Lesson 2
Character Creators Are Your Friend
In the first lesson, a few basic game and Blender functions were covered. In lesson 2, we'll look at how to make meshes and skins for FF/FFVTTR, even if you have no skill or experience, by using outside programs. Lesson 3 will deal with getting your creations into FF.
There are quite a few games out there that have a very detailed character creation system in them - RPGs especially. We'll look at a couple, how they work and offer some suggestions of other programs to try. These will be quick looks, as most will of these will have their own detailed instructions on how to use them.
Looking at the male and female civilian meshes, you'll see that there are alternate skins for each, basically simple recolors. When the game runs and places civilians on the map, it randomly selects a skin and you get different looking people walking around.
Lets replace the civilians with some new ones with some more variety to them. Starting with the male civilian first, rename the base directory to civilian_male1. Create a new directory with the original civ name, civilian_male. Inside the directory, create the skins/standard directories and copy the keyframe file over from the original male civ directory.
Next you'll need 2 programs;
1) 3D Ripper DX at
http://www.deep-shadows.com/hax/3DRipperDX.htm . This program will run in the background of a supported direct X game. When activated by hot key, it will try to grab all 3D data on screen and save it as file, along with all textures and shaders. More info is on the website link.
2) A program with a character creator. For this example, I'll use "The Movies Game" from Activision/ Lionhead. It came out in 2005, so the polycount is a bit better than FF, but still close enough to be usable and look good. Don't worry if you don't have it, this is just an example and any simular program you might have should work as well. If you like what you see, it's pretty cheap right now and easy to pick up. More info at;
http://www.amazon.com/Movies-Pc/dp/B00026D13A/ref=sr_1_1_title_0?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1327202599&sr=1-1 I've tested TMG on my Win7/32 laptop and it runs fine, even though the drive wouldn't recognize the disk in the drive, or the addon disk, and I had to find a no CD patch to get it to actually play.
I have the TMG Premiere Edition with the Stunts addon pack installed - if you don't have the full package, your choices might be different.
TMG consists of a tycoon-type sim game and as a way to make your own movies. It comes with a seperate program called Starmaker, we'll run that first. Each character in the game consists of two main parts. A head mesh and a body mesh. In the game, when you are changing your costume, the head stays the same while you get a new body mesh, texture or both.
Starmaker deals with making the head of your character and should be a seperate icon on your screen. A full featured version of Starmaker came out before the game and is still available on the net for those who want to try it out for free. It's about 120megs I think.
Running Starmaker you'll see the startup screen where you can choose to make a male or female head.
Select "Create Actor" and you'll be asked to input his name. It really doesn't matter, so we'll call him Mr Patriot. Click the check.
The next screen shows you the actor's head, animated - smiling and blinking at you. You can rotate the head by holding the left mouse button and moving it on the head left or right.
The 5 buttons up top will give you their function when you scroll over them
1) Main Menu
2) In Game Attributes - Not important for what we're doing
3) Basic Face Modeling (lit - where you are now)
4) Advanced Face Modeling
5) Info on how to use Facemaker - brings up doc.txt
The doc.txt gives you full details on how to use Starmaker. With Starmaker, you can age your character, change eye color, choose head shape, choose a second shape and blend the two, choose various eye makeup, facial hair, skin tone, eyebrows, hair style, etc. With the advance options, you can even change the shape of the mesh by choosing a part of the face and adjusting it with a slider bar.
The two sets of head to the left, front and side view determine which head to use from a set of premade choices. The top head is your normal choice, and you can select a second head below and "blend" the two together.
The set of colored circles below that are your eye color choices, and below that is a slider bar for aging the character from 18 up to an old man.
Since we're making a male civ, we'll keep it simple and just give him some new hair. Click on the lower of the two faces on the far left to go to a new screen giving you some basic settings. The Slider bars below the head should be self explanatory. We're just going to change the hair color to brown and leave everything else alone.
Return to the main menu, save your work and exit Starmaker.
The first time you run TMG, parts of the game are locked. As you play thorugh the game, win awards and game time progresses, you'll unlock everything bit by bit. This link;
http://tmsexymaria.angelfire.com/tutorials.html will walk you through unlocking the full game without playing thru it. Since we're working more on meshing/texturing than playing this will save a lot of time. If you already have the game, you've probably unlocked everything already and won't need this.
In Win7, the file worked when I put it here; "C:\Users\*******\AppData\Roaming\Lionhead Studios\The Movies". With WinXP, the normal location works fine.
Next, before running TMG, with 3D ripper DX installed, click on the shortcut to run that first.
On the top line, click on it to open an explorer window and point it to the executable for The Movies Game. For the capture key, I'm using F10. Some games make use of the function keys and you have to find one not being used. This works fine for TMG. Don't worry about the next 2 entries. On the right side, leave everything unchecked except for the "capture to .obj" choice. Click that on. 3DRDX captures to a .3dr file used by 3DS Max. Blender can't use this but can use the .obj format.
For the frames, textures and shaders, have them placed in the same place. I made a directory called "Ripper" but you can put them wherever is good for you, as long as you know where they are.
Hit the "Launch" button and TMG should run. "Esc" key to skip the movies and bring up the main menu. You'll know that Ripper is working if you see the "ready to capture" message in the upper left corner. Select Game and then Sandbox mode and set your options like in the screen cap. Click the check and you'll be asked to pick a studio emblem, name and owner. Click again and the game will run.


Once in, scroll till you find the Stage school. It will have a line of applicants in front of it.
Mouse over an applicant and grab him with the left mouse button and drop him on the "Import Star" part of the building. A popup will appear with Mr Patriot. Select him and he'll be in the game.

Pause the game and scroll till you find the makeover department. You can grab your star by finding him on the map or just grab his portrait in the upper left and drag. Drop him in the makeover part of the makeover department.

A new screen will come up for makeover. Your star will be on the left and all his costume choices on the right. From here, you can change some of the basic Star Maker options like hair style, facial hair, eye color, etc. The right column, "Cosmetics" controls this. The left column, "Clothing" can give you alternate skins for the costume worn, as well as add items like glasses, a watch, etc.
The bottom right area will take you through the costume choices. You can scroll through all, or pick a category, like "military" or "casual"
We're going to give Mr Patriot something simular to what the male civ wears in the game. Select "formal" then scroll till you find "60's Mod Suit". Click on it and he''ll wear it. Add a hat that matches the costume and he's done and ready to be captured.
Notice that there are multiple choices for hair and eye color, as well different colors for the shirt, pants, shoes and jacket. Once the original mesh is all set up to go, you can come back here and do multiple captures, one by one, of different choices in color. Since we already have the mesh setup, all we'd need would be the new textures to go into alternate directories under the mesh's "Skins" directory to have different looks for him. From the choices given, you can have lots of different random civilians walking around. Don't do this yet - wait till the first one is complete.
Since he's animated, we need to wait until he's in a basic rest pose, standing straight with a neutral expression on his face. When ready, press your capture key. A message should appear in the upper left corner telling you the capture is in progress. To check, go to the capture directory. There should be a .3dr file, a .obj file, a .mtl file and lots of .dds and possibly some .vsh and .psh files. The .vsh and .psh files are for shading and won't be used. The .3dr file is for 3ds Max and won't be used. The .3dr, .obj, and .mtl files are named by their capture date and time. The texture and shader files are named by what I guess is a random numerical name.
Don't change things around and capture again as you might overwrite some of the texture files. Check and make sure the .obj file is good and not 0 bits in size. If its bad, try capturing again. If the file is good, you can save and close out TMG and move on to lesson 3.
Alternate Lesson 2
This time we'll replace the civilian female mesh. As before, rename the original directory to civilian_female1, create a new directory called civilian_female, copy the keyframes in, and last make a skins and standard directory.
This time the two programs we'll need are;
1)3D Ripper DX again - see above.
2) "The Bodyshop" program from the Sims 2. The Bodyshop is a seperate program from the Sims 2 game that combinesTMG's Starmaker and Makeover functions. As with TMG, a character is made of a head mesh and a body mesh. The head has a seperate hair mesh and the body may be composed of more than one mesh.
A limited version of The Bodyshop was released before the game and is still available free online. If you already have the Sims 2, your choices in the Bodyshop will vary on which expansions you own - and there are many! I have a full install of all packs so I may have choices you don't.
Run the Ripper as you did before. Each addon pack has its own copy of the Bodyshop program and you'll want it to point to the one in the NEWEST pack you have - the latest made, not the last installed. It 's named "TS2BodyShop.exe" and will be the CSBin directory of the pack. Launch the program thru Ripper. It comes up much slower than TMG so give it a minute or two.

When it finally comes up, click the "Build Sims" button up top, then click on "Build or Clone Sims"
The next screen will have a prebuilt sim on the left. On the right will be 8 slots, 2 rows of 4 sims. 7 of these are prebuilt sims. The upper left green selection with the "+" is for adding a new sim. Click that button.
The program will make a random sim. Using the 3 buttons to the right of the sim, select female on the top, adult with the middle and the thinner of the 2 body types. the button below that is a randomizer. You can rotate the sim with the arrow keys at her feet.
The five buttons at the top let you create your sim
1) Genetics - skin tone, eye color and hair style and color
2) Faces - lets you alter the basic mesh of the face, changing jawline, eye shape, brow, mouth and nose

3) Modifiers - lets you alter all of the above even more.

4) Facial hair, makeup and glasses - Hats weren't included in game, but custom hats have been added by fans to the "glasses" category. We won't deal with this yet, but a good place for hats is at;
http://www.all-about-style.com/hats_4.html there's a blue velevet fedora that might work well on this page.
5) Clothing - from 7 basic types, plus 1 piece or 2 piece combos.. There are lots to choose from, and many of them have alternate skins. The symbol in the corner shows what addon pack it came from.
We'll go ahead and build a sim that looks simular to the one in FF. As far as I know, there's no quick way to sort through the clothing choices besides general types, such as "swimwear", "underwear", etc. We're going to select a fromal dress a third of the way on the slider bar. This dress comes in 6 different textures. With 6 dress colors, 4 skin tones and 6 hair colors, you have a base of 144 different combos you could make. some hats have alternate textures that would increase it even more.
Once we have the dress, hair and skin setup, we can capture the sim as we did in TMG. As with TMG, you can make a lot of different random civ females from just this setup..
Once the capture is complete and the sim is saved for later use, you can close Bodyshop and move to lesson 3.
Notes on "The Movies Game", "The Sims 2" and other programs
The Movies Game - TMG covers the era from the first silent films to the year 2020. It allows you to make any movie you can think of, but has 5 main categories
1) and 2) Comedy and Romance - There are everyday/formal/swim, etc outfits that will work in this category for any year the game covers, giving many choices for typical civilians/ secret identities
3) Action - Includes Western - Cowboys, Indians, saloon girls, gamblers, etc,;War - military outfits for most of the major 20th century wars the US has been involved with, with costumes for the other nations involved as well; Thrillers, Detective, etc.
4) Horror - Werewolves, vampires, zombies, guys in hockey masks, etc.
5) Sci Fi - early outfits that would fit in something like an old Flash Gordon serial, as well as more modern day stuff, as well as a few alien race and monster type outfits.
One of the main limitations of the engine was it was designed for a fixed camera angle, so all models were the exact same height. With Blender though, so can adjust their size to give a little variety.
Most of the fan sites for additional content for TMG has shut down, but there's a few left with added props, costumes, etc
http://www.8eyedbaby.com/ http://www.themovies3d.com/ The Sims 2 - The Sims 2 deals mainly with modern day life and has many different outfits to go with it. It comes with a base of 4 different skin tones and 6 different age groups - baby/ child/ teen/ college age/ adult/ senior, as well as different body weight types. perfect for making just about any civ or secret identity type.
Besides the standard choices in the Bodyshop, in-game characters can become plant people, vampires, werewolves, zombies, half aliens and witches.
Two of the main sites for additional material are the "Mod the Sims" site and "The Sims Resource" but with the popularity of the game, there's still many out there.
http://www.a-simslife.com/themeslist.asp http://www.parsimonious.org/ http://www.modthesims.info/ http://www.thesimsresource.com/ Maps - TS2 has an excellent in-game lot editor. Residential lots where the sims live allow you to create any house type with hundreds of choices of decorations. Community lots, like businesses and parks, allow you to create places where more than one set of sims can meet. With the "Seasons" add on pack, you can change the time of year between the four seasons and instantly add fall colors or snow to your lot. You can also change time from day to night or back.
I don't know if it would work, but its possible thay you might be able to grab the entire lot and turn it into a giant nif for FF/FFVTTR. It wouldn't be destructable and the poly count might be too high, but its something to look into.
Other games with Character Creators to look into;
I would suggest looking at games made mainly between 2000-2007 or so. Any game outside that time will probably have too high or low polycount to be used.
1) Fantasy - Unfortunately, the two main ones I hoped would work with Ripper, don't. Neither Neverwinter Nights 1 or 2 seem to work. You can get the models out of it and into Gmax, but that adds another layer to the process.
World of Warcraft does appear to work and looks like it would be a good match for FF style of graphics. Both Morrowind and Oblivion use nifs as base, so it should be possible to grab the mesh from the files without using Ripper.
Dark Age of Camelot is an older MMO, but uses nifs as its base file type.
Other possibles (untried) - Dungeon Siege 1 and 2, The Sims Medievil, Lord of the Rings MMO, Age of Conan MMO, Two Worlds, Heroes of Might and Magic 5, Sacred 2, and The Dark Eye: Drakensang, and Guild Wars
2) Horror - besides what's in TMG, the only suggestion I can make is "Vampire the Masqerade - Bloodlines" from 2004. Perhaps some of the Resident Evil games.
3) Sci-Fi - "Phantasy Star Online" . The Gamecube and Wii emulator, Dolphin, works well with Ripper. If you have PSO for Gamecube, I would check it out. The poly count might or might not be enough to match FF.
Since NWN 1 and 2 don't work with Ripper, I don't know if Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 would, but its possible.
Last, if there's any servers still up for the original Star Wars Online, that might be worth checking out.
4) Animals - Zoo Tycoon 2 and the first two expansions. This game uses nifs that you can grab right out of the installed game. The last 2 expansions use a different file format and are hard to get, even with ripper, due to distortion in the capture.
Wildlife Park 2 also uses nifs as base file type.
5) History - Empire Earth 2 and 3 are RTS games that cover all of history from the caveman days to the future. Hundreds of unit types for soldiers, vehicles and builidings - uses nifs as base file type you can grab from the installed games. Has a mapmaker that might be useful.
Civilization 4 - As above, but turn based.
6) Superheroes - I haven't tried any of the 3 MMOs - DC, Champions or CoH, but one of these might work. Also Bearded's new Unity project has a character creator in porgress.