Messages

51

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] Online viewer / exporter - Rɘverse FF9 (0.0.4b)

« on: 2015-03-31 13:27:06 »

This is a great update man, great work yet again.

Ah no world map export yet, too bad.

I'm surprised just how much content you've added honestly, even the initial Alpha had tons of working content without any real issues at all.

I'm looking forward to the summons, along with seeing what else you decide to tackle.

52

Graphical / Re: [WIP] Hojo Lifeform

« on: 2015-03-30 15:29:44 »

I think it started because the initial criticism was quite strong and harsh.

53

Graphical / Re: ff9 field background and battle stages extractor or viewer?

« on: 2015-03-19 13:27:21 »

I extracted the field of ff8 with deling and for ff9 I used the tools of this post: http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=14274.0.

I will try with blow up 3 plugin, thanks mate.

Extracting the backgrounds I can do with ease, as there are tools for this. Its extracting in bulk I'm interested in, 1by1 takes forever, like an hour or 2 per disc, especially since you're required by all those tools (maybe not pupa, not tried that yet) to give a name to them. Batching is what interests me mostly.

54

Graphical / Re: ff9 field background and battle stages extractor or viewer?

« on: 2015-03-19 08:51:20 »

Did you manage to export *all* the fields from FFIX or did you just test out a few and notice they were too small to use?

There is a photoshop plugin called Alien Skin Blow up that can resize images with minimum quality loss, its hundreds of times better than photoshops normal method, you could give that a try, theres a free 30 day trial on their website.

I'm also interested in getting all the FF9 (and FF8 too) backgrounds, but there doesn't appear to be any way to batch export them, and considering each game holds hundreds and hundreds of backgrounds doing them all 1 by one would be extremely time consuming. If you're figured out how to batch them please do share, I'm sure a lot more people than just me will be interested.

55

Graphical / Re: [WIP] Hojo Lifeform

« on: 2015-03-17 20:33:16 »

Thanks I appreciate the input. The process is mostly pretty fast, it's mainly slowed down by figuring out the best workflow for these models and what we want to do, and correcting mistakes by working the long way in the mean time lol. For instance my Life Form model was done a week ago, but since the process of baking materials to the texture doesn't work as expected it's been delayed lol. Wolf has actually been able to import and start, and finish, his Jenova model in that time frame lol. zBrush is pretty quick to work with so the potential is good.

There's a few options with the uv's but I definitely agree, it's not like doing them in Maya. There is the option to paint a "Protect Mask" which basically lets you kind of guide where the seams go, so paired with multiple Polygroups you do have a fair bit of control. For what we're doing it works pretty well though. Each piece of the model is it's own polygroup, so instead of unwrapping the whole mesh it's each piece separated. 

A week for that model is pretty good IMHO, I think the pro's can probably do it in a few hours, but I'm nothing like that so it'd still take me a while too, so I think the timeframe there is pretty damn good considering its probably not all day everyday.

One thing I will say though, is that you're lucky so far with the bones and animations, (did FFVII even use bones? Is it not just rotating the actual model parts themselves?) if FFVII really does use bones for some things then you might have some issues with some models where things don't fold correctly for example, so far though it seems everythings fine and considering how lucky every mod has been so far (I've not seen any weight painting type issues in threads) I'm guessing the method FFVII uses is a bit unorthadox compared to more recent games.

56

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] Online viewer

« on: 2015-03-17 17:33:42 »

Thats a nice update, nice work.

I wish you would add a model exporter for exporting objs beforehand but I'm comfortable waiting until you finish with the summons.

Interestingly, I did have a look at actually ripping the model straight from the browser viewport itself, but it seems that theres no tools to do this when the model file isn't temporarily saved in any particular location (which is how many of the 3d portfolio sites do it).

57

Graphical / Re: [WIP] Hojo Lifeform

« on: 2015-03-17 17:30:41 »

Oh no I actually meant retopo'ing yourself by hand, that'll get the best results, but it is time consuming.

But your retopo is seen by zbrush as a new mesh, and so it doesn't effect your main mesh, so you would be able to have everything with no issues.

Also another way to be able to retopo is to polypaint and turn off polypaint by uvs.

Eitherway if your method is fast and you're not fussed about how the UVS look then stick with it, I'm used to having to have really tight UVS with all the space used to the max and having full control over it, from what I remember zbrush unwraps and packs, but you don't really have any control over it from there.

58

Graphical / Re: [WIP] Hojo Lifeform

« on: 2015-03-17 15:47:31 »

It all comes down to preference. Personally I don't think anything comes close to zBrush's tools. There are something's I wish were better, but there's a lot of things in Zbrush I wouldn't be able to do else where. High poly meshes is a good point, but when a projects completed we can decimate it to nearly any level. Honestly we just aren't interested in 10k models. If I was doing professional work I'd import a completed model to Maya to clean up and optimize the edge flow, but just doing this in my spare time I'm more concerned about detail.

I have one model that's nearly done, actually just waiting on finalizing the texture map (we're working on a method of baking materials). Otherwise yes, I use Multi Map Exporter and the final model will have displacement, normal, and ambient Occlusion. Otherwise I have another that's detailed and just needs to be painted, and a few others ready for detailing. As of now there isn't a full scope for the project, it's more about just doing the models each of us wants and practicing with the zBrush UI. I have a few ideas but waiting to see how everything plans out first.   

Alrighty.

Well best of luck to you guys, if you need any tips give me a shout, but you're probably a little more versed in zbrush than I am, I only use it once every few months when freelance requires it.

One thing I'm curious about though, is skinning/weighting, how does it work, are you just completely reweighting the models before importing them back into the game, I don't remember much about hojo or that jenova form, I think hojo had some animations but Jenova was mostly static if I remember rightly.

One small tip, if you're after making the model lower but having more control over the final quality and polygon count then instead of decimating you could use retopo, I don't know what version of Zbrush you have but its a good tool, if not a little cackhanded at times. Thats what I've always used in the past if the changes I've made in Zbrush are too drastic compared to the low poly imported mesh.

59

Graphical / Re: [WIP] Hojo Lifeform

« on: 2015-03-17 15:00:17 »

much prefer zbrush

60

Graphical / Re: [WIP] Hojo Lifeform

« on: 2015-03-17 12:31:39 »

Problem is that with hand made models you have to get in to the millions of polys to hand paint the model. Then reduce it while havin uv maps. It's very tricky. That's as low as I could go without shredding it. Here's what I'm working on now.

Hey thats looking pretty nice, really liking the silhouette there.

I don't understand the part about needing to get into the millions of polys to hand paint the model though, if you're painting straight onto the 3d model in Zbrush using UV's then yeah your subdivisions need to be pretty high, but if you're just painting the UVS in photoshop then your polycount doesn't matter its only your UVS that matter.

Are you Uv mapping straight in zbrush too? Or do you start in Maya/3dsmax and then import into zbrush to sculpt in your real details?

I do personally think 10k is way too high for that model, but if it runs fine in game, and animates well, then theres not really any difference what the polycount is.

61

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] General editor - Hades Workshop (0.25)

« on: 2015-03-01 13:07:44 »

However, the main problem with that is the image size (that's why you can't make the other textures larger than what they currently are). If there is space to add some lines in fields' scripts, increasing a background's size (including upscaling them) would hit the limit extremely fast.

The viewer window needs rework ^^ As you said, most backgrounds don't fit inside. The pathing and few other stuff should also be displayed in this window so I let it the way it is until I decide its final form. Same as the Script editor that definitely needs improvements.

Could you explain the image size limits in a bit more detail at all?

The pathing? Do you mean the walkmesh, I remember a Zidane_2 tool let you view/export walkmeshes but I never got the tool working (eventhough I have the source codes to everything he's done).

One thing that I think would be nice, probably for everything actually, is batching export (and import), someone could export all the scripts from lets say disc 1 as a text file and edit that, reimporting it later on, not sure if it'd save any time over the current method though, but it'd be great for fields and battle maps.

62

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] General editor - Hades Workshop (0.25)

« on: 2015-03-01 09:04:40 »

Thanks

Updated to 0.27 :
- Field backgrounds can be viewed and exported (not edited yet),
- You can modify the amount of enemies inside battles ; be sure to change it both in the main panel and in the battle script,
- Added a window telling you how much some file reading processes are progressing (this is quiet useful when you load fields or battle scenes, since they are long to read),
- fixed bugs (tokenize code for japanese, some script bugs, some UI bugs...).

About field background, they are not 100% well displayed. Some tilesets (think of those as layers) are a mess and I don't know how to handle them ^^" Those tilesets are mainly about the "Places names" that are displayed when you first enter a new place but there are also some effects of light. There are also few tilesets that are behind ones they should be ahead of.
You can export them as .tiff (Gimp can read them at least). The filesize is hugely non-optimized.
You can see background's animations too.
I guess I'll keep making bug-fixes updates while I'm studying the top-level file format. I need to make the remaining (menu) texts available and I can't do it without this step (plus it should unlock the card's panel also).

Awesome update.

When you say "(not edited yet)" what do you mean? Are there plans for us to be able to upscale the backgrounds or replace them entirely (sort of like the work edone for FF7 and FF8 with Palmer and so on)?

Are there any plans to add any sort of batching to the backgrounds at all? There are a loooot of backgrounds as we all know, doing them all 1by1 is possible, but very time consuming.

Something else that would be interesting, though not exactly necessary, is to have the viewer window be larger than its current size, most backgrounds don't actually fit correctly.
Its not exactly an issue to scroll up/down left/right though, which is why I said its not necessary, just a minor thing.

Great work.

63

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] Online viewer

« on: 2015-02-22 14:22:50 »

There is one : http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=7996.0
My program will display/export fields' background in its next release as well.

For World Maps, Zidane_2 also made a tool somewhere here : http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=6968.0

I should have clarified I meant exporters, my appologies. I've an older (beta) version of his tool that didn't work, will try out the new one then.

Zidanes tools are all great, just a tad 'fiddly' for lack of a better term.

His world map viewer is great, theres no export option though unfortunately, and its written in Blitz Basic, which is super old and abandonware now, quietly been hoping someone might make a newer version with an export function (or one that runs in DX9 with a larger draw distance, then with no export function I could rip the model with a ripper instead.

Thats for the reply, I'll checkout the tool by Zidane_2, along with looking forward to your new tools release.

EDIT: Zidanes field viewer works well, but the export function is only a snapshot from the viewer itself, which results in issues when a number of the images are larger than the viewport window, and so they get cut off in export, theres no way to enlarge the window.

Some way to import/export them in bulk as stills would be good, especially at their original sizes.

64

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] Online viewer

« on: 2015-02-22 13:39:18 »

Oh man, this is super cool, also rather nice having it in a web browser.

A few models here and there have the wrong rotation or part of their body is block colour instead of a texture, but still, its looking awesome.

Right now I'm able to export the .db files, but will it eventually be possible to export the models and textures as obj or FBX (to retain animations).

I got really excited with 'world map models' thinking it was going to be the world map itself, are there any plans to implement that at some point, or field environments (surprisingly there doesn't appear to be any tools for viewing FF9's field backgrounds).

First a first release this is a pretty feature-filled tool so far, really impressive.

65

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-12-05 19:24:36 »

Yeah figured I'd share it since I had it laying about anyway, and I did say before I'd share it but I totally forgot.

66

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-12-05 10:07:45 »

Though I would share this on the worldmap from a guy on Xentax that was looking into it (for 20 minutes no less).

Vert coordinates and stuff, honestly I don't entirely know what to do with this information so I figured I'd share it here.

WorldGridW= 24
WorldGridH= 20

V1=2

(seek > 0x1000)

-> function loadSetka2(fil,1,1,13)

tmp1= 0x1000

ffs%=524548
point%=18432

dffs%= 8
mesh[0]= 24
mesh[1]= 4028
mesh[2]= 8216
mesh[3]= 12140

seek > 0x1018
numvert= 118
numTri= 189

VertPointer= 0x3C
TriPointer= 0x3EC

(seek > 0x103C)

//reading 118 vertices

Code:
#    0x103c
v 8.000000 62.466797 58.000000
v 7.675781 63.165039 58.481445
v 7.675781 62.676758 58.481445
v 8.000000 62.890625 58.916016
v 8.000000 63.378906 58.916016
v 2.000000 63.316406 59.892578
v 0.715820 0.000000 59.000000
v 2.000000 0.000000 60.039063
v 2.551758 63.316406 57.777344
v 1.797852 0.000000 57.000000
v 2.117188 0.000000 57.613281
v 4.000000 0.000000 60.146484
v 3.208008 63.316406 59.295898
v 3.338867 0.000000 59.663086
v 7.000000 63.488281 59.101563
v 8.000000 0.000000 59.062500
v 2.865234 63.316406 60.000000
v 3.012695 0.000000 60.146484
v 0.947266 63.316406 59.000000
v 0.819336 0.000000 57.951172
v 1.671875 63.316406 57.990234
v 1.050781 63.316406 58.163086
v 6.000000 63.679688 59.577148
v 7.000000 0.000000 59.248047
v 2.000000 63.316406 59.000000
v 8.000000 61.965820 56.255859
v 7.617188 61.685547 56.000000
v 7.617188 61.553711 56.250000
v 7.284180 61.770508 56.809570
v 8.000000 62.458008 56.656250
v 7.258789 61.783203 56.333008
v 8.000000 62.241211 56.562500
v 2.000000 0.000000 62.000000
v 1.000000 0.000000 63.000000
v 2.000000 0.000000 63.000000
v 1.000000 0.000000 61.000000
v 1.000000 0.000000 62.000000
v 1.000000 0.000000 0.000000
v 2.000000 0.000000 0.000000
v 3.000000 0.000000 62.000000
v 3.000000 0.000000 63.000000
v 3.000000 0.000000 61.000000
v 3.000000 0.000000 0.000000
v 4.000000 0.000000 62.000000
v 4.000000 0.000000 63.000000
v 4.000000 0.000000 0.000000
v 6.000000 0.000000 62.000000
v 5.000000 0.000000 63.000000
v 6.000000 0.000000 63.000000
v 5.000000 0.000000 61.250000
v 5.000000 0.000000 62.000000
v 5.000000 0.000000 0.000000
v 6.000000 0.000000 0.000000
v 7.000000 0.000000 62.000000
v 7.000000 0.000000 63.000000
v 7.000000 0.000000 61.000000
v 7.000000 0.000000 0.000000
v 8.000000 0.000000 63.000000
v 8.000000 0.000000 61.916992
v 8.000000 0.000000 60.903320
v 7.000000 0.000000 60.000000
v 8.000000 0.000000 0.000000
v 0.000000 0.000000 63.000000
v 0.000000 0.000000 62.000000
v 3.715820 0.000000 60.707031
v 0.786133 0.000000 60.000000
v 0.000000 0.000000 61.000000
v 0.000000 0.000000 59.000000
v 1.135742 0.000000 57.000000
v 0.000000 0.000000 56.000000
v 0.000000 0.000000 57.000000
v 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
v 8.000000 62.955078 58.000000
v 8.000000 62.492188 58.493164
v 2.333984 0.000000 56.000000
v 2.000000 63.316406 57.000000
v 2.480469 63.006836 56.000000
v 1.671875 0.000000 57.778320
v 4.000000 63.316406 60.000000
v 5.000000 0.000000 60.460938
v 5.000000 63.535156 60.314453
v 6.000000 0.000000 59.723633
v 3.000000 63.006836 56.000000
v 3.000000 63.188477 57.000000
v 4.000000 63.087891 56.000000
v 4.000000 62.835938 57.000000
v 4.000000 62.998047 58.000000
v 7.082031 63.344727 58.075195
v 5.000000 63.368164 59.000000
v 4.000000 63.083008 59.000000
v 4.838867 63.087891 56.000000
v 6.000000 63.423828 59.000000
v 8.000000 62.901367 57.071289
v 6.946289 61.757813 56.954102
v 6.447266 60.680664 56.508789
v 6.657227 60.787109 56.254883
v 6.775391 60.762695 56.000000
v 6.270508 60.709961 56.729492
v 5.901367 60.823242 57.098633
v 6.763672 61.841797 57.445313
v 5.419922 61.757813 56.500000
v 4.810547 62.090820 57.190430
v 5.555664 61.580078 57.444336
v 6.222656 62.095703 57.960938
v 6.397461 61.182617 56.000000
v 5.547852 61.500977 56.000000
v 5.000000 62.343750 58.000000
v 7.310547 61.329102 56.000000
v 7.833984 61.919922 56.000000
v 8.000000 62.081055 56.000000
v 8.000000 62.449219 56.775391
v 0.000000 0.000000 58.000000
v 6.000000 0.000000 60.000000
v 8.000000 0.000000 59.847656
v 2.000000 0.000000 60.871094
v 1.513672 0.000000 56.000000
v 6.000000 0.000000 61.000000
v 0.000000 0.000000 60.000000

67

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-11-13 17:37:24 »

Thanks. To answer you, it might be possible, but I think Zidane_2 (him again !) made a program to see the world map already. I don't remember how it worked (if you could export the models or only see it) but I may try to add this feature in the future.

Aye, Zidane_2 made a bunch of software written in Blitz3D for FFIX, I've put the sourcode here (he gave it to me a while ago) so you can grab it if you like, it just sits in there all the time anyway.

Here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/azf19y7homu8qnj/u-JOQibN1q

Unfortunately you couldn't export from his viewer, it was only that, a viewer, it was pretty good though.
I actually have the sourcecodes to everything he ever did for FFIX, I'd be happy to share it with you, I've got his permission to share it so its not a problem, might help you a little. It's all written in Blitz3D though, so you'll probably have to get the trial version of that.

A guy on the Xentax Forums managed to make a little progress in figuring out the format so I can always provide that info too.

Eitherway this program is awesome and your aforementioned updates sound great, IX doesn't get enough love honestly, I'd love to be able to go in and HD the game with higherquality textures (and perhaps a more painterly art style Ala Bravely Default) some time.

EDIT: In the end I just threw in all the sourcecodes for all the Zidane software he gave me (basically everything he put on the forums plus a few more things he never shared because they were incomplete.

68

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-11-13 11:10:25 »

Ah this program is awesome!

Is there anychance it might be able to export the models/textures of the world map at any point?