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Topics - squeeble

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Back to school, back to school to show my daddy I'm not a fool... packed my lunch etc etc...

Anyway I'll try and keep this short as possible. (with a little back story to clarify)

I'm currently living in regional Victoria, next year my girlfriend is moving to uni and I plan to move with her to the city.
In the instance I have decided that I want to take all my unused brain power and enroll myself in a video games design course of some description.
I'm currently re-educating myself with max and photoshop but I want to be able to do more than just create things visually, and have become more increasingly interested in programming, also reading anarticle in PCpowerplay the other week, where a videogame exec stated that they would pick the designer who can code over the guy who can creatively design 9 times out of 10 made me consider this more.

Anyway I want to introduce myself to all things programming so I can put a small portfolio together so I can apply for a course as I don't have any formal education for a few of the prerequisites.
I've been doing a bit of reading online, got myself a compiler etc, but I wanted ask any of the coders on here in particular if they have any helpful resources for someone wanting to get started.
I also plan to use knowledge gained on some ff7 mods if i get the chance :)
Any resource on any language is good as I can't see how learning different programming languages would be such a bad thing.

Thanks in advance :)

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Completely Unrelated / Hi guys
« on: 2012-08-23 02:50:22 »
So I was just playing through a bit of ff7 on my ps3 when my memory jerked on an old site I used to frequent, (this one) *cough*.
Anywho I thought I'd pop around and see whats been happening the last few years, and I'm nothing short of amazed at the amount of attention some people have been putting into their projects.
I'm quite considering coming back into the mod scene, but alas I have hardly touched 3ds max in over 3 years, although my photoshop skills have improved quite a bit.

For those wondering where I have been, once I got a job time slowly slipped away from me (i was 17 then), then I left that job and got an apprenticeship as a mechanic, then I did that for two years and got tired of it, and became a shed hand in the shearing industry , and as of the last year I've become a shearer (of sheep)(now I'm nearly 22 :( ). All whilst moving out of home managing relationships and being at work 10-14 hours a day has left me little time to start any projects.
But over the course of winter (work gets quiet) I've been rekindling my passion for the digital arts.
Now I'm not saying I'm going to jump back into the fray, but I might put myself through a crash course on modding the game once more(might even have to read my own tutorial lol).
So if anyone would like to give me a run down of the last few years, or just pop in and say hi would be much appreciated :)

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Hey guys haven't been here in a long while, just thought I'd stop in and ask what improvements have been made to the modding scene since i left.

Oh and I still get pm's everynow and then asking if I will give them a link to my mod, so if anyone is wondering now, no I will not at the current time be giving any links..
On another note I was thinking of getting back into this scene in the near future, if so are there any new programs out or updated versions of the old ones I used to use like Pcreator, and that other one I used to use to port the models in LOL it's been so long I can't even remember the names of the programs I used to use.

Oh and how many guys are still here that i used to talk to regularly from a while back?

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Completely Unrelated / We're being attacked :P
« on: 2007-12-03 06:32:43 »
Just dropped in to see if there were any new posts and noticed something rather odd.

Usually theres a few guests but you can see what there doing, wtf's going on here?


http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s280/squeeblish/whosonline.jpg
To bigger shot

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well while I was waiting for my sherra model to arrive in the post I got to work on a map of mideel in in the far cry sandbox editor. Because it works in heightmaps it can easily be ported straight into crysis without hassle. I managed to finish the map minus the actual town, as once i finished the map my model arrived and ive been working on that the last day or so, (even though I've only done a few hours on it :-P). Anyway this is FF related but I didn't know if it was related enough so i stuck in here instead of general. So I'll be posting up my WIP of these two things.

First Mideel

Moving from West to East the main town would be right near the beach.

And this just point of into nowhere :lol:.

Now lastly a rendered textured preview.

Just for the hell of it the TK'ing spree before the FH Tournament last night :-D I won :-P

Now on to something more important. I started the sherra yesterday but I was sick and after staring at the screen for an hour this was all I got done :lol:

But I did a bit more this morning, not quite an hours work and I've gotten a bit further :-).

Nothing special at the moment just trying to work the rough shape out then I'll come back later an add detail. Leave comments I'll update during the week hopefully.

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Archive / Squeeble's Mod "competition" (of sorts) :-D
« on: 2007-04-15 10:04:33 »
Ok so here the deal, I will set out some basic rules witch you must follow, and at the end of a certain period a few people will be chosen to join our little team. Now don't fret if you don't get picked first time round as i need as many people as possible but i can only manage a few at a time. So when the first lot gets settled then i can take more on.

Squeeble's little "competition"

What you need to be part of the team:
Windows Live messenger (MSN), decent english skills and enough discipline to do what i ask rather than what you want. Simple aye.

Now moving on, heres the competition you will convert the malboro from a static .3ds file into a fully working FF7 battle model. The five best (as in working properly) models and there creators will be chosen "at first" to be apart of the team. The winners will be chosen either at the end of may or if i only have a few people that want to be apart of this :lol:. But heres a tip use the static model for the bottom. http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s280/squeeblish/malboro1.jpg
Use the generic battle animation for the top. http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s280/squeeblish/malboro2.jpg
When you complete the files zip them upload them and post the links to me via pm or maybe on the forum I'm not to sure yet. If theres anything I've forgotten I'll edit it in later..

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Ok everyone here is the tutorial you've all been waiting for. This won't be a technical support type thread so please don't ask me how do i do this or that.

[Squeeble's model conversion tuorial]

Program requirements: 3ds Max(I'm using 9),Kimera,Pc creator, phtoshop (or similar photo editing software),LGP tools and biturn. Also you may need irfanview its not a must but it is the program you will see me use for some things in this tutorial.

Prerequisites: A decent knowledge of max, and the FFX models set.

Step 1:Setting everything up
Ok start by creating a folder for all your FF7 mod files. Inside this folder create one folder called battle archives and another called adamantoise like so.

Now open LGP tools and open the battle LGP, and extract all files into the battle archives folder.
Now we need to locate the monster we'll be working on. Now for me this takes a while coz i have to manually search for the right files using leviathan and kimera. But for you today you just get the file names :lol: . So go into the battle archives folder and copy the files from gqaa-gqda and paste them into our adamantoise folder.
Next we want to fix the tuxture up so we dont have any problems later on. To do this we create a new image in photoshop, we want all the photos to fit squarely so make it 768x768. Then go file and place each of the files individually.

Until you get this.

Now for this step i use irfranview for it's ease but you could definitely use photoshop. So boot up your program of choice and resize the texture to 2048x512 then decrease the colour scale to 8bit, and save as bitmap.

Now open biturn and go to the folder where we have our adamantoise files and convert the main file gqaa into a .3ds.
Yay things are now ready to get going.
Step 2:3ds Max
Now I'm not going to be telling people witch button to push to do what, so you will need to have a decent knowledge of the program to understand what im going on about.

Now boot up max and import the original adamantoise witch we converted from biturn, then import the one from FFX and resize the new one so it fits as closely to the original as possible.

Big tip here: Always do the uv mapping first or you WILL be crying later on. Trust me i found out the hard way.
Now open up the material editor and make the diffuse map the bitmap witch we created earlier, and apply it to all parts of the model. Also apply a standard material to the other model to get rid of the horrible vertex shading, wich never looks right in max for some reason. Your scene should now look like this.

Now select everything in the scene and convert it to editable poly. Select a peice of our monster and go to the Unwrap UVW's in the modifier list.

Choose select by face and press edit. When the edit screen comes up select everything you see on the screen.

Now size then down to fit the correct texture like so. It doesnt matter if you dont have it on the right colour yet as that can be easily moved later.

Now continue to do this until you have comleted fixing the UV's for all peices of the monster. Wich will take quite some time :lol:
After you have completed that, select the main body and select all the polys of the head up yo the neck like this.

Now the normals problem isn't to bad on this model but to make things easier, selct each peice one at a time and delete one half of the polygons like so.

Select the peices that should be attached to the to the main body and attach them. Now hide unselected, you should just have a floating body now.

Now we want to plug those holes up in the side of the body. I'm not gonna tell you how to do this you need to know how to do this yourself.After you have done that its time to fix the normals. So using normals modifiers and flipping individual polygons you should be there for atleast an hour. Do a test render.

Convert all objects back into poly, now do another unwrap UVW's on the body andmove the uv's of the hole we just patched to the black area.Convert it back into poly once more, now go to mirror and copy.

Select the vertices down the middle of the body and weld them together.

Unhide all and attach what should be attached to the head just like we did with the body. Also fix the hole in the neck on the body. Now back to the head proceed to fix normals just like we did with the body before mirroring it aswell and welding the vertices.plug the hole in the back of its neck and dont forget to make cuts along the way.Don't confuse cutting with slicing big difference.
Now select the head and make a quickslice about halfway down the head. Select half of the polys from where we made our quickslice and detach the object.

Now having a look at our other model we use as reference to see roughly were we need to slice.

so start by selecting the claws and detaching them, no slicing needed.

Oh yes don't forget to name everything as you go along or it may be confusing. Now we cant see the ankle to well so select the polys that are obstructing view and hide them.

Now make a quickslice roughly where the ankle would be and detach it.

Now proceed to do so with the rest of the front and back leg. After doing so we need to plug the holes in ALL of the peices, I hope you named them accordingly :wink:. On the peices make cuts that all come to one point so we can drag it up slightly, this will decrease some of the gap.

Now i leave you to do all that. Now when your finished it should look something like this. You should also have something close to the coresponding names, if you can make them out XD.

Delete the other models a we dont need it anymore and select all of the monster and drag him as close to the centre of the world as possible.

Now create a folder inside the export folder called adamantoise and select a piece and go file and export selected and name them accordingly.

You have now completed the 3ds Max part of the tutorial congratulations :lol:.
 
Step 3:Converting for game use

Start by booting up Pc creator and oppening the body.Select it and make it smaller so you can see it on screen.

Now go to options and set it to battle model set the battle size to what you want and also tick texture file(s).

Go file and battle HRC and go to your folder with the the FF7 files and open gqaa, set the number of battle textures to anything over 1 in this case as we are only using one texture.

All your textures will be screwed up now , so go to view uvmap and flip the uv's on the y axis.

Now save it then go back to file and go save as. Make your way to the directory with the game files we will be swapping out and save it over gqam. now repeat this operation for all other files. To find out witch peice goes where you can either use biturn or kimera by clicking on the peice to open the .p editor and in the top left corner of the editor you will see the file name, so you know wich peice to save over witch file.

now grab your texture file wich will be saved in the same directory as the original .bmp  under the extension .tex. copy this into the adamantoise folder and change its name to gqac. Open kimera and you should have something that looks like this now.

As for the front claws you can see they're in four different pieces. choose one to add your claw over and for the rest open them in the .p editor, and reduce the size of the piece on axis to 0 and save it, don't apply changes or kimera may crash. So dont forget to save every now and then to prevent data loss. Your fron leg should look something like this.

Once you have all your pieces together start moving pieces around and resizing them to fit. I started with the head.

After moving everything around for a few more hours i got this.

Now your probably wondering why i didn't do the other legs, easy solved by say clicking on the opposite claws finding out there file name, then going back to the other claws and flipping them horizontally and and saving them over the name of the other claw. Make sure you save them as battle model files or else it wont work.

After screwing around with the other side for a while the legs looked like this.

I know they dont look the best but they can be fixed later. Just save and close kimera.
Step 4:Compiling and playing

Last part nice and easy. Go to the adamantoise folder se;ect all files and copy them into the battle archives folder.


Bot up LGP Tools and go create, and select the battle archives folder and save the LGP file over your old battle one, Providing you already have it backed up.


Now just boot her up and and shes ready.



I know it didn't turn out properly but thats easy fixed later on.

So there you have it a start to finish guide on converting models into FF7, you can apply this knowledge to almost any other model aswell.
Big thanks to borde Reunion and yaz0r for there lovely programs. I don't know how many of you will still want to do this after seeing how much of a hassle it is but maybe you will appreciate my work more  :-P. Brain hurts sleep now. Give feedback.

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Archive / Feild model conversion's
« on: 2007-04-04 09:38:24 »
Ok i was gonna post this after i had finished tifa but she being a pain in the but i'll definatley finish her tomorrow. Anyway all credit for the feild model conversion goes to weeemus so thank him ,he would've posted them himself but he had to go out and i wanted to get these up so heres a taste.









He aso did the screen shots. So now we have three different threads for three different sections battle,weapons and feild so please put all suggestions to the corresponding threads. Thankyou... :-D

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Archive / Yuffie successfully converted into FF7
« on: 2007-03-29 08:58:00 »
first off id like to start off buy saying hello to everyone seeing as ive finally registered. Ok so ive been watching these forums for about the past three months using all the patches that've come out. So i became real interested in moding the game myself but the most i got was a bunch of half failed attempts until now. So using kingdom hearts kimera,PCcreator,lgpTools,3dsMax,yaz0r's tools to extract and view the models and the MDLS to .obj converter ive had my first successfull project .:-) Neway here are some pics.





b.t.w tha mangled looking cloud is one of my miserable attempts lol... il finish him... some.. other time

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