I expect that you know at least something about using these programs which are needed to make the patch!
This is a raw version and I’ll correct any mistakes and try to utilize all of your suggestions
What you need:
-FshX
-Image editing program (I’m using Photoshop
-EaGraph
-DB Commander
1. Pick a target
Choose the player whose band, sleeve or whatever you want to create.
I’ll take Carlos Boozer for my example, I’ll make his calf sleeve.
2. Find out what the accessory exactly looks like
Search for high resolution photos of your “target”. They might be hard to find, but try searching in Google, Getty images and my favourite: Yahoo! (As soon as the season starts, you’ll find good pics from the playerfile –pages.
This is somewhat good: Link
3. Improvise, find the right “materials”
Don’t try to copy the accessory straight from a picture like above. It’s not going to be good. After you’ve seen what the texture looks like and what the colour should be like, improvise.
NOTE! You’ll have to test in-game which colours and textures look good! The textures might look different in Photoshop and NBA Live.
4. Copy and paste
In Boozers case, I searched for “hexpad” in google. Bang! I found a perfect high-res picture from which I can copy hexpad texture for all my future patches too: Link
The good thing about this picture is that I can get the depth illusion with it also + White colour can easily be converted to any other colour. The bad is, that it’s really not that big, so you can’t stretch it too much. (Luckily the skin files are just 512x512 pixels.)
NOTE! Leg skin –files are always 256x256
5. DB Commander + EAGraph + FshX
Now you need to extract the right skin file from xplrbase.viv with EAGraph (located at NBA Live 07/sgsm/common).
To find out which skin file you need to extract, open appearance.dbf with DB Commander. “arm00base.fsh” is the skin file for a player whose color and muscletexture are both 0.
To extract the bitmap from the .fsh file, use FshX.
NOTE! In this case, we will use leg22base.fsh
6. Fit it on the right spot
Now that I have the texture, I know the colour and I have the skin file. It’s time to connect these three! Your screen should look something like this: Link
After cutting and copying your skin file should look like this: Link
You’ll probably have to try many times to get the sleeve to fit the right spot (do this by adding your edited skin file to the game and looking Boozer in edit player menu).
7. Enjoy it!
You’ve done it! If you have followed my advices, your boozer should now look like this in the game.
NOTES!
To add the bitmap to the .fsh file, use FshX again.
To make the sleeve appear on Boozer’s calf, rename the .fsh file to “cabooze_leg.fsh”
Remember to save your work, in .psd document format, so that you can edit your files freely whenever needed.
