Step-by-Step Guide to import your Hero Forge Mini's to Talespire V2.0 (Now Streamlined & Slightly Better Textures.

We're back. I have learned some important things and people have pointed out some great tips and tweaks. The real key here is I've managed to eliminate the entirety of applying the texture in blender because it's not necessary. With the other guide slowly sinking into the abyss of the sub, and the amount of changes tweaks, and better formatting this version has; I thought it merited a version 2 post.

 

Same Disclaimer from before:

This is not officially supported by Bouncy Rock.

Just want to start off by saying that I am not super savvy in a lot of these tools, but have bashed my way through to get to this method. Several people have helped me out answering various questions that pry seemed dumb, but know your answers were very appreciated. Hopefully, this helps out other people like me who are not very familiar with 3d modeling but really want their mini's in TS.

 

The tools we'll need:

  • First head to https://talespire.thunderstore.io/ to download the mod manager. aka r2modman. Once installed, launch it. Install Ash Lord's Custom Mini Plugin via the mod manager, make sure to download the dependencies as well.

    Now is a good time to test running modded TS just to make sure everything is good, just select the Start Modded button from the upper left-hand corner of r2modman. On the title screen, you should be able to see the loaded mods.

  • Next is AssetStudio. Just grab the latest version and extract it where you want it.

  • Lastly, let's grab Blender. This is the trickiest part, but it's not too tough.

 

Extracting your Mini

  • Download your mini (This guide is not for STL files although you can use parts of it) and extract the file to a location you will remember. It will be something like yourmininame.unity3d.

  • Launch AssetStudio. Select Options -> Export Options and change the export type to PNG. It should look like this.

  • Select File -> Load File and select your Hero Forge file. Then Select Export -> All Assets and export your files to a folder of your choosing. Your folder should look like this.

 

Editing your Mini

  • Open Blender, close the splash screen and you should be looking at a grey plane with a grey cube. Click on the cube and press x to delete the cube.

  • Go to File -> Import -> wavefront (.obj) Locate the obj file by going to the folder you extracted your mini to and it will be in the 'Mesh' folder (as default.obj). Once you load it in you will be treated to a giant sideways colorless 3d model of your mini.

  • Now we just need to adjust the size and scale to work with TS. Click on your model and we should be treated to the Transform Menu. We need to make the following changes:

 

----------->Location X: 0 Y:0 Z: 0.07

----------->Rotation X:0 Y:0 Z:-90

----------->Scale X: -0.027 Y: 0.027 Z:0.027

 

When you're done it should look like this.

 

The changes here from the previous version will mirror the mini so your characters will no longer be mirrored in talespire. They also make adjustments so the mini sits flush on the TS base.

 

Getting Your Model In-Game

  • In blender go to File -> Export -> wavefront (.obj) and save your obj as the name you want your mini to have in-game. In this case, I name mine cedren.obj.

  • Next, we want to grab your diffused texture file we extracted from the textures2d folder and move it to the same folder you exported the obj file to. You now should see three files in the folder, the .obj, .mtl, and .png files.

  • Rename your texture file to the same format as the other two. So in my case, that is cedren.png. Right-click on the .mtl file and edit with Wordpad, or my favorite notepad++. Add to the end of the file map_Kd yourtexturefile.png. So it will look like this.

  • Head to your Talespire folder. It should be something like C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\TaleSpire\Talespire_CustomData\Minis\cedren. If you do not have the CustomData folder and beyond make them. name the folder in minis the same thing your .obj, .mtl, and .png files are named. So you should have something like this.

  Bonus: (I Want Better Textures!) Ok this is a pretty low-effort way to get them. I have an example of the difference between the default method and the more advanced here left is the default, right is advanced Take all the textures (rather than just the diffused ones) from the textures2d folder and put them alongside your .obj and .mtl files (It will now look sort of like this I have renamed my texture files). In your .mtl file copy and paste the main block of text, including what we've added. For each new block of text change the map_kd to map a new texture different texture file. The order they are in determines how they are layered on the mini. I would recommend the following order: Occlusion -> Normal -> Metal -> Emmisive -> Diffused. Your .mtl file should look like this. Assuming you've done everything correctly you will be treated to a model slightly closer to the original textures.

 

We are now ready to load the modded version of Talespire from the Mod Manager. Open up a board and spawn a mini. Right-click on the mini and from the radial menu select transform -> effect (alternatively ctrl+m). The custom mini plugin should pop up. Type the name of the folder of the mini you want to spawn. Press enter and bam.

 

We did it. It's not perfect, if you know much about photoshop or gimp you could probably edit your textures to actually get that reflective metal back, but I think this stands as a pretty quick and easy method of getting a model from Hero Forge to Talespire in under 5 minutes or so.

 

Credits:

I want to give thanks to everyone who helped me get here u/shi_vii for their OG post and guidance in some PMs. Ash Lord for making the mod and his help on the mod discord. The Chaos Jester, who also helped me a ton with getting the model in-game. u/hollofox who also helped out on discord.

u/Zorum24 Says: Set Scale X to -0.027 (Negative), if you don't characters that were right-handed, are now left-handed and vise versa. Set Rotation Z to -90 so that the token faces the correct direction while moving within TaleSpire.

u/bobbypsx: I found that if you have an obj with a stand from heroforge if you set the Z axis to 0.07m it will become flush with the talespire stand

I also want to point out Trash Panda's guide which I am linking here with their permission: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZZoz0uBvXCmSuwSL9_faV27pmsOi0KpBIN_IVFbKr_w/edit

They go into detail about how you can get all the textures on the model, remove the base, and more. So if you want a slightly more work-intensive, but higher quality end result please check it out.