Battle model question...

[Giffen1]

Hi i'm new here.

Just like to thank all u decoders/programmers in advance for all the great work u've been doing to make FF7 pc as customizable as possible.

Ok with that outta the way i'd just like to ask if only Cloud has a high poly battle model (more akin to the FMV Cloud models)



if the others FF main characters have them too where can i find them? And if the others don't hav high poly models , why? And why only Cloud?

another question...why does Barret and Vincent have multiple battle models where as the others don't.

See i don't hav the PC game version of FF7 so i can't check the other LGP folders and stuff...I only hav FF7 main character battle models which Ahlexx was kind enough to send to me (THANKS again!!) all those months back...(only got back to being interested in FF7 again...that's me short attention span)

anyway those renders above were made in 3dsmax which is obviously below par due to the buggy texturing..
(i've just started using 3dsmax so i'm not that knowledgeable about the program)

a question for Mirex : first off, THANK YOU!! Biturn's a really helpful app. I hope u continue to develop for the other file formats like 3ds, ms3d, obj. so that they can export textures and bones and whatnot.

I've seen ur renders/pictures of the FF7 characters like safer sephiroth and Cloud's friend? Do they export that way in Lightwave or do u use some tool to smooth out the textures?

I don't hav lightwave so i use file format converters....unfortunately my converter doesn't have support for lwo 6.5+ so when i convert the battle models in biturn i use lwo and when i generate them in the file converter the textures appear blockyhence above image...is there anyway around this besides retexturing them on my own by making new maps?

thanks for any help u guys could give me.

[mirex]

Ok with that outta the way i'd just like to ask if only Cloud has a high poly battle model

If you mean 'high poly model' then all main game characters do, they are used in battles. If you mean 'really high poly model', then its only Cloud and Seph, which are used in the final fight scene (IMHO).

if the others FF main characters have them too where can i find them?

You can find them in the battle.lgp. If you want to know how, check out my new document, how to rip gamedata, its also on my page.

See i don't hav the PC game version of FF7 so i can't check the other LGP folders and stuff...

Uhh i cant help you then, i work only with pc version, i even never seen psx version.

I hope u continue to develop for the other file formats like 3ds, ms3d, obj. so that they can export textures and bones and whatnot.

I will, but it takes lots of time to make it work and also i have to get programs for testing. Now i wanted to include Softimage .XSI fromat. So far only LWO6.5 format is quite well done.

I've seen ur renders/pictures of the FF7 characters like safer sephiroth and Cloud's friend? Do they export that way in Lightwave or do u use some tool to smooth out the textures?

Yes they do export that way. Textures are used only for eyes and mouth and such.
Problem lies in that the only format i know that supports vertex colours is LWO6.5. No other. So i would like to export it fine but formats dont allow it. Without vertex colours all models look like the one at the right on your picture.

Note : polygon colour = each facet of model has its own colour (looks blocky); vertex colour = each corner of each facet has its own colour (looks smooth)

[Giffen1]

sephiroth...u mean the bare chested version where he goes off to fight cloud?

hmmm well that doesn't bode well for me.....so ur saying that the only file format that supports vertex colours is lwo 6.5....

i think 3dsmax supports vertex colours as well...

either that or uvw mapping...and the sad thing is the uvw map coordinates doesn't export with the mesh...so i'll haveta uvw map the whole thing again...

[Rubicant]

It's not that bad. I put the high-res cloud model into truespace and had to completely resize everything, color everything, and trust me..it wasn't an easy task. After a few days work, I managed to get the model looking decent. However, I couldn't get the eyes and other textures onto the model because truespace's texture feature sucks swollen balls.

So, it looks like I'm forced into using lightwave if I want the model's colors to look okay. Damn, I really hate using lightwave's interface, and all that I can't do in Truespace is the eyes. Decisions, decisions...

[Giffen1]

bones or not i only need the actual textures (skinning is one thing but uvwmapping each individual part of all 10 FF characters is unfathomable) to look right

....let's say i get Lightwave :erm: and let's say Lightwave supports 3ds or at least wavefront .obj exporting...when i export it will i get the vertex colours to look right (smooth) when i import it into MAX or will i get smoother textures or the same edgy look..coz if that's the case then acquiring a Lightwave app for a simple conversion would b fruitless

guess i could settle for the jaggy look. I hope Mirex, Ahlexx can think of a way around this vertex colouring thingie without the use of Lightwave

in time maybe?

[Cyberman]

Well.. I suppose if I could have the oportunity to build a POV ray plugin one could do the following.
1: UV mapping (handled by POV with an image map)
2: Smooth triangles (handled by POV mesh with triangle points and vertex normals)
3: color gradients (more complex but a doable thing requires individual triangle objects with there own pigment that's a gradient from each vertex).

Although POV isn't the best format, you can add some texture affects to each mesh of the FF chracter. For example Clouds pants you can had a thread bump map too and make it look like denim or plaid.. in texture same color.

Smooth triangles are the biggest thing, they create a shade gadient between each vertex. You can then use Moray to manipulate your object files and export them to whatever rendering engine you want.

I suppose another posibility is if they give vertex normals one can do polygon multiplication as well. You can estimate the curvature of the mesh using the surface normals and then create new polygons in the group meshs.  IE make your own high polycount objects from the low polycount objects using extrapolation and interpolation.  Won't look as good as the original but you might get something passable.

Cyb

[mirex]

i think 3dsmax supports vertex colours as well...

maybe, but max fileformat is not described, and hacking it would take some time. Try if it really supports vertex colours.

skinning is one thing but uvwmapping each individual part of all 10 FF characters is unfathomable

i found one nice prog for texturing. you can draw/spray directly onto the model (btw i had same idea some time ago, grrr they took my idea). Its called Deep Paint 3D, its from RightHemisphere, and you can dl it at http://www.righthemisphere.com/products/dp3d/downloads/dp3d20.exe

Griffen1: what formats can you load int your 3dsmax ?

[_Ombra_]

mirex, 3dsmax can open .3ds files and import .obj... i think both formats supports vertex colors and you can find a lot of docs about these 2 formats.

[Alhexx]

I've thought to write a "Texture-Generator" for the Ultima. It should read out the vertice colors and generate a bitmap from it ... however, I don't realy have an idea how to do this

 - Alhexx

[Giffen1]

actually 3dsmax can import a lot of file formats

basically what i do is convert the battle model file to lwo (not lwo 6.+) in biturn (i turn on the load poly material in options FF7...which is actually the one that makes th texture jaggy coz the model is actually smooth underneath...otherwise if i don't turn on the load poly material it shows up without texture at all) In Lightwave even if u don't turn poly materials on the textures show up. Anyway i convert lwo to :

obj (Wavefront Object) - this is the one i use to import
mtl (Wavefront Material) - which directly loads this (jaggy textures)

here are the other file formats

md2 (Quake 2)
md3 (Quake 3)
3ds (3d studio mesh)
prj  (3d studio mesh)
shp (3d studio shape)
ai (Adobe Illustrator)
dxf (AutoCad)
dwg (AutoCad)
ai (Adobe Illustrator)
ige, igs, iges (IGES)
stl (Stereolitho)
wrl, wrz (VRML)
lwo (without any texturing at all)

even lwo (though the current plugin available can't import the textures in...and it's pretty old doesn't support lwo 6.5 to 7.0)

now if u can make a lwo 6.5 plugin which imports the textures for 3dsmax that would be great lol

Question about Lightwave : i understand u can import the bones in there too....can u manipulate them in any way? so's the pose can be changed...

oh and the bones show up in LW Modeller but not in Lighwave so u can't manipulate the bones why is that?

-----------------------------

and 3dsmax has a similar tool to Deep paint 3d called Vertexpaint where u can directly spray on the model.

Ahlexx : man  a texture generator would b great.

but either way i'd settle for just importing the texture.

edit : just checked the 3dsmax website at http://www.discreet.com/products/3dsmax/

added the following features for the new version that came out :
(Version 5)

-Global illumination with exposure control, photometric lights & new shaders
-Now includes reactor® – premiere dynamics software integrated with 3ds max
-Export to real-time 3D environments with Render-to-Texture, Normal Maps, and Light Maps
-Support for Vertex Color Baking of Radiosity solutions

i only hav version 4.2 (i'm pretty sure it does support vertex color) but i'm probably gonna get 5.0 anyway...

[mirex]

mirex, 3dsmax can open .3ds files and import .obj... i think both formats supports vertex colors and you can find a lot of docs about these 2 formats.

Can you give me a link to any of the docs ? I have found only few weak ones on .3ds ...

Question about Lightwave : i understand u can import the bones in there too....can u manipulate them in any way? so's the pose can be changed...

yes, load model into Ligtwave (layout) and in the left menu choose Add/Bones/Convert skelegons into bones.
Now you can move body parts by selecting & rotating bone ! ( thanks Sephiroth 3D )

In Lightwave even if u don't turn poly materials on the textures show up

hey, its not texture, its a vertex material/color.

[_Ombra_]

.3ds
http://www.tsrevolution.com/docs/c3ds.zip
http://www.wotsit.org/download.asp?f=3ds
http://www.wotsit.org/download.asp?f=3ds_d
http://www.wotsit.org/download.asp?f=3dsinfo

.mli (materials)
http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/mxr/gfx/3d/MLI.spec

.obj
http://www.wotsit.org/download.asp?f=objsrc
http://www.wotsit.org/download.asp?f=w_obj //very good

[mirex]

i've read those, but still i can't find how to assign material to vertices in obj. Can you find that info for me ?

[_Ombra_]

Sorry man... sadly i don't know where to get those infos...    the only way i know is the same you know. Hack into the file format  
Btw, i don't think is too much work since almost all the file is decoded.

[Giffen1]

hey thanks for all the effort...if u ask me i think the best bet would be using the wavefront obj format the neat thing about it is it exports the material seperately (doesn't include the tga files though...why is that seperated anyway?) the only limitation with biturn when converting the collected battle mesh (rtaa, saaa,,etc..) is it screws up the orientation...but it can export individual parts perfectly (srao, rtao, etc.) without the vertex material/color (which i so desperately need)  :z

anyway, worse case scenario...i just reskin them...no biggie a deal...just long and tedious (agh)...my god...how long will that take me...I'm guessing Cloud has the lowest object count at 17...phew..lol

thanks for the info about the bones never would've guessed..lol..

u know wut i just hate the Lightwave 7.5 interface it's so dang hard to control....either that or i'm just adjusting...i think 3dsmax is much user friendly ...but that's me...

[mirex]

glad to help.

Lightwave does not look too hard to me, its just different. I'll try to play with 3ds max and i will see what can i do.

[Sephiroth 3D]

Giffen1: I'm the exact opposite. I hate Max. I can work with it, no problem, but everything I have to do in there, I can do 50 times faster and better in LW. But that's just me. I'm sure you can say the same thing about Lightwave.

Unforunatly, Vertex info is new, being only in 6.0+ or 6.5+, so using anything older will not work when trying to get the vertex info into Max.

LW takes some time to get used to, but once it's in your blood, it becomes a part of you.

Here's some examples of my LW work:
http://www.sara-and-david.com

Here's some FF7 examples:
http://www.sephiroth3d.com

And I also have a few images posted around the board somewhere... Mirex, you really should use those images as examples of your prog or something...

I'd probably visit here more if the forums worked in Netscape... For the record... Something added to the site is what broke it for NS uses. I just installed the same version of phpbb on my site, and it works fine!

[mirex]

And I also have a few images posted around the board somewhere... Mirex, you really should use those images as examples of your prog or something...

Gimme links .. you know how boring it is to search for hours.

[Giffen1]

Unforunatly, Vertex info is new, being only in 6.0+ or 6.5+, so using anything older will not work when trying to get the vertex info into Max.

exactly, and the only lwo 5+ importer plugin available at this time was LWOimp which couldn't even bring regular textures into Max much less vertex colors...and it's fairly new at that  -_-

Mirex : maybe u could use that particular plugin as a starting point and make a better one   hehe

anyway...for the moment since i don't exactly have access to the bones, ok so i do but in lightwave not in max, and since the generic battle poses when u export the models as a whole is so hard to work with...i just opted rebuilding each character from the individual parts...it's a bit tedious but fun...hehe..i'd probably animate it shortly with CS but now it's jus like Lego..hehe



just finished Red XIII ... again a less than average rendition of red XIII but it'll do i suppose ...until i can reskin it



Sepiroth3d : that dragon and a chocobo u once showed in another thread  in ur wallpaper did u rebuild that from the individual parts or did u export it as is with biturn?

btw i jus saw an old thread of urs concerning the FMV hi res FF7 models...did someone actually release it on the net? man, that would hav been awesome...wish i could hav gotten it :isee: ..btw any luck finding them...?


[/b]

[mirex]

Ok i messed with 3ds max, but anyhow i tried, i could not set any vertex colour/material. Is it possible ? Anyone accomplished it yet ? if so, send me a file with it please ....

[Alhexx]

Is anyone xpecting me to post a reply here, too ?

 - Alhexx

[mirex]

Alhexx: ofcourse, if you have anything to say.

[Giffen1]

more power to u Mirex...i'm sure u'll get Max in time...if not maybe a more advanced lwo 6.5 + importer plugin for Max?

thanks again for all the effort

btw where r the summon models (i.e bahamut, ifrit, leviathan, Highwind) anyway? r they also stored in battle.lgp?

[Alhexx]

mirex: Sorry, I hadn't enough time to read this topic ... I'll try to do that and reply something useful...

 - Alhexx

[Sephiroth 3D]

Mirex: Here's the only one I could find online. I'll see about making/posting more after I get tomorrow's S&D issue done.

http://www.sephiroth3d.com/stuff/battle-show-off.jpg


Giffen1: That sounds about as bad as the Lightwave importer for Maya...

The Dragon was orignally my "test subject" for Conv/Biturn. The one in the wallpaper was done with one of the first versions of Biturn. The characters, however, I completely modeled myself. I did have to put it together, and position it myself, though. Bones weren't supported yet when I did it.

As for those movie models, I've always heard they exisited, but I could never find a copy of them. They seemed to dissapear completely from the internet right around the time I started looking for them. Sucks, don't it?