Jersey Tut.'s - Adding; Custom Numbers; Creating a Preview

This was included in the Template I released, for those who want it, check here.

This is a tutorial of sorts that I've written. It outlines how to add the jersey, how to edit the teamgear.dbf, and tells you where to find a tutorial on making previews because the tutorial is way better then what I could explain. Hope it helps

Let's assume that your new jersey is Boston's '78 home jersey (I'm making this up here). The name would therefore be 'bostc78h'. The first four letters are the team, the 'c' is for classic, the '78' refers to the year, and the 'h' means home. An alternate jersey uses 'serd' instead of the 'c78h' (you can also use 'ser2', 'ser3', 'ser4', etc.)

1) Select an existing jersey that has the numbers/letters (the player's name) you want your new jersey to use. You probably want numbers that are green for a classic Boston home jersey, so let's use Boston's current home jersey.

2) Find Boston's home jersey (bosthome.viv) in the 'NBA Live 06\sgsm\uniforms' folder, and copy the file to another folder, say called 'Added Jersey's'

3) Open 'bosthome.viv' with whatever (I use bigGUI) and export all the files to the 'Added Jersey's' folder (there should be 5). Rename those 5 files and the .viv file to the new name (bostc78h).

4) The newly named 'bostc78h.fsh' is the file that contains the actual jersey. Open it with whatever (I use FshX) and import the new jersey. If the jersey is in .png format, once you are in the correct folder, type the file name in and you can select it to import. Save the .fsh and close it. You should also inport the file I included called "06 lighting greyscale c0nr4d" into the smaller grey jersey inside the .fsh as the lighting file.

5) Open the 'bostc78h.viv' file and import the 5 renamed files. There should now be 10 files in the 'bostc78h.viv' file. 5 should be called 'bosthome' and 5 should be called 'bostc78h'. Delete the 5 called 'bosthome'. Compress and Rebuild the 5 remaining files (they should be the 'bostc78h' files). You now have a completed jersey file for your new jersey.

6) Copy the 'bostc78h.viv' file to the 'NBA Live 06\sgsm\uniforms' folder. As of right now, you have not affected the game in any way, and your jersey will not show up yet, so don't worry about messing up the game.

7) The next step is what most people say is the hard part, but I find it easy, as long as you know what you're doing. It's the .dbf editing. The only file you need to edit is the 'teamgear.dbf' file. This file is in the 'My Documents\NBA Live 06\saves\my roster' folder (where 'my roster' is one of your saves). What I usually do is choose one 'teamgear.dbf' and edit it and than copy it to my other saves after I know that there's no problem with it. There are many good resources for .dbf editing from the nba-live.com main site. Click on 'NBA Live 2005' on the left, and than on the left under 'Resources' are the various resources for .dbf editing. The .dbf files in 06 are virtually the same. I will refer to the Teamgear.dbf Editing Guide, so you should look at it.. You can copy/paste the following url into your browser to go to the Teamgear.dbf Editing Guide:

http://www.nba-live.com/nba2005/dbf_teamgear.php

8) You need to first Append the record in the 'teamgear.dbf'. The easiest way in DB Commander is to hit the down arrow when the last entry is selected to add a line for your new jersey.
- Put an 'F' in the deleted column
- The ID that you put is just the next available number (i.e. if the last number in the .dbf was 426, than you can use 427).
- The Team ID would be '1', because you made a jersey for Boston, which is Team ID 1.
- The JERSEYTYPE is explained in the 'Teamgear.dbf Editing'
- same for SHORTTYPE
- same for SHORTNUM
- The SHPNAME is the name you gave the jersey without the four letter team code (bost), so the SHPNAME is 'c78h'.
- The year is what is displayed on the in-game jersey preview screen. I found out that you don't need to use a year here, you can put whatever you want (I made a Toronto Maple Leafs alternate jersey for the Raptors, and named it 'TML' in the year column, and the in-game preview said 'TML Alternate'), so put whatever you want. In this case with our Boston classic 78 home jersey, the year would be 1977-78, or 1978-79, which ever you choose.
- I'm not entirely sure what ACCCOLOR does, so just put the same as an existing similarly coloured jersey (so put '3' because that's what the Boston home jersey has).
- The three AUTOCOLORs are the accessory colors, the first is the primary accessory color, the second is the second, etc. (The AUTOCOLOR2 is the colour that the socks will be if you give a player team-coloured socks). There is a colour chart in the 'Resources' section I talked about, but if you want a custom colour, scroll to the bottom of the colour chart and it tells you how. If you don't get it, PM me again and I'll explain it.
- The SHOE is what the default shoe will be for the jersey. I have no clue what shoe has what number, but I do know that if you put '-1' you will get random shoes . Most players have certain shoes anyway, so this doesn't really matter.
- The SOCKCOLOR is apparently random, so don't worry about it.
- The NECKTYPE is what kind of neck the jersey has. This is independant of the texture you made, the game will give the jersey the necktype you put, ignoring how you made your jersey. In the .psd file, the number beside the name of the layer is the number you need to put in the column (ex. if you used the 'round 0' set of layers, put a 0 in the column).
- The NAMETYPE is whether or not the players name on the back of the jersey is arched (0=arched, 1=flat)
- ISUNLOCKED is whether or not the jersey has been unlocked in the game, just put '1' there.
- I don't know what ISPERF is, but put TRUE there
- I would start the game, load the save that has the edited 'teamgear.dbf' and play a game with the jersey to make sure everything is how you want. If you want different colours, just go back and change them. Once you're sure that this is what you want, copy the 'teamgear.dbf' that you edited, and paste it in all your other saves if you want the jersey accessible in all the saves.

You're now done the .dbf editing. As of right now, you have added a jersey, but there is no preview for it. Some say this could cause your game to crash, but it hasn't happened to me yet. If you want to create a preview, I suggest you read Bassman58's tutorial (go to the nba-live.com main site, click on 'Tutorials' on the left, it's called 'Creating Jersey Previews Tutorial'). This tutorial has everything you need, there's no need for me to go over it. Just make sure that if you create a preview, use the corresponding file to the one you used for the jersey (we used the 'bosthome.viv' file for the jersey, so use the boston home preview file as well, called 'jerseys~bo~bo_home.big', and found in the NBA Live/fe/jerseys.viv file).

I hope this helps you. If you have any questions, you can PM me, Cable Guy; email me at cable_guy_0113@hotmail.com; or post a topic in the forum if you want others' opinions.

Some tips:
- use the Jersey Raptor to repostion numbers.
- If you don't want numbers on the front, you can change the preview like that too, just create a 32x64 image with a transparent background, nothing else, and import it to the preview .fsh file, over the numbers.
- Have fun and experiment! As far as we know, there is no limit to the number of jerseys you can add to the game.

Good Luck!

Last edited by Cable on Thu May 11, 2006 8:43 am, edited 3 times in total.

Also, here's a tutorial on creating custom numbers. You'll need Fshline (@ the bottom).

1. Find numbers to use as a base

2. Export the xxxxyyyy_num.fsh

3. Copy Fshline/other file to the same folder as the xxxxyyyy_num.fsh

4. Drag the xxxxyyyy_num.fsh into Fshline; it should create a new folder inside the existing folder with the name xxxxyyyy

5. Inside the xxxxyyyy folder are an Index.fsh, .dds, and .png numbers; edit the .png numbers to the new numbers with Photoshop. Make sure the numbers are not touching the borders of the .png, it will cause funny lines on the jersey.

6. Once all 18 are edited (you don't need to do the '10' ones), copy the xxxxyyyy folder to use in case the new numbers are erased

7. Copy Fshline/other file to the xxxxyyyy folder

8. Drag the Index.fsh into Fshline (both done within the xxxxyyyy folder)

9. It should end up with the xxxxyyyy_num.fsh that you originally used having the custom numbers
*Note: The xxxxyyyy_num.fsh should not be moved after you originally drag it into Fshline, it should still be in the exterior folder

Update on the Custom Numbers:

You don't need to do the '10' ones, but you do need to do the '0' ones. Thanks to Bassman58 for pointing this out.

He also suggested I explain how to make invisible numbers. My first thought was to import a blank .png over the numbers, but that doesn't seem to work, because:

- it appears only the back numbers are used, the front numbers don't affect anything. I edited just the back numbers on a jersey and both the front and the back had those numbers, so it seems EA screwed up.

- if you wish to have invisible numbers on either the front or the back, I suggest you use the Jersey Raptor and put a '0' in all the boxes for either the front or the back, depending on which you want to make invisible. This will get rid of the numbers without overwriting them.

Last edited by Cable on Mon Apr 24, 2006 12:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I was cleaning out my stored patches, and I came across this. It should be helpful to go along with adding a jersey, although it also deals with creating an entirely new preview.

To make a new preview ...

- open the jersey as a .bmp
- create a 256x256 image with a transparent background for the preview
- resize the jersey to 340x340 pixels from 512x512
- one at a time, select the front and back of the jersey and copy/paste to the 256x256 preview
- erase the edges of the front and back, move the back layer behind the front
- merge the back and front
- copy/paste EA's preview on top
- stretch new preview vertically until it lines up with EA's
- Ctrl-click EA's preview in layer thumbs (should select around it)
- inverse selection
- delete inverted selection from new preview
- make new layer; Ctrl-click new preview
- feather at 3 pixels, stroke 10 pixels in black
- change the opacity to 40
- save as a .png

To add a new preview ...

- find the preveiw for the jersey used for the numbers of the new jersey
- open jerseys.viv in Program Files\EA Sports\NBA Live 06\fe
- export the correct preview
- open the preview
- export the 4 files
- rename the preview and 4 files to the new jersey name
- open the xx_xxxx.fsh file and import the .png file
- save the xx_xxxx.fsh file
- open the xx_xxxx.ebo file using Hex Editor
- in the left column at the bottom, rename the 11 references to the old preview to the new preview
- save and close the .ebo
- open the renamed preview file and import the 4 renamed files
- delete the old files
- rebuild the new files
- DO NOT COMPRESS THE FILES
- now you're done

Last edited by Cable on Mon Apr 24, 2006 12:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'll have to check this out...cause I'm working on custom numbers right now for a project...

can some1 send me the normal teamgear.dbf, i sorta screwed my previous one when i was using notepad, now it says in DB commander 2000: Error opening "teamgear.DBF" table: Encrypted dBASE tables not supported casper.92@hotmail.com === My email

The original file is on one of the CDs in a .zip file. You shouldn't use Notepad either, it corupts the file

Btw, welcome to the forums

I updated the third post with a Jersey Preview tutorial I found on my PC. It's been sitting around since August 13, 2005; I'd completely forgot about it.

c.j.! i have a little question, on the jersey preview how can i adjust the numbers?

c.j.! i have a little question, on the jersey preview how can i adjust the numbers?

You can't. One must find an existing one that has numbers in the position you wish to have you jersey's numbers in and use that as a base for creating the files.

^^ Actually, I don't recommend that. Use the same preview as your jersey (ie if you used Boston's home for a base, use it for both the jersey and preview), if not, I've had the game crash. There's really no way to adjust preview numbers, you just have to live with it.

ok thanks!

pictures for each step would be nice, thanks for tute

sorry 2 bother any1 but i reallyy dun get any of this DBF stuff i am just a beginner on this ..i was working with Bassman58's tutorial it was pretty helpful untill step #7.. he really didnt mention much on the DBF editting so i got kind of lost i really want 2 add this jersey i made into the game but this DBF step is confusing the hell out of me so can any1 explain it 2 me briefly on how to work with this

just simpily copy the data in the readme into the dbf's respective columns

yeah i did that but it still didnt work after i add the data isnt there a way to save it or does it automatically save it self ?

It should auto-save when you close it.