CountVirgo wrote:Importing the .msh went just fine (as shown below), my problem is I can not work out how to add the .dds texture to the mesh.
I have googled it (adding the dds to a blender mesh) to no avail... so would much appreciate some pointers (or a link to a tutorial if there is one)!
Okay, so, yeah. This is not exactly a straightforward process. A week with Blender is just enough time to get frustrated
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You might want to look at Szkaradek123's script. It works with the older Blender 2.49b, but it does import the textures and armature, not just the mesh, and once you've imported and saved, you can open the file in Blender 2.56 no problem.
If you're feeling brave, the way you add textures is as follows:
1) Right-click on the object to select it and and hit tab to go into edit mode (tab - so it's showing vertices)
2) In the properties view, select the material tab (fourth from the right, icon is a checkered sphere):
Screen shot 2011-04-02 at 9.10.30 PM.png
3) There should be at least one material. Each one will correspond to parts of the model that use the same tetxure map(s). So, for example, the head might have two textures, one for the eyes and one for the rest of the head. Select one and hit the "Select" button on the material tab. This should select all of the vertices and give you an idea about which texture you should be using. If there's only one (which is true for most bodies), you could have just pressed the A key to select all the vertices, but wanted you to see the materials tab - this is where you specify base color, shininess (specularity), transparency, etc.
4) Now, click the texture tab (third from the right, icon is a checkered square. There should be a list of textures with red checkerboards with no names. Those are the textures for the currently selected material, and if they have no name, they're just an empty slot waiting for a texture. The material and texture tabs work together - the texture changes here affect the currently selected material in the materials tab.
5) Single-click the top empty item in the list of textures and then click the "+ New" button to create a new texture. Optionally, you might want to rename the newly created Texture from "Texture" to "Diffuse" because this texture channel is going to hold our diffuse texture (the main texture with colors)
6) Change the Type of the new Texture from "Clouds" to "Image or Movie"
7) Look down for the section called Image, and hit the "Open" button. Find the appropriate .dds file in your file system and select it. In your case, you want cn_bdy_suca_0d.dds for the body.
After you select the image, it should add some new fields to the Image section. Look for a checkbox called "Premultiply" and check-it. DA2 maps that use alpha use premultiplied alpha, so you need to select this for things like hair to look right.
9) In the Image Sampling section, make sure under Alpha:, the "Use" checkbox is checked. If not, check it. Not all textures in DA2 use alpha, but many do, and I believe the Desire Demon is one that does.
10) Go down further to the Mapping section (click the disclosure triangle if it's not visible) and change the Coordinates from "Generated" to "UV", then in the new Layer field that comes up, click and select UVTex (or whatever it's called - there should only be one UV coordinate layer)
Now you've got the base texture added. If you add some lights and setup the camera, you should be able to render. Switching your 3D view to "textured" mode probably won't show this new texture, however - this is for the rendered object, there's actually a different place to set it up, which I'll identify in a moment, but I'll tell you how to add the normal map to get the fine details first
Unfortunately, Dragon Age 2 uses byte-swapped normal maps. There's source code earlier in this thread that will create a program to process a normal map. The normal map in your case is cn_bdy_suca_0n.dds for the body (n for normal, see how that works?) The conversion sript works on .png images. So, you need to convert from .dds to .png (You can open it in Blender and save as a PNG), then byte swap the png with the program, which will create a purple tangent-space normal map out of the byte-swapped gold normal map from the game. You don't have to convert back to dds for Blender, it's happy to use png images.
Once you've converted to a purple tangent-space normal map, you select the second texture in the list (the first empty one) and repeat the steps above, only selecting the normal map. Then, there's a few extra steps you have to take to tell Blender this is a normal map, not a diffuse map, including
1) Under the Image Sampling section, click "Normal Map" and make sure "Tangent" is selected.
2) Scroll down to the "Influence" section. Unclick the "Color" checkbox under the Diffuse: section and then and click the "Normal" checkbox under the Geometry section.
Now your renders should pick up some of the fine details like wrinkles and folds.
DA2 files commonly have several other types of image maps. You don't need them, but they'll give extra oomph. The cn_body_suca_0s.dds is a specularity map. It defines what parts of the model reflect more light. This will make jewelry and weapons reflect light from your light sources more realistically. The process for adding a specularity map is the same as the diffuse texture, except uncheck "Color" in the "Influence" section and check "Intensity" and "Color" under the Specular: section.
I'm not 100% sure what the other two are. I think the one that ends in "e" (cn_body_suca_0s.dds) is an emission map - it defines parts of the model that actually emit light. If I'm right about this (and I'm not sure I am), it would be used for things like glowing eyes.
I have no idea what the map that ends in "t" is (cn_body_suca_0t.dds). It seems to hold some kind of pattern (a checkerboard in the case of the desire demon) and I honestly haven't a clue what it's for.
Finally, if you want the texture to show up when displaying the 3D view in Textured mode, you'll need to convert one of the panes (not the 3D view) into a UV/Image editor. If the selected object is in Edit mode and there are vertices selected, you should see a graphical representation of the UV coordinates in the UV/Image editor. Now, in the bottom of the UI/Image editor, look for the "+ New" button, but don't press it. Instead, hit the little image icon right to the left of it and select cn_body_suca_0d.dds. That should overlay your UV coordinates over the diffuse texture. Now the textured mode should work. Textured mode doesn't work well with multi-texture models. I rarely work in texture mode anyway.
Hope that helps.
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but is there any chance you can make an exporter or replacer? The reason I ask is simple, I wish to mod the meshes for use in game, and while the importer will make modding the mesh possible, I have no way currently to put them back into the game. 
