Not sure if this should be its own separate thread or not, or if anyone has posted this or not. If either of those are true, apologies in advance!
Wanted to share my recent developments as it pertains to discovering a surefire way of being able to create custom court templates, just like I've seen
The Goods, and
RobDavis do for years past. I'd like to give credit to them and their YouTubes for teaching me so much about how to interact and work with PSD and DDS files and using Photoshop to create custom courts, as well as Sjuojota, 2KSpecialist, NLSC, and anyone else who can be credited. Now then, again, if this is already posted somewhere apologies.
I don't have access to an actual shading file for the courts other than what's stock in 2K22, comparatively to Lagoa's template which had a file for shading for NBA 2K20 comparatively, found here:
Lagoa Court Template for 2K20 (NBA and FIBA)I originally found that if you simply drag a court file or stadium file such as f031 or s031 for instance, for the Charlotte Hornets, into the Mods folder that comes with the install using the NBA 2K22 hook, found here:
NBA2K_Hook For NBA2K22[ V0.0.7 & new script "UnlockDebugOptions" ] by looyh, whatever court and stadium files you drag into said mods folder will automatically override the default court and stadium files found in the game, as long as you installed your Hook correctly.
With that being said, I discovered this while I was toying around with a file found on Shuajota's website by user "L3" if I have that correct. You can find that file here:
NBA 2K22 Charlotte Bobcats 2007-08 Court by L3When I was looking at the court file to this download, I noticed it has the same typical "big76ers" file. I wondered if based on how it's well known among all of us how despite some advancements every year the NBA 2K series can a lot of times be a "copy-and-paste" of the previous year, I wondered if the latest and greatest court template from 2K21, by Lethanos for NBA 2K21, would translate perfectly to NBA 2K22 for the purposes of custom court creation for modders. You can find the link to that template here:
NBA 2K21 Updated Court Template v3.0 for Modders by LethanosSo after downloading that template, not editing it whatsoever, just doing a dry test run of looking through files, this is what I discovered:
You'll need the latest version of photoshop to accomplish it the way I did. When I used older jailbroken versions of Photoshop that I have on my tablet, it didn't seem to override the big76ers file from the 2007-2008 Bobcats download, even though I had pulled that file out of the court file or "f031" file itself and saved it separately on my computer, THEN tried to name my finished template the same name to override the file, as The Goods and RobDavis have demonstrated in tutorials in the past in order to essentially create a new DDS save file for that specific part of the court file to then drag into the f031 or whatever court you're replacing to import the new design you've made. Again, I used the latest version of Photoshop in Photoshop 2022, and I followed these two links in order to achieve capability to save DDS files in the new Photoshop:
you're going to want to scroll down to method number 2 in the article below. They include the link to the NVIDIA plug-in download for DDS save capability, but it's also the second link I've included below in order to make it easier:
Photoshop DDS Plugin: The Ultimate Guide to Using ItNVIDIA Texture Tools ExporterYou will need to make a free account through NVIDIA as part of the Developer Program, but you can leave boxes to receive emails and notifications unchecked. Once that's complete, when you open the court template provided up above by Lethanos, and then go to save it as I'll detail below, you will see the capability to save it as a DDS file.
Before we get to that though, you're going to want to go into the f031 file from the 2007-2008 Charlotte Bobcats file download, and unzip using 7zip or winRAR, find the file that's named "big76ers256.0200976aa730f40b.dds" within the f031 file format, and drag it out of that folder and copy it to your desktop, documents, any folder you wish and on any drive on your PC, just as long as it's a standalone file.
Then, when you've completed your new court design through the Lethanos Court template, you're going to want to go into Photoshop file menu, File > Save a Copy > "select to your computer option here on the pop-up menu" > file format should be set to NVIDIA DDS, and make sure you're saving it as the same big76ers copied filed you save individually from the step above > at this point you'll get a pop-up NVIDIA plug-in window. Save it as a BC7 file in the top left corner.
Once that's done, you'll see the "big76ers" file may have changed size to around 39,321,972 from its previous size of 25,166,036. I thought this would be a problem as well. However, when you drag and drop the separated new big76ers save file, into either the original or a copied version of the f031 Hornets court file, in order to replace that texture, it will replace the file and show the new file as part of the total court file as that same 39 million size, however it won't affect it appearing in game at all.
Once you've completed that step, you simply drag your new f031 court file to the Mods folder in the NBA 2K Hook, and name the f031 file whatever court you want to replace in game. I believe the court file names are still accurate to a tee from NBA 2K20, compiled at this link:
[NBA 2k20] Stadium & Floor List credit to maumau78 for that.
It's important I should note as well, I already verified all boundaries including out-of-bounds, foul line, paint area, and three point line are identical to the actual zones the game has pre-determined.
Essentially, this is a tutorial to create a custom court for modders for NBA 2K22, it's the same as NBA 2K21, using NBA 2K21 court templates. I haven't seen an actual NBA 2K22 court template released yet which is what provoked me to research this, as I had made a few custom courts for 2K20, but hadn't made anything for NBA 2K21 as I didn't even purchase it with such a heavily modded NBA 2K20.
In any case, I'd be happy to post a revamped template and file download in a Google Docs for those interested using the files of different users I used to achieve this discovery, with permission from each of course.
Thanks guys! Y'all have really inspired me over the past two years since I discovered the modding community for 2K, and I may be making a YouTube channel in the future to continue to educate those out there interested! We all just keep learning each and every day.