default" folder where all assets are located, while they store high-resolution textures in a different folder, such is "streaming". The game uses the low-res or the high-res textures based on your game settings. However, storing your textures in the same location as the low-resolution textures will make them work even if your game settings are High.

Making your texture setup just like the original game - by making a low-res and high-res version - is possible, but ultimately unnecessary and a waste of space, as this will cause very minimal performance loss, even on lower end systems.