[FF7PC] Red Werewolf

[Jeet]

No problem, i just hope it will works,but if its not the case there is still a second way to edit the beast, so its not a big deal.

About the horn dont worry the move ur talking about is not a head butt , its his magic casting , so even without horn its more like a "howling" (not sure about the english word).

[WolfMan]

Ok so I am pretty slow at the importing side but I'm getting there lol. I am having a minor texturing issue though. Is it to do each part as it's own texture so long as I am assigning them correctly in pcreator?

[cmh175]

Ok so I am pretty slow at the importing side but I'm getting there lol. I am having a minor texturing issue though. Is it to do each part as it's own texture so long as I am assigning them correctly in pcreator?

I'm confused on what you're asking. You mean make a single texture for each piece? Battle models only have 10 texture slots, but for the most part just 1 should do it for a single model, giving you the rest for weapons. I'd try each one first with the main single texture, and if they're having uv issues like the first piece you had than fix it so it uses a single smaller texture.

[WolfMan]

So far.

[Kuroda Masahiro]

Coming along nicely.

Don't forget that you can cut your importing time in half by simply mirroring the arms and legs once they're fully resized and rotated to fit on both sides.

[WolfMan]

Yes I did a mirror on accident. It made it really easy. I wish you could duplicate and mirror.

[WolfMan]

Jeet. I have a quick question for you. When I go to convert Red Werewolf to a field model how is that going to work?

[Kaldarasha]

There is a Red XIII skelton on two legs but you need to do all animations for him yourself. If you not care so much about a animated tail, I recommended you to use Barret's skeleton.

The pieces needs to be scaled down from 100 to 3 or 2.

[chasedark]

This has been coming along nicely, I know it doesn't sound like much from someone who's not really a modder/modeler, but I'm impressed.  Can't wait to see it in action.

[cmh175]

There is a Red XIII skelton on two legs but you need to do all animations for him yourself. If you not care so much about a animated tail, I recommended you to use Barret's skeleton.

The pieces needs to be scaled down from 100 to 3 or 2.

The two legged version is a good place to start, but the tap dancing needs to be fixed lol. I think sticking with his more original skeletons maybe better. Either way you're likely to have to alter animation files, and at least this way you're not doing anything that will effect other models. I think if you alter his idle animation (sitting) so he's standing up that should mostly do it. Maybe his walking and running animations if you're feeling adventures, so he stays on two feet. This way though the model will still function like normal, like in Cosmo Canyon when he jumps up the cliff side to his father. That probably wont be very easy to alter for a different character skeleton. 

[Kuroda Masahiro]

Why don't we just simply make him use a normal human's skeleton on the field?

In terms of animations, we can easily make Cloud's skeleton fit, and in terms of the story, he could be quite civilized, and when he needs to, or when he sees an enemy, he psyches himself into a frenzy and makes use of his wolfman strength?

[cmh175]

Why don't we just simply make him use a normal human's skeleton on the field?

In terms of animations, we can easily make Cloud's skeleton fit, and in terms of the story, he could be quite civilized, and when he needs to, or when he sees an enemy, he psyches himself into a frenzy and makes use of his wolfman strength?

It's true this would be much easier since it's a standard skeleton with good animations, but you wouldn't be able to alter any of them. Not unless you also alter the flevel, which I don't recommend. That would make it more difficult to use with other mods like the Reunion, nightmare mod, just about anything gameplay altering.

[Kuroda Masahiro]

I'm not saying make him use the normal animations, GIVE him the normal animations.

To make someone like Cait Sith or Nanaki into a normal human, all we need to do is change all of the corresponding .a files for them, we can find out what their animations are by opening the flevel with a text editor, such as loveless, and doing a search for {Red XIII} which we then make a note of every level he appears in, then we use an event editing tool, such as meteor to see what animations are assigned to him.

We keep these in a notepad or word document, then we copy and paste them all into a separate folder and then we test them one by one to see what each does, and then we can start to replace them with appropriate animations that the skeleton we want to use has.

By doing this, we can make either Cait Sith or Nanaki be 100% human in the field without editing any events, and if we keep a backup of the animations, then nobody will EVER have to sit down and do it again, and we can then turn them human in a matter of seconds without any negative consequences.

The only mildly tricky part is getting his field skeleton set up, but all we need to do is take another skeleton, for simplicity sake I'll use Cloud.

Take aaaa.hrc and open it with a hex editor, and under every single part, change it from axxx to nxxx, and just copy and paste all of his normal field files to be that, and afterwards, simply rename naaa.hrc to Nanaki's .hrc, which is adda.hrc.

...And for when he's a soldier, we can just make him use the normal soldier's appearance and animations, unless you want to keep his tail sticking out.

This is a simple process, and not to mention, I already did this for Cait Sith and Nanaki to be 100% human with appropriate animations.

[Jeet]

Wolfman>

I think you have 2 solutions, the easy way and the difficult way:

1/Let him untouched, a werewolf is supposed to be a transformation so he can still be an animal on field and transform only for battle.( and ur model is still close than the original red13 colors so i think it look realistic enough if u dont modify him)

2/For battle model galiant beast was the best choice to fit with a werewolf, for field model i think its Diamond weapon, if i remember well thats the only character ( in field) who have monster's like animations but still walking on 2 feets like an human but like Kuroda said, if you change the skeleton of a character in field, you need to modify his animations in ALL events where he will appear ( thats a lot of works),otherwise ur char will be very glitchy. ( for example , you can swap cloud field model with cid, it will works easy, because they have the same skeleton, but red13 have unique skeleton , like cait sith, so that wont be an easy works)

To summarize, if u want a perfect mod you need to replace a lot of files just for a field model, if you say that you prefer modding graphics, and hex editing is too much for you then I suggest you to let red 13 field model untouched ( i personnaly put more interest in battle model)

[cmh175]

I'm not saying make him use the normal animations, GIVE him the normal animations.

To make someone like Cait Sith or Nanaki into a normal human, all we need to do is change all of the corresponding .a files for them, we can find out what their animations are by opening the flevel with a text editor, such as loveless, and doing a search for {Red XIII} which we then make a note of every level he appears in, then we use an event editing tool, such as meteor to see what animations are assigned to him.

We keep these in a notepad or word document, then we copy and paste them all into a separate folder and then we test them one by one to see what each does, and then we can start to replace them with appropriate animations that the skeleton we want to use has.

By doing this, we can make either Cait Sith or Nanaki be 100% human in the field without editing any events, and if we keep a backup of the animations, then nobody will EVER have to sit down and do it again, and we can then turn them human in a matter of seconds without any negative consequences.

The only mildly tricky part is getting his field skeleton set up, but all we need to do is take another skeleton, for simplicity sake I'll use Cloud.

Take aaaa.hrc and open it with a hex editor, and under every single part, change it from axxx to nxxx, and just copy and paste all of his normal field files to be that, and afterwards, simply rename naaa.hrc to Nanaki's .hrc, which is adda.hrc.

...And for when he's a soldier, we can just make him use the normal soldier's appearance and animations, unless you want to keep his tail sticking out.

This is a simple process, and not to mention, I already did this for Cait Sith and Nanaki to be 100% human with appropriate animations.

That does sound simpler than altering animations. Does this make them use exactly the same animation files though as Cloud, or can they be renamed so there's no overlap? I suggest this so any animations that do need altering, or even just personalizing, wont effect Cloud or the npc's. I think that's what you said, just wanted to confirm. 

Wolfman>

I think you have 2 solutions, the easy way and the difficult way:

1/Let him untouched, a werewolf is supposed to be a transformation so he can still be an animal on field and transform only for battle.( and ur model is still close than the original red13 colors so i think it look realistic enough if u dont modify him)

2/For battle model galiant beast was the best choice to fit with a werewolf, for field model i think its Diamond weapon, if i remember well thats the only character ( in field) who have monster's like animations but still walking on 2 feets like an human but like Kuroda said, if you change the skeleton of a character in field, you need to modify his animations in ALL events where he will appear ( thats a lot of works),otherwise ur char will be very glitchy. ( for example , you can swap cloud field model with cid, it will works easy, because they have the same skeleton, but red13 have unique skeleton , like cait sith, so that wont be an easy works)

To summarize, if u want a perfect mod you need to replace a lot of files just for a field model, if you say that you prefer modding graphics, and hex editing is too much for you then I suggest you to let red 13 field model untouched ( i personnaly put more interest in battle model)

That's not a bad idea, but than the models wont match. You can have anything from Kela, Kaldarasha, or my Red XIII field model. Either way nothing really resembles the battle model. I think this would only really work if a four legged version of the werewolf was made. Kuroda's idea seems plausible, and Cloud's idle and running animations can be altered so look more werewolfish. Altering the hrc is annoying, but easy. Just need to make sure you also do the rsd files so they match the new p file name. 

[Jeet]

A character field have only 3 animations if i remember> standing, walking, running, these animations can be modified without problems

The problem is the event animation, for example, when barret shoot with his arm in field, that kind of animation is not stored in the character himself but in the " event file" ( NPC are stored here too), it mean if you dont modify all events in the game , red 13 will be able to stand, walk and run, but each time he pop from cloud and talk, it will be glitchy, because the animations in the event file wont have the same " skeleton" that his animation in his "character file", to summarize , if you modify the skeleton of an original character  ALL events files have to be modified one by one so they fit with the new one.

I wanted to do this with my Sephiroth mod, but i gave up, and instead i give him same skeleton than Cloud ( by deleting his long hair on the back), so instead of modify tons of files, i modified only one.


EDIT: cmh175>  why would the diamond weapon not match ? the only issue will be the size and it can be modified, then he put the wolf parts one by one on the skeleton.But i actually have no data about this character because i dunno where he is located, i know its stored in a big worldmap file and finding it can be an hard work, maybe its not the case in PC version. So if there is already custom field model for red13, its true it could be easier to simply use them.

[Kaldarasha]

To make someone like Cait Sith or Nanaki into a normal human, all we need to do is change all of the corresponding .a files for them, we can find out what their animations are by opening the flevel with a text editor, such as loveless, and doing a search for {Red XIII} which we then make a note of every level he appears in, then we use an event editing tool, such as meteor to see what animations are assigned to him.

We keep these in a notepad or word document, then we copy and paste them all into a separate folder and then we test them one by one to see what each does, and then we can start to replace them with appropriate animations that the skeleton we want to use has.

You could use Makou Reactor for all of this, even to play the animation. But it will be a lot easier to use the Char.lgp DB function in Kimera. The tool will list all animations for Red XIII.

[Kuroda Masahiro]

The method I described would allow us to turn either Nanaki or Caith Sith into Cloud's skeleton, although we can do the same for anyone else, such as Tifa, Cid, Barret, Sephiroth, etc.

The way it's done means that there is absolutely no overlap, as we physically change the animations to someone else's, for instance, the game's levels would load the animations aeae.a, aeaf.a and aeba.a for the idle, walk and run animations respectively for Nanaki, but as we changed them directly in the char.lgp to be aafe.a, aaff.a and aaga.a respectively, for every single scene in which the human Nanaki needs to stand, walk or run, he will automatically do it using the respective animations that Cloud would normally use.

We could get him set up to use Barret's animations, but be warned, it is a pain to get his legs properly working.

Doing this method, we can physically change any and all field characters to be someone else (in the main party) except for Cloud and Aeris, because they share 80% of their field animations with NPCs.

Cloud having skeleton A has around 70% of NPCs use his normal animations as well as his misc ones, while Aeris is the same, except a vast smaller number uses her animations, but important characters, such as Hojo and Sephiroth share Skeleton B.

From this, we can interchange Barret, Tifa, Nanaki, Yuffie, Cait Sith, Cid and Vincent between one another by simply changing their field animations.

I have a complete list of what every single field animation does and which skeleton it belongs to, so we can likely implement future mods far more easily in future.

The only annoying part is looking at both lists (Cloud and Nanaki) to see which animations match, then we copy and rename said animation to be for Nanaki, before putting it back into the char.lgp.

I did extensive testing with both Nanaki and Cait Sith as human, and there is absolutely no errors doing it this method.

@Kaldarasha, I never really touched Makou Reactor, but can you use it to physically rename the actual animation files and replace them?

I assumed that could only change them within each scene in the flevel.

[Kaldarasha]

I'm not sure what you mean with rename but you can spot the animations very easily. But as I said it's faster to use Kimera for it.

I have a complete list of what every single field animation does and which skeleton it belongs to, so we can likely implement future mods far more easily in future.

I had once the same idea, but it was to much for me to do it alone, also I wasn't ever sure how to describe the animation correctly.

[cmh175]

A character field have only 3 animations if i remember> standing, walking, running, these animations can be modified without problems

The problem is the event animation, for example, when barret shoot with his arm in field, that kind of animation is not stored in the character himself but in the " event file" ( NPC are stored here too), it mean if you dont modify all events in the game , red 13 will be able to stand, walk and run, but each time he pop from cloud and talk, it will be glitchy, because the animations in the event file wont have the same " skeleton" that his animation in his "character file", to summarize , if you modify the skeleton of an original character  ALL events files have to be modified one by one so they fit with the new one.

I wanted to do this with my Sephiroth mod, but i gave up, and instead i give him same skeleton than Cloud ( by deleting his long hair on the back), so instead of modify tons of files, i modified only one.


EDIT: cmh175>  why would the diamond weapon not match ? the only issue will be the size and it can be modified, then he put the wolf parts one by one on the skeleton.But i actually have no data about this character because i dunno where he is located, i know its stored in a big worldmap file and finding it can be an hard work, maybe its not the case in PC version. So if there is already custom field model for red13, its true it could be easier to simply use them.

No I meant about the part of leaving the field model and just doing the battle model. The werewolf transformation for battle sounds cool but the models themselves wont resemble each other much. Diamond weapon's skeleton wouldn't be hard to work with either, but I think the animations would require more work. It has a very stiff walk.

Turning Red XIII into Cloud is sounding pretty good. Just sounds more time consuming than actually being difficult, which is good. 

[WolfMan]

I think I agree with the idea of using Cloud's model. May have some issues with the leg structure but I think it will be the best way to go. So will doing it this method make it to where we wont have to adjust event animations??

[Kuroda Masahiro]

...How did I not know about kimera 0.97a?

This would have saved me so much time when I was doing field animations ages ago.

Anyway...

@cmh175 - All we need to do is just use the Nanaki with Cloud skeleton I did, which is adda.hrc, but instead of loading the normal field model parts, loads new ones that won't overlap with any other model at nxxx, so all we need to do is just put Red Werewolf over Cloud's field skeleton and we're set.

@Wolfman - In terms of animations, I think Cloud or Barret will be our best bet, since they share enough animation types to work, but we can probably get him to work fully using Cloud's skeleton, and if not, I'll make the adjustments myself.

[WolfMan]

How about I post him as the battle model and we'll see who can convert him to the field in the best way. I will send the winner 1 milllllllion dollars. LoL

[WolfMan]

Just kidding. I am going to get him completely battle ready and uploaded here and then begin replacing the field model.

[cmh175]

Just kidding. I am going to get him completely battle ready and uploaded here and then begin replacing the field model.

The field model itself wont be hard at all. Just putting everything else together with the animations will be the tricky part.