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Ifalna - FF7 Model viewer / animator
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v1.40 - Updates
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-Preliminary support for battle models & animations
v1.36 - Updates
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-Fix comments in HRC files causing issues
v1.35 - Updates
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-Included render to export an animation sequence to a BMP or PNG collection of files
-Set background colour
v1.30 - Updates
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-Included NeutopiaW's updated P format; fixes some corrupted models and displays textures properly!
v1.25 - Updates
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-Uses NULL reader which allows you to read in models from folders on disk as well as LGP's
-Fixed ratio stretches in OpenGL window
-A few changes to P rendering code
-Frame copy command
v1.21 - Updates
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-Filter setting saved to INI file
-Ifalna can display multiple polygroups per bone correctly (fixes some models, like Aeris' Don Corneo scene costume).
v1.20 - Updates
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-Redesigned interface
-Added model details
-Added animation filtering - ie. show only animations which *really* apply to a particular model
-Window remembers its position and size
v1.10 - Updates
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-Now runs correctly on non-English systems (caused many crashes...)
-Simple editing of animations possible!
v1.01 - Updates
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-Reflection view (not really useful, but it does look cool)
-Result cache (saves analysis of last opened file, to save loading time)
-No longer requires FiceLib (may solve crash problems?)
-Logs messages (look for LOG.TXT)
v1.00 - Initial release - Coded by Ficedula ([email protected])
Ifalna is a rather sw33t 'model viewer' for FF7 PC. Meaning? You can look at the 3d models from FF7 (only the 'field' ones so far, ie. NOT the battle models) and also view their various 'poses' - the animations they go through, if you like.
This is a rather big improvement on previous programs that only showed models one piece ('bone') at a time and couldn't animate them
How To Use
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It SHOULD be simple (of course, if you've used my programs before, you're used to hearing that, right?). Just run IFALNA.EXE and you'll get the main window up. The first thing you need to do is open an archive containing model data. There's only one main archive in FF7 like that, CHAR.LGP, so (if you've got FF7 installed) the program will hopefully have that file shown in the Open dialog for you. Just choose the archive using the normal Open File windows dialog, by clicking on the "..." button. (Incidentally, the world map archive, WM.LGP, also contains model data - for the 3d models on the world map, obviously. There's far fewer of them so the archive is much quicker to load).
Now Ifalna will scan the archive for model data. This can take quite a while because CHAR.LGP contains over 12,000 files, and even though it doesn't need to examine all of them, it does need to look at quite a lot of them.
Once it's done, the left hand list will contain a list of viewable models. Both the filename and the skeleton name will be listed. The skeleton name is usually fairly descriptive - the first skeleton should be AAAA.HRC, which has the name "n_cloud_sk" - obviously, that's Cloud.
When you choose a skeleton, the right hand list will fill up with a list of POSSIBLE animations to apply to this model. Now, Ifalna can't tell which animations were actually meant to go with this model, just which ones MIGHT.
(It's dependant on the number of 'body parts'. Tifa's model has 24 body parts, so when you choose her model, Ifalna lists all the animations that contain data for 24 body parts. However, more than one model in the game could have 24 body parts, so not all the 'valid' animations will actually look correct with Tifa - some could be intended for other models. Especially for people, most people will have a similar number of body parts. The exceptions are people with cool hair (seriously!) where additional body parts have been dedicated to the hair, so they have a different number of bones. So people like Aeris & Sephiroth are easy to find animations for
What then? To view, just choose an animation, and that model & animation will be displayed in the display window.
What happens if you select an animation that wasn't intended for that model? It depends. If both models (the one you're viewing, and the one the animation was intended for) were similar - both humanoid - then it might look "more or less" correct. Some parts would look a bit out of place.
At worst, of course, it'd be a animation intended for a totally different model, and the body parts would appear in totally the wrong places.
Ifalna does have a "filtering" mode. If this is on, only animations which really *were* meant for the selected model are displayed. At least, that's the theory - it should work, but of course, it's not guaranteed to. Generally, you'll want this turned on though.
When you exit Ifalna, it saves the analysis of the model files in a cache (IFALNA.CACHE) which it tries to load next time you run it. This saves loading time a lot.
The Viewer
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To start off with, the viewer should show the model just 'standing' there.
There's a number of controls you can alter:
'Rotate X/Y/Z': Drag these bars across to rotate the model in different ways.
'Start/End draw': Select the body part to start and end drawing with. To draw ALL parts (normal) set Start to the beginning (far left), and End to the last (far right).
'Frame': Selects the frame of animation to view (when Animate is on, the program cycles through all the frame by itself of course. This lets you view the frames 'manually'.)
'Zoom': I think you know what this does
In addition, there are various viewing options that can be turned on or off from either the Options menu, or the Display toolbar.
'Crosshairs': When on, each body part has three lines forming a 'crosshair' showing that body parts' center. Not much use (I used it to test out different methods of model viewing).
'Wireframe': When on, polygons are drawn as outlines, rather than as filled shapes.
'Animate': The good one When turned on, the model will perform the chosen animation over and over.
'Bones': When on, the 'bones', or 'joints' within the model, are drawn. You probably won't see this since the body parts cover them, so either turn the body parts off, or put them into wireframe mode.
'Bodies': When on (it normally is), the body parts are drawn. You'd only need to turn this off so you could see the bones (skeleton) of the model.
'Lighting': Turn on to add some simple lighting/shading to the model. Doesn't look very good but its only a quick test.
'Reflection': Enable a spiffy reflection special effect.
'Editing': Enable editing mode - see below
Note
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The world map archive (WM.LGP) contains quite a few good models - don't think that CHAR.LGP is the only archive with models in it.
Editing
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You can turn editing mode on now. This lets you edit the rotations of bones in the animation frames. When on, you'll be presented with a list of body 'bones' on the left of screen, and three slides - X,Y,Z - on the right. Select the bones to edit in the lefthand list, then use the three slides to rotate it. You can't MOVE bones around just rotate them - that's the whole point of a skeletal system (your arm rotates around the shoulder, but you can't just pull it off at will, can you? I hope not, anyway. Also, because it's a skeletal system everything behaves like a real skeleton - if you rotate the neck, the head obviously follows
Each frame is edited totally independently. No shortcuts (yet).
When you change to another animation (or choose File/Save, of course), you're asked whether to save the changes back into the LGP. It should work, there's not much to go wrong...
Problems?
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Firstly, make sure you're using a valid copy of CHAR.LGP. If in doubt, restore it from the installation CD.
Secondly, Ifalna uses OpenGL. Make sure
a) You've got the latest version drivers for your video card
b) It can run other OpenGL software. Voodoo's especially don't have full GL and GLU libraries, so if you use a Voodoo card, you might be best off getting a software renderer (eg. MesaGL).
Thirdly, try restarting it
Also please note that the P decoder (polygon files) isn't perfect. It reads a LOT of files well, but a few of them will look corrupt. It's not perfect yet.
If you still can't get it to work at all - or something doesn't work - or even if it's just comments or ideas on features to add - please email me at [email protected] . If Ifalna produced a LOG.TXT message log, it'd help if you included that as well as any error messages you saw.
Check for updates on my website @ http://www.ficedula.co.uk
Cya,
Ficedula
1/9/2001