Guardians

The Guardians category shows a player body with a face, armor and a weapon. You pick each part, and Studio puts the guardian together. You can export the whole guardian to Blender.

The game builds a guardian from character data, not from one package asset. Studio reads the same tables, but much of the mapping is assumed. May be inaccurate lists it. What is WIP lists what is known to be wrong.

Open a guardian

1. Open the Assets tab of the asset browser.
2. Choose Guardians, in the WORLD group.
3. Click Titan guardian, Hunter guardian or Warlock guardian.

Each row is one class body. The class picks the body. Race and gender do not.

A guardian opens in the class’s placeholder armor, the galaxy pattern the game shows when you preview gear. Each class has its own placeholder set. The hands always draw, for the chosen gender.

The placeholder helmet hides the face. To see it, turn off Show helmet or set Helmet to None.

What the viewer shows

The model is on the left. The tabs on the right are Guardian, Parts, Materials and Related. The Guardian tab holds every choice. The other tabs work as they do for any entity.

A change rebuilds the guardian in the background. Studio reads the tables and the body rig once, so later changes are quicker. Back and Forward keep your choices.

With a weapon, the guardian opens holding it, in the stand pose the game picks for that weapon type. The pose holds on its first frame. Press play in the clip panel to run it; the clip list names it Weapon hold pose. With no weapon, the guardian opens in its bind pose.

The face always shows the head’s neutral pose, in the bind pose and in every clip. Each head carries this pose in its own data. Without it the head mesh looks wrong: on Human and Awoken heads the eyes stare and the lips part, and on Exo heads face plates stick out.

The top of the Guardian tab has these controls:

Notes, at the bottom of the Guardian tab, lists each part that could not load or skin, and why. Such a part is left out or stays in its rest pose.

Change the body and face

A drawn helmet hides these parts; see Open a guardian.

Studio also draws Head and Eyebrows. Neither has a choice of its own. Studio assumes Colours 1 to 3 tint Head, Colour 4 Hair, Colour 5 Eyebrows and Colour 6 Markings. Exo has no Eyebrows and no Colour 5.

The Hair and Markings pickers are in the Head section. Each head part has a second lookup in the game data. What it is for is unknown, so Studio does not draw it.

A colour list the race does not have is hidden.

A face, hair or colour number stays valid when you change race or gender. Studio moves it to the last entry of the new list when it is past the end.

Equip armor and a weapon

1. In the Guardian tab, open a slot: Helmet, Gauntlets, Chest, Legs or Class item.
2. Type in the search box to narrow the list.
3. Click an item. Default picks the class’s placeholder.

Default is the first row of every armor slot. Hover it to see which item it is. Only the Helmet slot also has None, which takes the helmet off. The other slots always draw an item.

Each slot lists every armor item of that slot, from the Armor category. Studio cannot tell an item’s class yet. So a Titan can wear a Hunter item, and the result may look wrong. Each row shows the item’s tag on the right. The open icon next to a slot opens that item. Hover the (!) mark after it to read that item’s notes.

Each armor piece shows with the item’s default dyes. A female body uses the female model of a piece when it has one. Inside one model, Studio draws only the parts made for the chosen gender, as the game does.

A cloak, mark or robe holds more than one copy of its cloth. Studio draws only the copy the game draws, so the cloth shows once, on the body. The Blender export holds that one copy too.

Hoods

Some armor has a hood that the game shows only while the helmet shows. Most Hunter cloaks have one. A few chest, leg, gauntlet and helmet items have one too. Some Hunter vests and cloaks also have parts that show only while the helmet is hidden, such as a hood worn down.

Studio follows the game. With a helmet drawn, the hood shows. With Show helmet off, or the Helmet set to None, the hood is hidden and the hood-down parts show. The game data names this switch only by a number, so its name is unknown.

The Weapon picker, the last row, lists the Weapons category. None removes the weapon. The weapon is held in the right hand. There is no stowed or holstered weapon.

The body takes the weapon’s stand pose. Each weapon names an animation tag, and the game’s tag tree turns the tag into a pose. Studio runs the same tree, so the pose follows the weapon type:

A few items of a type use another type’s pose, because their own tag says so. In the two-hand pose the fingers take the rig’s resting curl. The one-hand pose sets its own fingers, and its right hand stays almost open; see What is WIP.

Export to Blender

The Export to Blender icon at the top of the Guardian tab exports the dressed guardian as a view-only bundle. Export a guardian has the steps and lists what the bundle holds.

What is WIP

These are broken or only partly working. In Studio, the bow pose, cloth and hand notes end in (WIP).

May be inaccurate

Not built yet

New and Clone

New and Clone in the Guardians category are gray. The tip says: “Guardians need character data Studio cannot write.”