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Miscellaneous Forums => Archive => Topic started by: Reunion on 2006-07-04 22:02:55
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Hello everyone!
The past couple weeks I have been working with the .nif model format from TES4: Oblivion. I started to make a viewer program and got bored with that until I realized that they were textured by the amount of vertices, which means that they can be converted into .p models with their texture!
I am currently working on a project that converts 3d studio models into .p files for FF7. It is going well for how little I know about programming... Here's (http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVIIIReunion/Daedric_Chest.jpg) a picture of my prog viewing the Daedric Cuirass model. I have not really done anything with adding groups to each model groups yet but that shouldn't be to hard. As of now the prog can write .p files with or without lighting or a texture. It can also transform, scale, and rotate the model. However I am having a little trouble with the rotating functions it seems to eat the model while rotating...
I replaced cloud with the Daedric armor from TES4 just to see what it would look like. I am going to assume it's the largest model the FF7 engine has ever encountered with 25,545 vertices and 24,978 polygons! I had to bend a few things to get it to fit clouds skeleton so some textures are a little screwed up.
Anyway here are some pictures, I made him huge so you can see him better...
Daedric1 (http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVIIIReunion/Daedric1.jpg)
Daedric2 (http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVIIIReunion/Daedric10.jpg)
Daedric3 (http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVIIIReunion/Daedric8.jpg)
Daedric4 (http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVIIIReunion/Daedric11.jpg)
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Hey, that looks really nice Reunion!
It's somewhat sad (for me) to see how Kimera is going to become useless. But who cares. Great job!
By the way, is that armor fully textured or are the details directly embeded in the geometry of the object?
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So let me guess this straight, you're actually working on something that would enable ff7 to play new models ?
Wow is all I can say.
Good to know talented people like you (and many others around here too) still care about this game and, more importantly, continue to improve what we can do with this thing!
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Hey Borde thanks, Yes the models are fully textured using the UV cords form the TES4 files. The UV cords are placed directly below the vertices and normals in the .p file. The vertex and polygon chunks are simply colored white because they are not rendered since the models have textures applied to them.
If you want I can give you my .p file writing code, my prog does not edit .p files or the colors for that matter, so both would be useful.
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Nice pics, borde don't give up kimera is still the only thing out there that can get new battle models ingame as far as we know, plus well its free allowing for people like me to make models
oh and nice to see Reunion working for us again
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Reunion amazing work as always. You deserve something far greater than "Fast Newbie" under your name. If our dreams of a .3ds to .p file converter become reality, check out this little project Nii is working on for Garry's Mod.
Link (http://forums.facepunchstudios.com/showthread.php?t=142926)
I know its far off, but its hard not to get excited at the possibilities of this. Anyways I thought it was pretty good work, give it a look and Nii is accepting help from anyone to complete/improve upon it.
EDIT:
For anyone checking out the forum thread:
1) Skip over the fanboy responsies and critics, I'm sure many don't want to read through a 17 page thread. The WIP pictures improve upon time.
2) Nii releases Cloud's clothes UVs on page 12 of the thread if any talented skinners can do better than Blackfire's work posted on page 14
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Hope you release this soon i would really like to use this!
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You know what? This means we can replace all the models with AC lookalikes if we so desire! Yay AC!
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More fanboy gushing ahead:
Awesome work, Reunion! keep it up!
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good work there Reunion i knew if any were to do it. It would be you
2 things
1 any lag
2 giving that ff7 is old do you think that the engine take more hi res models?
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Thanks for the offering Reunion. Yeah, it would be neat to add that feature to Kimera, but what I'm wondering is if there will be anyone interested in using this program anymore when they can use 3D Studio. Anyway, if you felt like sending me the code one day, I'd try to append it to Kimera. Thanks again for your hard work.
PD: AC models... great.
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2 things
1 any lag
2 giving that ff7 is old do you think that the engine take more hi res models?
Well there is no lag on my computer anyway, I'm sure it would on some a much slower computer. The geometry of the model is the same as in Oblivion but the texture files had to be reduced to 256 color, plus ff7 does not use bump maps, normal maps and extremely glossy lighting. So the geometry can be as complex as it wants however the texture quality doesn't really get any better than what you see.
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Wow like, you really can create P files from scratch ? Thats nice news ! :) congratz for that
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Good God :-o Thats really amazing :cry: Imagine playin' with our own custom models... That is, if you know how to model :roll:
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Please realease this soon i can't bear it anymore!
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so uh when should we be seeing this tool
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Well I'm not really sure yet, I have a few thing I need to add first. The main thing I want to do is add support for groups because this allows you to combine two or more objects and you can still put a separate texture on each model. Also there are some rendering options that groups allow you do do such as transparency..
I am also having trouble with my 3ds loading code, if anybody has a good method it would take care of some major bugs anyway..
Thanks for your help
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Hey Reunion, if you are programming it under C++ you could use lib3ds. It will make all the job when dealng with 3ds files.
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Sorry for the huge bump, but have you had any luck with this?
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sorry I'm rather busy with my summer job, I only have a few hours in the evening to work on it..
Hey Reunion, if you are programming it under C++ you could use lib3ds. It will make all the job when dealng with 3ds files.
Well its in vb but I rewrote it and it seems to be much better. It has not crashed yet but it doesn't load grouped 3ds files it just load the first group it finds.
I'm almost done with the the group support, It can take 4 separate 3ds files and write them as one .p file all with separate textures (or the same..) Here's (http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVIIIReunion/helmet_group.jpg) a picture, the helmet is one file the first two groups are the eyes so the blink like they should. There is some problem with lighting with more than group that's why the lighting is off in the picture.. but I'm sure its a simple fix.
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This should turn out rather interesting.
How's the battle animation?
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Good to se you back in the game, reunion :-) .
Btw nice looking thingy you got there :lol:
Looking forward when you have experimented more, with the transfer from .3ds to p.
kutgw (keep up the good work)
typos :/
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(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVIIIReunion/glass_armor3.jpg)
hmm I wonder if this can inspire someone to make a editor for the field animations, with custom models we are really going to need one!
If not then try these...
Glass Armor 1 (http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVIIIReunion/glass_armor1.jpg)
Glass Armor 2 (http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVIIIReunion/556cefd3.jpg)
btw: I should be able to release my program this weekend, just a few handling bugs and I should probably write a tutorial for it...
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All hail reunion.
Master of FF7.
Creater of field swapping models.
Creater of his program that will rape everything and anything in FF7.
I highly await your program.
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Well, you've managed to surprise me once again Reunion. How do you set a P file trasparent?
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In the material chunk(hundrets), offset 0x44 sets the level of opacity for each group.
0 - transparent
1 - Translucent 75%
2 - Translucent 50%
3 - Translucent 25%
4 - Opaque (default)
The sword is made of two groups the first being the handle is set to 4 so it is opaque, the second groups is the blade and it is set to 3.
I should also mention that the model is grouped as much as possible, it uses only 9 .p files including the sword. If it wasn't grouped it would use 21 .p files and that would be ugly... good thing for grouping!
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Does this work in battle?
If so, can we see a screenshot?
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Yeah it does the files are generally the same after all.
(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVIIIReunion/trans.jpg)
Both the battle and the field script can change this value.. in battles think of summoning and other magics, for the field the times when
cloud goes crazy..
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Sorry if I didn't make it clear.
I was looking for ascreenshot of the glassarmor cloud in the battle.
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Sorry if I didn't make it clear.
I was looking for ascreenshot of the glassarmor cloud in the battle.
I don't think he has the animations for the Glass Armor model...
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Did the model with the glass armor have a custom made head model? I ask because I used this sweet modeling tool called FaceGen to make a spitting image of myself in Oblivion. It analyzes front, left, and right portriats of a subject to make a very close 3d model and texture. I ask because these models could then be exported to .3ds format. And with your tool...good things could happen.
Here is one I messed with that took 10 minutes to render. It would be even more accurate, but I only used a front portrait to analyze. And the photo was not a very high resolution.
Mr. Popular (http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/474/dubyapreview7vp.png)
If someone could find consistent lighted, accurate colored, hi-res pictures of Advent Children characters, I could get started on rendering at least a nice looking head model. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but it's just a thought.
Amazing work as always Reunion. :-D
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I'll load up the movie and see what I can get ya.
Cloud Strife
Mouth/chin
http://seiferlm.canalblog.com/images/t-Final_Fantasy_VII_Advent_Children_Cloud.jpg
Face
http://www.gameland.ru/post/25841/FF7_2.jpg (tech demo)
Tifa
Face
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~jshih/home/ff7ac_tifa_01.jpg
Cid
http://www.fractionize.net/wordpress/images/ffac/cid.jpg
Vincent
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/1/1e/180px-VinceFFVII.jpg
Yuffie
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b227/XiaoLi101/yuffie.jpg
Barret
http://marcoss.jeeran.com/barret.jpg
Aeris
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f0/FFVIIAC-Aerith_Gainsborough.JPG
Seohiroth
http://www.rpgfan.com/pics/ff7-ac/ss-004.jpg
more in a bit.
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Wait wait wait.
1) Just give me the link to the image, don't want to suck up all the bandwidth with these pictures.
2) These need to be higher res, these are good, I was thinking if someone could take snapshots of the Dvd itself.
3) This program is very picky
Criteria
1) Hi-Res image (as previously stated)
2) Less hair in the face the better, but I could try some photoshop magic and make it disappear if necessary :wink:
3) Frontal pics need to look straight forward with a neutral expression (No big smiles and whatnot)
4) Any Left or Right portrait pics should have similar lighting and coloring (If not I'll envoke more photoshop magic)
Thanks for the quick reply, I really appreciate it. Any more pics you find please supply the link. If mod wants to split topic I understand, I don't want to muck up Reunion's topic.
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Thank you for the information Reunion. I had no clue about this feature.
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Now that's interesting about the model information. It would explain some of the battle models in the PS1 version of FF7.
I'll have to peruse the PS1 model file data to find the 'tweaked' value.
1) in the PC variant the weapon models are seperate files that can have seperate textures? Or is the weapon included with the main model and not as a seperate one in your example?
2) the PS1 had no weapon models with textures, and all weapon models were packed with the battle model. I'm fairly certain you can't add texture data too the PS1 battle model weapons for the characters, although that would be kind of interesting if you could.
Cyb
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The weapon models are all separate files and each group in each model can use a different texture, so its the same as any other model in the PC version. For example clouds model files are from rtam to rtbi then the weapon files come right after that, rtck to rtcz.
The battle file naming system seems to put a limit on the amount of textures you can use, they start at ??ac and then the models files start at ??am, so that gives you 10 textures ??ac to ??al. For the field I don't think there is a limit although I'm not really sure, either way 10 should be enough for anything.
As far as putting a texture on a weapon model it's just the same as any other model...
(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVIIIReunion/glass_trans.jpg)
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Editing Weapon models?!
I can clearly see a custom battle animations importer... awesome job Reunion.
I know I'm new, and though I just started planning to contribute to the community, Reunion was the first name I heard when I entered these forums. It's nice to know there are still dedicated people for this hopeful little community. Insane job, Reunion.
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This is looking incredible so far. It would be awesome if we could eventually use Reunion's program, along with some scene.bin editing to make a drastically different game, with a different story and characters and everything.
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now more then ever i cant wait for a download of this there tool
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This is looking incredible so far. It would be awesome if we could eventually use Reunion's program, along with some scene.bin editing to make a drastically different game, with a different story and characters and everything.
Hmmmm making a game is still a lot of work. There are engines out there galore if you didn't notice. You still need to have a core plan and structure to make it happen. FF7 currently requires a lot of tweaking (or hacking) to get it to do new things. The engine is buggy and old. Imagine trying to create new dialogs and conent? Lots of work without modifying existing material. It's possible but still lots of work.
The weapon models are all separate files and each group in each model can use a different texture, so its the same as any other model in the PC version. For example clouds model files are from rtam to rtbi then the weapon files come right after that, rtck to rtcz.
The battle file naming system seems to put a limit on the amount of textures you can use, they start at ??ac and then the models files start at ??am, so that gives you 10 textures ??ac to ??al. For the field I don't think there is a limit although I'm not really sure, either way 10 should be enough for anything.
As far as putting a texture on a weapon model it's just the same as any other model...
This is a function of the PC version of FF7, It can't be done with the PS1 version. The Bones and Joints as well as model information on the PS1 are stored in the first section of the file. Then come the animations. After the animations is the texture. For characters that have changeable weapons, a single bone model is used for each weaon. Unless the PS1 code is 'adjusted' there is no place for a texture on the weapon and of course the problem then becomes space in the VRAM. The majority of the models use 4 bit tims (of which decoding them properly is a nightmare), the size limit is 256x256 for the texture. Later engines such as FF8 and FF9 can handle multiple and larger textures. They used 128x128 8bpp textures though. Because of the way the VRAM is setup on the PS1 I don't think much could be done. It is cool for the PC version at least, and you can have fun with it. :D
Cyb
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Will your editor be able to create and delete polygons? So if i have a model that has a torso and head i would be able to split them? When will it be released?
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Reunion said sometime this week.
I can hardly wait!
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huray huray i cannot wait much longer but it will be worth it when it comes