Sunday, February 21, 2010

Dragon Age Origins Change Character Appearance 2010

It's possible! 2010-02-21 (Backup your game first by making a copy of the Bioware folder in My Documents)

So you made your character, but there's something you don't like about it. Use these steps to remake your character from scratch.

Download and install the toolset http://dragonage.bioware.com/toolset

Open Dragon Age Origins.

Load the save game you last played of the character you want to change the face / appearance of. Make a new save, name it "changeface", then exit the game.

Make a new character of the same race and sex as the character in the "changeface" game. Make the name be "MyFace". Pick out the new way you want it to look.

Tip: If you want to use the face of a character you already have to put on a different character, you can do that too, just follow the steps below about changing the game files and skip the steps about creating a new face.

Tip: You can download extra hair colors http://www.google.com/search?q=Pineappletrees+Vibrant+Colors and http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=555

Tip: Take screenshots of the sliders when creating the character, this will help you tweak it further if you don't like the appearance of your new creation.

Start the game of the new character. Check to see if you like the face.

Tip: You can run up to a solid object, then move the "camera" to be right in front of your face (between you and the wall) and it will zoom in close on your characters face.

If you don't like the face, delete the character, and start again (work off the screenshots of the sliders to get that tweak just the way you want it).

Once you like the face, save the game as "newface" then exit the game.

If you have a slow computer, you may need to Quit the Dragon Age game so the computer doesn't run out of memory when loading the game files from the toolset.

Open the toolset (Start>All Programs>Dragon Age Origins>Dragon Age Toolset)

We will first open the save game "newface" and copy the part of the file that has the appearance (called "MORPH" in the file), then we'll delete that out of "changeface" and paste it into the same place.

File>Open File = My Documents\Bioware\DragonAge\Characters\Myface\Saves\Slot_1\newface.das

Click the little plus ( + ) signs to expand them on these items:
+SAVEGAME_PLAYERCHAR
++SAVEGAME_PLAYERCHAR_CHAR

Scroll down to find a line called: SAVEGAME_PLAYER_MORPH

Right click SAVEGAME_PLAYER_MORPH and choose "Copy". We are "copying" the face from this saved game.

Tip: If your computer is slow, do File>Close before opening the second saved game.

Now we open our other character so we can "paste the face" into it.

File>Open File = My Documents\Bioware\DragonAge\Characters\\Saves\\changeface.das

Click the little plus ( + ) signs on:
-SAVEGAME_PLAYERCHAR
--SAVEGAME_PLAYERCHAR_CHAR

Find the line that says SAVEGAME_PLAYER_MORPH right click it and choose "Delete". (slower computers will *choke* for a moment)

Scroll back up to the line SAVEGAME_PLAYERCHAR_CHAR right click it and choose "Paste". (again, on a slower computer it will look like it's crashing, give it a moment)

File > Save

File > Close

File > Exit

Open Dragon Age Origins. Load the "changeface" save. You should now see the face you've created. Run around for a little bit, maybe move to a new zone or two, try going into combat, if everything looks good, save it as "twitterimkilo".

Now just play the game as normal, and enjoy the face you always wanted!

Feel free to buy me lunch (or help me upgrade my slow computer) with donating at http://milescomer.com/ or holler at me on http://twitter.com/imkilo

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Many thanks if this should work, my new char has a weird edge at his cheek that I'd like to remove. I'll try it later today. :D

Anonymous said...

Me again and yay, works like you described! I also copy/pasted the few SAVEGAME_PLAYER_PORTRAIT_XYZ entries to port the little picture, too. And you don't necessarily need to delete one entry before you paste one. I just chose 'Paste Value' and it overwrote the original value. Thx again.

Anonymous said...

Hi there! I frequent the Social Network under Lucy_Glitter. I had a huge problem trying to figure out how to do this. Downloading the updated toolset helped a great deal (even if it was a 3 hour download) but your post is AMAZINGLY helpful, and thankyou somuch for taking the time to write this all down. You are a god amongst men!

Unknown said...

thank you so much
your recommended way didn't worked with on my pc - the toolset closed down when i tried to save the pasted morph(i think i don't have enough memory or something)
but i had my fun with the toolset anyway (i downloaded it after reading your post) and had my fun changing things with it manually and downloaded mods from your link (dragon age nexus) so thanks <3

tankilo said...

@Yili If you would like, you could email me one of your save games, and the newface.das file and I'll fix it up for you and mail it back.

If you are reading this comment and want/need this done, shoot me an email on gmail as twitterkilo (I made my email address look weird like that to help avoid spam)

OliverKlozoff said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Dragon Age - Changing hair/parts/tints/makeup/tats mid-game and even keeping that lovely face:
http://www.dragonagenexus.com/articles/article.php?id=45

Juliana Giraud said...

I've created an awesome character in the toolset, passed it to the Character Creator, started a new game, saved the new game as "newface" and, for precaution, exited Dragon Age. Then, I've opened the toolset.

File > Open file > ... > characters > MyFace > saves > ... > newface.das

All right. I've copied the morph. Then, I opened my main character's save, Changeface.das, I've deleted it's morph and pasted the other.
But, when I'm going to click SAVE or SAVE AS the Toolset "die" :/
And I can't change... I did it many other times, don't know why right now this is happening.

tankilo said...

Juliana: email me the save file and the face file (twitterkilo @ gmail . com) and I'll put them together and email them back to you.

Anonymous said...

I was reading your blog (it's a bit old i know) about changing the appearance of an existing dragon age character and i've been trying to follow your guide but my damn toolset keeps crashing everytime i try to do virtually anything. I've tried all the workarounds and troubleshooting guides i can find and none of them worked. Anyway, i noticed you offered to help some of the people who had the same problem if they sent you the relevant saves and i was wondering if you could possibly do the same for me? I would be extremely grateful.

tankilo said...

@ anonymous if you are still out there, email me the files (look at the comment above yours for my email address)

I'll try and email you back as soon as I get it, then let you know when I get it done.