#mass effect modding

things you need:

an art or photo editing program that works with transparencies. i use photoshop. photopea is a good free alternative 

GIMP

ME3Tweaks Mod Manager (i assume you already have this)

some experience with digital painting and/or photo manipulation 

note about safety: what you heard about texture modding breaking the game is likely the 'content mods before textures' rule. you have to install all your regular mods before you touch your textures. if you edited textures and then install a non-texture mod over that, you will have problems. textures always come last. if you've modded textures but want to update a content mod or install a new one, you have to restore your game to vanilla first. as long as you do that, you will be fine.

first off, you’ll want a base for your face. this can be femshep’s default face texture that you extract, or you can do what I did and modify someone else’s modded texture. i worked with primitives texture overhaul’s femshep (they have an open TOU.)

here’s what those textures look like unedited. already much better than the default femshep texture, but i wanted no makeup, my shep’s canon scars, noticable eyebags and more freckles.

(if it’s custom shepard’s textures that you’re editing, I don’t have experience specific to that, but I found this tutorial from 2013 that might be helpful. please note that it doesn’t use the new mod manager or GIMP.)

in the mod manager, go to tools > mass effect modder (for legendary edition). this is the texture modder. it lets you install texture mods, but also mess with the game textures yourself. for that, navigate to ‘texture manager.’ note that it’s sorted by game. you might not have every game’s backups ready at all times, or have made changes to the game since the last texture map was created. follow instructions on screen if that’s the case.

start with modding only one game. i started with ME3 because that’s what I was currently playing. you can use the same texture you make for the other games, but you’ll have to pay attention to the file names, which aren’t constant across the trilogy. 

once the chosen game’s textures have loaded in, you can search for the ones you need. note that for ME3, there’s a femshep texture file in a second location: this one is for the endgame, where she’s injured and bloody. you’ll want to replace that one too. 

find them by searching for “*PROShepard*”.  Double-click on a result to see it in its folder.

there are three kinds of face textures: the diffuse map (the visual one), the specular map (which tells the game how shiny the texture is) and the normal (bump) map (which allows you to fake 3D details.)

you’ll want to download all of these I marked + the face_norm_stack that I forgot, lol (this is how my finished texture looks, by the way). click on a texture and download it as a PNG.

once you have your PNGs extracted, open the diffuse map in your chosen software (not GIMP. while you can use GIMP for all these steps, I don’t recommend it.) you should see a ghostly, stretched out face. it’s ghostly because there’s a hidden transparency mask on top of it. 

extract the transparency mask by (in PS) choosing layer > layer mask > from transparency in the menu. if you’ve ever worked with masks before, it should feel intuitive to handle the mask. if not, i suggest watching a video on transparency masks in your chosen program. 

disable the mask. do not delete it. you should now see the texture in full opacity. you need a bit of imagination to envision it on your shepard’s face, so be prepared to have to return to this step to make modifications later. 

make a new layer to paint over it, do not paint on the texture itself. if you make a mistake, you’ll want to be able to undo it easily.

i assume you know what you want to change for your shepard’s face. you’ll have to paint it in yourself, or you could go and look for a face texture that has what you want and then combine the two of them to get the look that you want. all i did was paint/manipulate (removed makeup, added eye bags, added freckles, added scars, sized up eyebrows). 

once it looks good, take the transparency mask that you disabled and add it to any new layers you might have. you want everything to have the same mask. now duplicate the original texture for a backup, and merge the duplicated texture and your edits into one layer. the transparency mask should remain. re-enable it if that hasn’t already happened automatically.

the reason the mask is there (as i had to figure out through many hours of frustration) is that it serves as a built-in specular map. i don’t know why it’s done this way since there is a separate,  proper spec map that you hopefully downloaded. but regardless, how it works is this: the more opacity an area has in the map, the shinier it will be in game. so if you want there to be a very shiny area on that new face, you can go in the mask and paint in some more opacity there. similarly, you can reduce it to make the area matte. 

when you’re done, save your diffuse map as a PSD (if possible. PNG likely also works but I can’t vouch for it!). be careful not to mess with the string of numbers in its name, the game needs those to load it in correctly. you can add words like “myedit” etc before the numbers if you want, to distinguish the new texture from the old one. as long as the numbers are the same, it shouldn’t affect anything in game. 

here’s what my ME3 files are named:

now, GIMP. it’s a dinosaur of a program, but the reason we use it is that it’s free and it has built-in DDS export functionality. (if the program you used happens to have that, lucky, you can skip GIMP and just do it there!) 

open your new file of the diffuse map in GIMP. go to export as > DDS image. select DXT5 compression and generate mipmaps. save as a DDS file.

small edit: make sure the PSD you're converting to DDS has no hidden layers, as it might throw up an error when attempting to replace the texture in the next step. if you have a hidden backup layer, delete it before DDS export! you want a single layer.

To test out your new texture, you can now go to the texture manager and replace the diffuse map with your new map. Always make sure you have a backup of the original texture when you do this, and that you’re not jumping between games. 

I recommend having a save in a well-lit place that lets you quickly check the texture on your shepard, but if you haven't started the game yet, the character selection screen should work. I ended up making several edits, but part of that was figuring out that the weird transparency mask was actually a spec map, so I hope I spared you that. 

for a complete texture swap, the specular and normal maps need to be changed to match the new face — but it really depends on the changes you made. added scars and resized eyebrows are what made me actually go back in and edit them, but you might not have made these changes. you can load the game and test out how your texture looks without the adjusted spec and norm maps. (frankly, i’m not sure about the purpose of the spec map since one is already included in the diffuse.) 

if you do want to make changes there, open the PNGs in your program. i recommend looking up specular and norm map texture editing online if you do this, as I don’t feel qualified to explain it. what i did was place the PNG of the (unmasked) diffuse map over them and lower the opacity of the layer to see where the faces diverge. i fully admit that i was lazy with this, only transformed the eyebrows to match their new size and added the scars to the norm map so they get that 3D feeling.

sometimes, these maps come as stacks. replacing them with a single image (rather than a stack of many images) seems to work, i’m still not sure how exactly to handle them. sorry.

(for my ME2 retexture, I left the spec map untouched. I haven’t really played with the texture in game though, so if I notice something is off I’ll go back in and add it, but my brief playtest looked fine.)

you export these the same way you exported the diffuse map. keep the numbers intact. save as DDS and replace in the texture manager. 

(this old tutorial suggests photoshop can’t actually handle normal maps. i don’t know if that still applies, but you might want to give this a read. saving as a TGA file (targa) is still possible, but i’ve never tried out the program they use. maybe GIMP can handle it.)

norm map edit: editing them in PS definitely works! I was able to add dynamic under-eye shadows for my shepard by extending the existing furrow in the map. here's before and after of the norm map for reference, plus an in-game photo.

before (left) & after (right)

result!

and don’t forget the bloody endgame texture "FaceBlood" in ME3 unless you want your shepard to suddenly sport her old face! :) 

once you are happy with your retexture, you can compile it into a MEM texture mod file so you won’t have to do the manual swap every time you restore your game to vanilla to mess with your mods. find the option under texture modding > create texture mod. as always, make very sure the numbers in the file names are correct. once you have your MEM file, you’re good! congratulations!