As of now i dont know how to model anything from scratch on my own yet, so this guide won't cover that. What it will cover is how to get a model you already have into the game and get it working properly.

For an example in the guide, i am using a Dedede hat model from kirby and the rainbow curse, gotten off of Modeler's resource:
https://www.models-resource.com/wii_u/kirbyandtherainbowcurse/model/11845/

I also use blender, so anything i do in a modeling program for the guide will be done in blender.

In this particular example of the Dedede hat, the download came with a few files:



From left to right, we have the texture, material file, object file, normal map, and occlusion map.
Since the model came with a .mtl file, most of the material will be done for us when we import this into blender. If you dont have a .mtl file, the Material section of this guide will cover how to handle that later.

Import the .obj file into blender and it should autodetect the .mtl if you have it. ( you can press ALT+Z to toggle into the material viewmode )



The next step is to add a single bone and weight the hat to it, so the editor will recognize it as a Skeletal mesh. If you want your hat to be a timestop flair, skip adding the bone entirely and move onto exporting from blender. Timestop flairs use a staticmesh, which has no bones.


With the model selected, the cursor at the center and in Object Mode, select Add > Armature > Single Bone. If your cursor ( the red and white dotted circle ) isnt at the center, you can use Shift+S > cursor to center to re-allign it.





When thats done it should look something like that.

Re-Select the Mesh in the top right, then Shift click to select the bone after.



With both of them selected in that order and still in object mode, press CRTL+P to bring up a menu and select "With Automatic Weights"



This will set the hat onto the bone completely, and The Editor will now recognize it as a skeletal mesh. Go ahead and save the .Blend file now, as we may need it later.

The last step now is to export it in .FBX format so the editor can read it!
File > Export > .FBX

Once you've gotten there, theres a couple more things we need to change - At the very bottom left you can change some of the properties of how it will export - Under "Geometries" You will want to change the Smoothing to "Edge" or the Hat Editor will not be able to read them.



And finally uncheck "Add Leaf Bones" under Armatures.



Then the actual Export button is at the top right of blender, across from where you name the file. With that all done, the editor should have no trouble accepting the model.

Once you've got the .FBX sorted, You can import the hat into the editor. In the editor select the "Import" button at the bottom of the Content browser, then select your .FBX file and you'll be greeted with a window like this:



You'll want to change the spot under "Package" to something other than "MyPackage" or it may cause errors and crash with other mods that forgot to change that. If your .FBX is going to come with materials, scroll down in the window and select Check the box next to import materials, and import textures.



Once you've done all that, hit OK. grouping is for organizing different assets / larger packages, but is optional and can be left blank. You should be greeted with a warning about an incompatible FBX version, but you can safely ignore that.



Once its done its thing, you should be left with something like this! Go ahead and save your package ( either in your mod's "Content" folder, or somewhere you'll remember it for now ) And you'll be ready to move onto the next step, Fitting it to hat kid and bow kid!

Once you've got the model imported, you'll need to see how it fits on hat kid. in the content browser, select the "All Assets" Button, then search for the "hatkidhead" Skeletal mesh. when you've found it, right click it and open it in the Animset Viewer.

Wew, theres a lot of stuff here. luckily we only need a single thing, the Socket Manager here at the top left -





Once you've got the socket manager open, hit the "Clear Previews" button ( the one with the red X over the cube )

So there are a lot of different sockets here, but to start, scroll down and find the "thorhat" socket and select it. It will open up some information on the right - Go back to your own package and left click once on your Hat mesh to select it, then back to the socket manager and hit the green arrow across from "Preview Skel Mesh" ( or Preview Static mesh if it is a timestop flair )



This will show you how the hat currently fits on hat kid, and in this case with the dedede hat...



Its a tad big.

Dont worry if its position is off, as the hat editor can fix that very easily later. for now we need to worry about the size, and for that we will go back into blender. Go ahead and close the socket manager and Animset Viewer, and find the hatkidhead skeletal mesh again.

This time, drag it into the Hat editor's empty scene. right click it and select SkeletalMeshActor Properties, or select it and press F4. A window will pop up, under the movement tab set its X Y and Z coordinates to 0,0,0.



We are going to use this mesh to scale the size of our hat to hat kid's head. Right click it, and Select "Export .FBX". If you don't have this option, go to the prefrences tab at the top of the editor and uncheck "Simplified Editor" at the bottom of the dropdown menu. Once you've saved the mesh somewhere, we can go back to blender.

Open your .blend back up and import the hatkidhead .FBX into the scene. since its origin is a bit lower than where it actually is, drag it down a bit so its somewhere around the center like this ( about where the socket was, you dont need to be exact )



Now, while still in object mode you can scale the hat until it is the size you want. feel free to translate it around so it looks like it fits her.



Once you've gotten it to fit right, remove the hatkidhead mesh from the scene ( delete all of it ) save your .blend file, and re-export it. ( dont forget to re-select edge under Geometries! )

Note: If you save over the old .FBX file you actually imported into the hat editor, you can right click the hat's skeletal mesh in the content browser and hit "Reimport Skeletal Mesh" which will save you a bunch of time, and having to delete the old one.

Now if you go back into the animset viewer and still have the preview mesh set, it should be the right size!



If its offcenter a bit above her head or even clipping into her dont worry- we'll fix that next!
With the hatkidhead animset viewer still open, right click and open your own hat in the Animset viewer. ( if you are using a static mesh, move to the next part about the Static Mesh Editor )

In the Animset viewer, you can change your hat's Origin, and Rot Origin. This will auto update with the preview in the Hatkidhead animset viewer, and let you make any needed adjustments to location, or rotation.



For the dedede hat i was lucky and it was alligned where i wanted it to start off, but in the preview there i've set it 10 units off to the left to show that you can control its position from the animset viewer. Go ahead and rotate it / translate it until you think it fits just right!


For a static mesh, its handled a bit differently.



You'll need to go into the Static Mesh Editor, and under the tool tab there are options to rotate it, and translate it.

Once you've gotten it alligned how you want it, save your package and you're good to move onto getting it fitted onto bow kid!

Bow kid's hair is handled quite a lot differently than Hat kid, and you'll need to make sure it fits on her too. Search for the "bowkid_head_skm" Skeletal mesh and repeat the same process for getting it to preview on her head mesh. ( make sure to use the same socket, I used "thorhat" as the example one as it is in the default position and the socket doesn't rotate or scale your mesh at all. )

Bow kid has different Selection groups for her hair, which change which parts of it are visible/hidden to fit better with different hats.



You may need to size up the window or scroll down to reveal the section for Selection groups. you'll notice it might not fit quite right on her, as her head is actually slightly smaller without her big poofy hair. You may have to go back and adjust the scale of the model slightly, or mess with the origin until it fits both of their heads. You can have all three animset viewers open at the same time, so just play around with it untiil you like how it fits.

Take note of which Selection group you liked the best ( brewing hat for the pigtails, or maybe your hat fits well with the big poofy hair ) and save that for later, it'll come up towards the end of the guide.

I chose the thor hat socket as it is the easiest one to use, since it has no weird effects with translation or rotation, along with it being centered on her head by default. You may try other sockets and see they have different effects.
- The kid hat socket bounces quite a lot more than the other sockets, you'll notice it bobs forward and back quite a lot. The thor hat socket does this a bit too, but its much smaller. The kid hat socket also allows your hat to animate with the helper hat ability, how it jumps off your head and spins around.

When it comes to the Dweller mask, it gets a bit more complicated. since you probably want it to line up with the green eyes, you will want to use the DwellerMask socket. What you may notice right away though, is that your hat is smaller when using this socket. Sockets can change scale, and the DwellerMask socket multiplies the scale by 0.7.

This is a bit weird, but what you can do is go back in blender and scale up your mesh by enough to counteract the 0.7 offset, ( which happens to be about 1.428 ) so when you set it as the preview it comes out at the right size.

To avoid badges floating around randomly around your hat or not showing up at all, you'll need to setup your badge sockets. The same way you opened the socket manager for the hatkidhead mesh, you can do the same for your hat mesh.

This time it will be completely empty. Select "New Socket" hit OK then for the name type in "BadgeA"



Then in the same way you put your hat in the preview on the hatkidhead mesh, paste
in for the preview static mesh. This will act as a visual while you move the socket around and rotate it, so you can tell what it will look like in game. You can use spacebar to toggle between rotate and translate, mess around with it until you've fitted it into a spot you like.

Above where you pasted in the preview mesh, you can change the relative scale. If you dont want any badges to show on your hat, set this to 0.00001 and put the sockets inside the hat somewhere nobody will see it. ( setting it to 0 will cause it to default to 1 )



You'll need to repeat this for all three slots, named BadgeA, BadgeB and BadgeC.

If you had a .mtl file and imported the material into the Editor, Unreal will have auto created a material for you with some of the basic things, but its not quite all ready yet. ( and if you didnt, or didn't have a .mtl file, import your texture as a .PNG seperately, when it is in the editor and saved right click it and hit "Create new material..." )

It'll do the same thing as the .mtl file had done.

Right click your new material and open it.



Change the blend mode to Masked, the Lighting model to PBR ( may freeze for a few seconds ) and make sure "Used with Skeletal Mesh" and "Used with Static lighting" are both checked under Usage.

If you've got a normal map, now would be the time to import it!

You'll now want to hook up a "PlayerShader" function to this material, so it will have all the effects hat kid has - when she's fallen in ice or mud, is hurt, or is wet from the rain or swimming.

Drag anything from the material function library into the material editor ( i just used the blend_ColorBurn since its the first in the list ) then paste in


under the "Material Function" spot.





Hook it up like so, and hit the green checkmark at the top left to apply changes. you can also select your hat in the content browser and hit the green arrow to change the preview mesh, so you can see how the changes you make to the material look on the hat without having to look over at the animset viewer.

To add a normal map if you've got one, you can drag it straight from the content browser into the material editor, then hook everything up like this:



Note that "WorldPositionOffset" being hooked into the VertexShader handles the warping of the muddy effect when hat kid falls into the mud, so if your hat doesnt work well with that you can unhook that to disable it.
The material should be good to go! hit the green checkmark again and save your package, you can move on to the final step.

The final step is setting up the hat flair script. I'd reccomend using a program like notepad++ to make it easier to read!

Here's a basic hat flair script, set to make an ice hat flair:


And if you're not too sure on how to save the file, you can download it here! https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/192838821396742144/580912855424040970/Star_CosmeticItemQualityInfo_Dededehat.uc

But this is where you'll insert the information regarding your hat, so it can be an actual item.

is for what hat ability the flair applies to. in this case it is an ice hat, but you can find all the other full ability names in
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\HatinTime\Development\Src\HatinTimeGameContent\Classes\Abilities\Trigger

controls how often it shows up in the roulette, and you can find the vanilla ones in
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\HatinTime\Development\Src\HatinTimeGameContent\Classes\Abilities\ItemQuality
or make your own!

lets you disable it showing up in the roulette entirely, maybe if you wanted the flair to be available instantly.

is where you would put the full name of your hat mesh. you can get the full name by right clicking it in the content browser and selecting "copy full name to clipboard"

is the icon thats shows up in your inventory ingame. you can import an image you want to be the icon ingame, and it would go here. if you import your own, open it in the Texture Viewer and set its LODGroup to "UI" so it looks correctly in game.



is where you will put the name of the socket you have chosen

is where you put the section group you chose for bow kid.

Those are all the required ones for your script, the one at the bottom "HidePonytail=CIQ_Off" determines if hat kid's ponytail is hidden. As the ice hat normally hides her ponytail, CIQ_Off will disable that feature since my dedede hat doesn't hide where her ponytail connects to her head. You can also check out located in
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\HatinTime\Development\Src\HatinTimeGameContent\Classes\Abilities
for the other things you can put into that default properties section of the hat flair script, like hiding hat kid's bangs/front hair!

is where you can optionally put a string that allows you to use a localization file and give your hat a name. If you dont do this, the name will show up as whatever hat it is being a flair for - so in this example it will just say "ice hat".
If you want a name though, paste
Into a .txt file and rename the .txt file as "collectibles.int"

As a final note, make sure that the "class Star_CosmeticItemQualityInfo_Dededehat" matches your .uc file's name. If it doesn't, the script wont compile.

You should be able to copy that block of code, paste it into a text document and slot in your own mesh, icon etc. or copy one of the existing hat flair scripts in the source files of the game, located in
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\HatinTime\Development\Src\HatinTimeGameContent\Classes\Abilities\Trigger

Make sure you re-name it as a .uc file if you started with a text file so the editor can read it.

In the event you aren't replacing a mesh and are just looking to change the material of a hat ingame, you can actually add an extra materials line to the defaultproperties of the script.
example of it being -

That is taken from one of the variations of hat kid's hat with the extra stripes, so instead of having a new mesh for each hat they just swap the material out in the script like that!

You can also modify any of the other material slots on the hat, so if you did something like this -
It would do no changes to the first two material slots, but replace the third slot with a new material!


This is an optional step, but if the flair you are working on has physics, whether you are modifying a basegame flair's materials or have your own, you'll need to add it to the script, too. You'll need two lines to make it work -

One that specifies the physics asset you have, and another line i believe to tell the game it has a physics asset and to apply it.

While i don't know how to set those things up myself and it's not covered in the guide, that is how to put them in the script so things like the bow or chefs hat bounce around when walking.

Something else to note, if you are making a flair of hat kid's normal hat ( the helper hat in the game files ) it will by default hide a bunch of the material slots. nothing to worry about if you only have one material on the mesh, but if you have 2 or more some of them will be hidden by default, making it seem like your hat is broken. Add
to your script, inside the defaultproperties section and it should fix the parts of your hat being hidden.

Note also that having too many material slots can cause a lot of visual glitches, the limit is somewhere between 12 and 16, so be careful if you end up with that many.

Now that you have the two main things done, the script .uc file and the content package .upk, you need to place both of these in the right location in your mod's folder so the tools can read them when you compile and cook the mod.

In your mod's folder
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\HatinTime\HatinTimeGame\Mods\dededehatmod
for example -

You'll want to create a "Classes" folder to place the .uc file in, and a "Content" folder to place the .upk package in. that way, when you hit the compile scripts button everything will be in the right place and the tools can read them. If you compile your scripts and it reads green you're good to go! cook your mod and test it in game to see if it works.

If you've decided you wanted to give your hat the optional name, in your mod folder create a "Localization" folder, then an "INT" folder inside that one, and place your collectibles.int in there.

By default, the flair will show up in the roulette. If you dont want it there and would rather have it added straight to your inventory, there is another script you can add after setting "SupportsRoulette" to false in the flair's script. ( if you dont set that you can still get it in the roulette after disabling the mod through the menu which is weird )


And if you're not sure how to save it, it's downloadable here: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/192838821396742144/582607896744034314/Guide_DededeMod.uc

But, here's an example of an available instantly script for a hat flair. You'll notice it specifies two classes at the end of both the adding and removing sections. One for the hat class you are applying the flair to, and after it the flair class you've made.
So you can change
To the hat your flair applies to which you've also specified in your flair script already

and change
To your flair class. ( same as the file name )

Make sure the file name of this new script and the "class" name
( In the example script )
are both the same, and you can place it in your "Classes" folder right next to your flair .uc file as a separate .uc file.

Recompile and recook your mod, and with the script you should be able to enable and disable the mod ingame!


When thats all done the mod manager will automatically detect that the script, and add the tag for Available Instantly. This has the added effect that by disabling the mod *BEFORE* uninstalling it, the mod wont leave behind a duplicate of the hat in place of the flair and it will remove cleanly!

As for a flair tag on the workshop, The tools should automatically detect it and you should be good!

If thats all worked out, you should have a nice looking hat flair in game, all ready to go and upload to the workshop!




If something was unclear or you need help, feel free to leave a comment or join the Official hatintime discord at Discord.gg/ahatintime - theres a #modding-help channel at the bottom of the server where you can go for support!

They've also got a #modding-tutorials channel which will link you to many other useful guides, like some of the basics not covered in this guide!