Ever want to change the artwork in your haven to better suit your tastes? Maybe you want to "improve" some of the paintings hanging in Lacroix's office or replace some of the posters hanging around town. Well this guide should help you do just that.

First things first though. All we're doing here is swapping one texture for another of the same size. It's a simple concept, but the process is a little bit more involved than some other games, which is why I'm narrowing the focus of this guide to make it a little bit easier.

As a result, the resolution will remain the same as the file you're changing. We also won't be changing anything about the models that the textures are attached to.

What I suggest doing is modifying files in an existing mod that changes the image you want to change. This way you can largely avoid the process of extracting game archives and hunting down the file you want in a sea of other files and folders. Also, this allows you to use files that are probably already a higher resolution than the original game files, avoiding any hassle related to defining how the game needs to scale or transform the texture since the mod author did that work for you. (Give them a thank you for that.)

PLEASE DO NOT REDISTRIBUTE OTHER PEOPLE'S WORK AS YOUR OWN. If you really want to share your work, make sure it's yours and you're not uploading someone else's artwork or a bunch of unmodified files from the original mod.

Also, the VPK Tool that we'll be using can be a little bit wonky. If it doesn't seem to work or complains about a file already being open or something like that, try closing it and opening it again.

And as always, remember to backup your original files before you do anything.

GIMP. Free, open source image editing software. You're free to use something else if you prefer of course. What's important is it needs to be able to handle importing and exporting .tga and .dds files.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines Unofficial Patch. You'll probably need this anyway just to get the game running on modern systems. When you install the patch, make sure to also install the Patch Extras for the Bloodlines SDK.

Bloodlines SDK. Installed with the Unofficial Patch. Can be found in the game folder under /Patch_Extras/Developer Tools/Bloodlines SDK/Bloodlines SDK.exe

Tools within the Bloodlines SDK we'll be using:

• VPK tool. This is what we'll use to convert files back and forth so we can work with them.
  
• TTh/TTz Viewer. You can use this to help identify the texture file you want to work with without needing to convert every .ttz file to a .tga. It's not strictly necessary, just helpful.

First you need to locate the file for the portrait or poster you want to change. It can be helpful to have a save game with your character in the location of the image you want to change, both for reference and testing purposes.

An important note to keep in mind is that these files are split into .tth, .ttz, and possibly .vmt files with the same name. For example, picture27.tth, picture27.ttz, and picture27.vmt. This is the name of the painting hanging over the stereo in the Skyline Haven. The .ttz is the actual image, while the .tth is a header file. The .vmt contains metadata about the texture telling the game engine things like how to scale or transform the image so it looks like it's supposed to in game, among other things, but for simplicity sake we won't be messing with that too much.

These files should be located somewhere in the /materials folder. Some examples of where to look:

/materials/models/scenery/furniture/wall_art This folder contains various paintings, including those found in the Skyline Haven.

• picture27.ttz is the painting over the stereo.
  
• picture7.ttz is the painting on the wall next to the dining table.
  
• picture12.ttz, picture13.ttz, and picture16.ttz are the paintings hanging around the T.V.
  
• picture8.ttz is the painting in the bedroom.

/materials/decals/pictures More pictures can be found here that are also located in Skyline Haven. Specifically some of the ones named "loft".

• loft004.ttz is the poster at the top of the stairs, and in the lobby next to the elevator.
  
• loft006.ttz and loft007.ttz are on the wall going up the stairs.
  
• loft010.ttz is the poster on the wall in the kitchen area.

/materials/models/scenery/misc/posters The various posters you get as rewards for doing favors for other vampires are located here.

/materials/models/scenery/furniture/paintings/painting2.ttz and painting4.ttz These two files are the paintings hanging in the Tremere haven. They also happen to be hanging in Maximillian's room.

/materials/models/scenery/furniture/paintings/jeanettethereseroom/portrait.ttz This is the large portrait of the Voerman sisters hanging in their room at The Asylum.

/materials/models/scenery/misc/busstop You'll find the ads posted on bus stops located in this folder.

You can use the TTh/TTz Viewer tool found in the Bloodlines SDK to open these files and see what they look like without needed to convert them to .tga files first.

Once you've found the file you want to change, we can finally get to the fun part.

Once you've found the texture you want to edit, you need to convert it to a .tga file so you can edit it in GIMP. To do this, open the VPK Tool found in the Bloodlines SDK. Then click on the Texture Tools tab.



Under the Texture Tools tab, click Open File and select the .ttz file you want to edit. Then click the Convert TTZ to TGA button.



This will generate a .tga file in the same folder as the .ttz. Open the .tga in GIMP.

Now that the .tga is open in GIMP, you can pretty much do what you like as long as you don't change the size of the image. For a simple edit, like changing the picture in the paintings or posters hanging in your Skyline Haven, just copy the new image and paste it over the old one, resizing the new image as necessary so that it fits inside the borders of the old one.

There's something to note when doing this, however. Some of these files have a texture around them that looks like wood or some other kind of picture frame. This is for the frame in the game. So you'll want to keep your new image inside that wooden textured area.



If you don't, the new image will bleed onto the picture frame and you'll get some weirdness like the example below.



When you're done, export the finished image as a .dds file. When you do, make sure to select DXT5 compression and generate mipmaps.



Also, it's best to keep all these files in the same folder while you're working with them. So as an example if you're editing picture27, you'll have a picture27.ttz, picture27.tth, picture27.tga, picture27.dds, and possibly picture27.vmt all in the same folder.

Now that you have a .dds with the texture image you want, it's time to convert it to a .ttz/.tth file so the game can use it. Open the VPK Tool, go to the Texture Tools tab and open the .dds file.

Next, make sure to check the Hint DXT5 box and then click the Convert DDS to TTZ button.



This will generate/overwrite the .ttz and update the .tth file.

Once that's done, you should be able to copy BOTH the .ttz and .tth into the appropriate game file folder. Typically somewhere in /Unofficial_Patch/materials/, but it might depend on your installation and whether you're using one of the more complex game changing mods. It should be in the same folder structure location as the original file though. If there's a .vmt with them, you'll probably have to copy that one as well.

With all that done and all the files copied into the game folder, all that's left is to open the game and take a look at the results. If you did everything right, you should have a shiny new image adorning the wall for you to look at. If not, well, it's probably going to look weird, show as a missing texture or in the worst case, crash the game. You did remember to back up your original files, right? ;)

Everything below is completely optional. It requires just a tiny bit more working knowledge of GIMP or image editing in general, but can dramatically improve the visual quality of your image modifications.

So lets say you've got a new image in the paintings at your haven, but then you notice they don't really look like paintings. They look more like a poster you bought at the Red Spot down the street and put in a frame. There's nothing particularly wrong with that, but you'd still prefer that they look like an oil painting for that little bit of extra detail. Well, here's an easy way to do it.

First, you'll need an oil painting texture. Just fire up your favorite search engine and do an image search for "oil painting textures". Or if you're feeling really ambitious you can use a camera or your phone to take a picture of one yourself. You'll find all kinds of examples you can use, so just pick one you like. Remember, you're not looking for any particular picture. You're looking for brush strokes, cracking, oil spots, stains, things like that. Even a picture of a crumpled sheet of paper, rusted sheet of metal or plot of dirt could potentially work.

Now, open the image you want to add to the game in GIMP. Then paste the image of your chosen texture as a new layer overtop of the image you want.

Here is where the magic happens. Over in the layers window, you should see a setting for "opacity". Make sure the texture layer (the one for the oil painting) is selected and adjust this value down.



The oil painting texture should become more and more see-through. Keep going until you settle on a value you like.



Once you find a value that looks good to you, just merge the layers and save your image. Then proceed with the steps above for adding this image to the game.

And that's it. That's all it takes to turn a smooth, mass produced poster into a hand painted oil portrait.



Lets say you want to change something like the graffiti found on one of the walls near The Last Round. For this example, we're going to swap out this graffiti for a mural of our favorite Malkavian.



When you open the associated file in GIMP, in this case /materials/decals/details/sprayj.ttz (after converting it to a .tga of course), you might notice that it's already a bit see-through, and the area around the graffiti is completely transparent. If you haven't already guessed, the first detail can be achieved with the opacity slider. This little bit of see through is what makes it look like something spray painted on the wall rather than a paper sheet glued to it. Now for the second detail, the transparent area around the image, we just need to remove everything around the subject of the image. Open the new image you want as graffiti in GIMP.

Right click on your image layer and select Add Alpha Channel, if the image doesn't already have one.

Now there are a couple of ways to do this. You could, for example, use the eraser tool to thoroughly scrub all the unwanted details being carful not to accidentally remove chunks from the part you want to save. A better way is to use the intelligent scissor tool.





With the tool selected, zoom in on your image and click somewhere on the border of what you want to save and what you want to get rid of. Then move a short distance along that border and click again. You should get a line that roughly follows the shift in colors between the two points. Move along the border and click again to create another line connected to the first.



If the line appears too much inside the area you want to keep, press backspace to delete the last point you created and try again. Shortening the distance between two points can help get the line where you want it. Don't worry if the line goes outside the subject because you can clean that up with the eraser tool later. It might take a little practice to get used to, but it's a handy tool for projects like this. For now, keep going until you've made an outline around the subject. This is a rough example of what you should be looking at.



When you've clicked on the first dot to complete the circle, just click somewhere inside that area to finalize the selection. Next, click Select>Invert or press CTRL+I. Then press the Delete button. You should end up with something like this.



Like I mentioned earlier, you can use the eraser to clean up any rough spots. When you're done, all that's left is saving this image and following the same steps as the paintings to get it into place. This time, however, after you paste this image as a new layer over the original image and get it scaled and positioned, play around with the opacity on it until it more or less matches the transparency of the original. Then with the new layer selected, click "Layer>Layer to Image Size". That should make the new layer the same size as the old one. Now delete the original layer.

Almost done. At this point, when I went to export the image as a .DDS file, the opacity didn't save. What I did was create a new layer beneath the one I wanted, then merged the one I want to save into the new one below it. (Right click on the upper layer and click "merge down".) After that, everything went smoothly getting it exported and converted for use in the game.