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Tutorial: Dragon Age Toolset Head Morph for PC
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For more information, more tutorials, and any advice I can offer using the Toolset follow this link. Or click on the link to your left which says DA Toolset Tutorials.
After hours of forehead-against-the-desk banging, I finally made my first morph work thanks to the mighty Beerfish. These are his instructions illustrated with screen shots. Credit where it is due, because without his generous help on the Bioware forum, I’d never have gotten it.
Always, always back things up before you change anything in a game – any game.
What to do: First you have to download and use the Dragon Age Toolset. This assumes you’ve at least gotten that far.
How to do it: This YouTube video isn’t me and it’s not mine. Visit his site if you want to learn first hand video instructions on the Toolset. Here he has some good pointers on actually designing your character:
Or if you want the insanely detailed version of using Object Inspector, I have one which isn’t in video form.
If you want to use the More Hairstyles Mod I have another Tutorial up for that.
I wanted someone who looked utterly different from all my other male characters. They were starting to all look alike no matter how I tweaked them in the character generator, so I decided to go over the top with a Blood Mage.
Here’s what I designed. Save often, as occasionally my Toolset did crash.
What a charmer, huh? Notice that you can actually wipe the glum look off your characters face if you want to.
What to do: The character should automatically save as a .mrh file extension. Go ahead and save it by going to:
File (top left of your screen)
Save As
Name it whatever you like.
Remember where you saved it. If you don’t, you can always have Windows search for it, but it’s easier to just remember it.
There are two ways of doing a character head morph that I know. One is to start a new character, the other is to overwrite the save file of one that already exists. This is handy if you’re already into the game and decide you’re sick of looking at a morose face or just want a change.
I’ll put both in here for your ease. Probably mine, too, so I don’t forget how to do this….
Starting a Fresh Character with a New Look
1. Start with the Toolset closed. Open up Dragon Age Origins.
2. Create a new character. Pick the sex, voice, race, background and how you want your character to have his / her head tilted on the portrait. Set your Attributes the way you want them. These steps are important as only the appearance will change.
Here’s how Fred started out:
3. Make him or her look like anything. There’s no reason to spend time on that step as you’ll be using your freshly designed head morph from the Toolset.
4. Play just far enough that you can save your game. Fred is a Human. Male. Mage. I got him through the Origin story dialog and saved as soon as he touched a vase in the Fade.
Remember what your save name is. This is important.
5. Open up Toolset again.
6. Open the .mrh file you created earlier.
7. (Couldn’t get a screen shot) but Click on:
– Edit
– Click on Post to Local
(or you can right click with your mouse to bring up a small menu and do the same.)
Panic Attack! – It’s only exporting as a .mop file! That’s easy to fix – you can see for yourself just click here.
8. The Log Window which is right below your morph is going to be active. You’ll see a lot of rapid scrolling. Scroll up a little from the bottom.
9. Look for a line similar to this:
14:36:48 – PostProcessing
I: 14:36:48 – Exporter completed successfully for resource: fred.mrh
I: 14:36:48 – Successfully exported C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\My Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age\packages\core\override\toolsetexport\hm_fred.mor.
10. Notice the end. My file has been magically transformed into hm_fred.mor Remember what the full name of your .mor file is. You’ll need it later. Jot it down on a slip of paper if you have to. I won’t tell.
hm stands for human male, so yours may look different if you’ve made a female or any other race.
11. Close the .mrh file. You won’t need it any more. You should have a screen like this. (You can ignore the stuff on the right. It doesn’t have any effect for this.)
Changing the Character in your Game
Moving on.
1. Now you get to play the Sherlock Holmes of the Dragon Age set. You have to locate the .das file for your save game which you made way up at the top of this tutorial.
Don’t panic. It’s buried, but I’m here to help, remember?
In the Toolset go to
– File
– Open File
– My Documents
– BioWare
– Dragon Age
– Characters
– Character Name (Fred for me)
– Saves
– Slot_1
– Name.das (for me Fred.das)
Tip: If you want to do this a lot, you can always create a shortcut on your Desktop to the Saves folder by right clicking on the folder (Win XP.) Then you can drag and drop your files straight into Toolset.
Panic Attack!: (Win XP) If you absolutely can’t find your file you can search for it using Windows.
Click your Start button in the bottom left corner
– Choose Search
– Search All Files and Folders
– Type in Name.das in the top box (Fred.das for me)
– Click Search
– Once it’s found, you can drag and drop the file into the Toolset
Now that it’s open here’s how to make your custom head work.
2. Click on SaveGame_PlayerChar
3. Click on SaveGame_PlayerChar again in the submenu. (You can see it in the screenshot above.)
4. Click on SaveGame_Appearance
5. Click on SaveGame_Appearance_Morph_Name (you may need to double click.)
6. Type in the name of your .mor Remember to put the prefix for your gender and race in front of it as you found out above.
7. Click on something else to make sure it “sticks.”
8. Save
9. Exit Toolset
10. Open Dragon Age Origins.
11. Load your save file. Voila! Fred has a whole new look. He now wants to suck out your soul, lightly seasoned, with a straw.
Now, you can do this to ANY save file provided you have enough RAM and your computer can open it. Unfortunately, if you’re too far into the game, it’s often impossible to get the file open. That will depend on your computer. Always back up your old one, but if you want to change your look halfway to the Landsmeet you can do it. Follow the instructions above, but locate the save file for your current game instead of creating a new one.
Credit (Beerfish. You’ll have to scroll down a bit):
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* Dragon Age Origins, the Toolset and all its characters belong to Bioware and their respective owners. This blog is dedicated to their work with fiction, tutorials, and things to share with other fans.
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