FFXI HD Mods

Just use XiPivot, it makes all these dat mods so much easier to use.

^
This.

Update wiped all my HD mods. Was mad at first, but then I setup XIPivot, and it's just so much easier/cleaner now.

Fortunately, I had kept all my mods in a separate folder in their proper folder hierarchy (rom/'folderid'/'modID.dat'), and the process was seamless.

On another note, does anybody know of a way to pack/unpack .dat files other than VRS these days? Or are the days of modding the actual 3d models for this game gone? I don't really want to pay the subscription fee for VRS just to try my hand at it.

You can use FFXI Model Viewer to export/unpack DAT files to extract their 3D model and texture files. I still do some modding for FFXI but nothing crazy like the zone editing. Mainly just some minor 3D model editing and upscaling the textures on weapons, armor, and some npcs like summons, Promathia, Shinryu, etc.

VRS is extremely complicated and confusing to use since it's only in Japanese, plus the subscription makes it a major hassle. Metasequoia is the main free program most people use to edit the 3D models for FFXI. You have to use Meta v3 though because v4 will cause the DAT files to be super corrupted when you import them back after editing.

Adobe Photoshop and GigaPixel A.I. Upscaler are the main programs used for upscaling and modding the game textures. Model Viewer will also let you figure out what each DAT file is number wise in the FFXI ROM file directories. Once you export the DAT file, it creates 4 files.

The .mqo is the file for 3D model editing with Meta. The .dds is the file which has the texture map in it. The .mcd file I believe is for the DAT animations which you usually just leave alone unless you know advanced modding tricks on editing animations. The .bmp file is the picture version of the texture mapping. That's the one you open in Photoshop if you want to upscale.

For texture upscaling, A.I. GigaPixel doesn't read .bmp files, so you have to first save the .bmp as a .png in Photoshop. Then open .png in GigaPixel, upscale it to a higher res .png file, and then open it in Photoshop. Then do a "save as" and overwrite the old .bmp and .dds files with the new high res .png and then import the files back into Model Viewer. You have to also use a program called Texture Hammer to increase the max resolution of the DAT file you're working with in order for the high res textures to show up. Otherwise it will just look the same even if you do the upscaling.

There's a lot of old tutorial info online for XI DAT modding from back in the Ps2 days when a lot of people modded the game. Try hunting around for it if you're wanting to learn more.

Lament




Executioner (all races, offhand & mainhand)



Nihility (all races, offhand & mainhand)


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZiMSOOJZZgLdaegTdYO9hi-K7GRbS6YH/view?usp=sharing

This is the latest version of the HD mod for Ambuscade, if anyone wants it (was made in 2020). Someone asked me for it and it's buried a many pages back so bumping it up.

Finally got around to doing some video's showcasing these wonderful Texture mods made by RadialArcana and others. If your wondering what a modded setup looks like in 4k this should give you a good idea of what to expect. I intend on doing more of these "Atmosphere" video's if it's seen to be something people are interested in.

I'm always blown away by how good your game looks Logical. Are there any tutorials out there for making a good looking setup that's not going to destroy my multiboxing capabilities?

At the moment, I don't struggle to run them. No huge performance dips seen when adding HD mods, but certain zones will always black-screen characters. I'd love to make my game look even half this good, but don't want to have instabilities in things like Dynamis W3/Odyssey/Omen.

For reference, I'm running a 3060Ti and an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8 core and typically 4 box

With that setup it's definitely not a resource issue. Sadly that darn black screen issue has plagued some people for years now, I've only had it happen twice in the few years so I have little expereince with it myself. It doesn't appear specific to multiboxers as I know single players expereince it as well. You may want to try going with a smaller package such as Amelila's which doesn't change those zones from what I recall but yea it then won't look like it does in my vid's. I will ask, have you tried my new 2021 video and texture pack? I've heard very few complaints about black screens when using it so you may have more luck with it if you have not tried it yet.

I haven't tried the 2021 steps yet, maybe I''ll give that a shot. I knew it wasn't a resource issue, but it seems to happen a lot in reisenjima and sky. I thought Amelila's mods were the ones I had before. For reference, there's a black screen issue that happens some times where the whole screen will be black, then there's also one where the zone textures won't load and my character/npcs will be standing there, but unable to move.

Edit: I also remember instances of it happening in some major cities and North gustaberg

Interesting, I've not heard of it happening on other zones, just Reis and Ru'Aun and I think Jueno for some. To be clear I'm referring to the issue of none of the textures loading and you just see your char and can't move. I would definitely recommend trying my 2021 vid, it also goes over 4 possible texture packs giving you options to try to see if you can get any better result. Good luck!

Hi Logical,

I'm trying to setup your HD-pack with XI pivot. Should it theoretically work with a ultra-wide screen?

Edit: CHeking your 2021 video, seems like I'll run into issues.

Sadly yes, FFXI really wasn't setup for UltraWide. Now note it will work and look pretty darn good, it's just some things will look a little stretched from what I'm told.

I went through your 2021 video and it's looking great. Only problem I'm having at the moment is a sort of tearing issue when I run. All of the super detailed ground cover seems to "vibrate" and takes a second to stop after I stop moving. Do you happen to know what might cause this?

I think that's the supersampling issue some have, make sure it's turned off under Windower4 please.

Weirdly enough, turning supersampling on actually helped the issue. I had it off before.

haha, whatever works. :)

Just saw this, Thanks for the info! Didn't know about Metasequoia. I may look it up when I get a bit more time to play around.

Been using this myself, Even boosted up the Vram to 4000Mb and I'm running a Ryzen 7 5800 and a RTX 3070 ti, I do run multiple characters but I specifically only have XIPivot run on my main character while the others use the normal textures.

I remember seeing this black screen issue over a year ago ever once in a blue moon and this was before I was using any HD mods. I think all I was using back then was XI-View. Hadn't seen it in over a year until I started using the HD texture packs recently.

If it happens and I'm next to a HP I will unload XIPivot and HP to another zone and back and without XIPivot loaded the zone will load fine. Not sure what is causeing it but it's extremely annoying.

I multi-box, I'm on Asura (so the zones are busy) and I have made zones with massive textures way above what is available to download and I have never one time had this black screen issue. I spent hundreds of hours doing this stuff with mega textures loading in and out over and over again to ridiculous amounts while making them to test stuff and not once can I remember having this happen.

I have no idea what is causing it for some people but I have never had it happen even once.

Could be an OS issue maybe since I'm on 7.
I don't use DGvoodoo.
I have an SD drive, normal drives take too long to load hd zones.
I don't use bump mapping (this loads extra files)
It could be cumulative but I don't see people complaining about this with the upscale hd pack someone made.

The only issue I have ever had is direct crash if there is some problem with a texture or something loading as invisible, never black screen.

As stupid as it sounds I was trying for over a week to try and make this happen so I could figure out how to stop it and I could not get it to show up.

Same, I tried and tried and was unable to. Then when I was messing around with making my 2021 update video this year I somehow got it to happen twice while I was trying different versions of apps. However, once I landed on the current versions that I recommend it has not happened since. I will also say that in my 2020 video I had people complaining of this happening fairly frequently but never have anyone mention it on the 2021 where I mention to use this new version. Due to this I think it indeed has to do with DGVoodoo and that they have fixed the issue in the last year with the newer versions. Note this is just based on what I saw and the lack of people reporting the issue lately who follow my 2021 guide. I was never able to get it to happen again even using an older version of dgvoodoo but it was the thing I was messing around with when I did finally get it to occur so something to try anyway.

Well I was advised to get DGvoodoo when I got my first Black screen after using the texture packs from your 2021 video. I then went and got DGvoodoo. bumped the VRAM to max and while it did seem to help as I was getting black screens a lot before DGvoodoo. I got a black screen last night.

I run all my FFXI stuff off of a Samsung 1TB M.2. So read speeds should not be an issue.

I never had super sampling or bump mapping on ever also. So there has to be some other reason for it.

And like I said if i unload XIPivot and revert to the OG texture packs and i zone out and back in after getting a black screen then it fixes it.

FFXI's graphics engine becomes unstable with lots of large textures at once. I loaded the 5GB FFXI-HD model pack and got nothing but random crash's and lockups. Disabled it in XIPivot and everything went back to normal with my regular set of mods.

So modders might want to back down the target texture resolution, I mean we're just doing rescaling anyway so 4K/8K textures don't really offer anything that 1K/2K could do seeing as the original textures are like 64x64 or 256x256.

Made these years ago, never bothered finishing them. Only posting the images cause I found them funny, in that they are basically he-man.

These are not mods I'm working on, this is just a mod I abandoned years ago.

Really wanna make some proper HQ face/hair mods at some point, but it's so hard to keep them true to the original and still make them look good.

Whoa! After staring at the same set of faces for nearly 20 years this is... shocking haha. Really a neat idea!!! Would be very interested in some Character models textures.

At this point I really see my NextGames Texture Pack diverging into two by the time the 2022 Video comes out. I'll be trying to make a lore friendly pack for those that don't want things like Ru'Aun changes, .dat's swapped, models changes etc. And then another one that very much resembles my current pack that is far from lore friendly but has the most beautiful mods in the game to make it look as pretty as possible. These character model changes would fit perfectly in that second pack making it so people who wanted to retain original looks could use the lore friendly one but ones who wanted these new changes could still expereince them. Just an idea I'm tossing around currently as I've had several request lately for a more lore friendly version of my NextGames pack.

I'm currently working on lore friendly HD faces with 512 x 512 res, and I just finished hume males, but it seems it takes a while to finish modding all the races face like I cannot say when I could finish it.

I also tried to create the lore friendly Mhaura, including each room in the area.
These dat files also includes the fix of rooms in Bastok mines instead of reading Qufim islands dat file (if you have HD mega pack installed in your PC).
Feel free to try it and let me know if there's any inconvenient thing happens with this mod.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tZfOsYTewFKfFyPyo8TfmxvdEnzTAKWv/view?usp=sharing

Anyone have access to VRS to edit models?

Hey guys, I just uploaded the HD hume males face mod to Nexusmods.
Let me know if there's any issue when you try it.
https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy11/mods/7