Possible Projects Interest

Started by Randomdays, September 22, 2013, 02:43:31 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

windblown

Lots of great stuff here! I especailly love the animals/dinosaurs imports, I'm pretty excited of the possibility of importing keyframes from those other games too, great news! :)

Also I'm glad to see that you've found a skinning partner on Dean for the Saturday Morning project, working with Podmark on the New X-men was the best part of FF modding for me and it was very motivating, as it was doing X-force with Death Jester or Generation X with Murs. I hope that both of you keep your collaborations going!

Randomdays

Thanks windblown... all possible with your help.

Some of the dinos have some very nice animations - eye blinks, tail swing attacks, 'alert' behavior.

If you have a chance take a look at the experiments me an SA have been trying to work with from Ultima Online and the Neverwinters. It looks bad, but if there's some simple fix we're overlooking that would be nice.

Also, if you could look at any of the spiders that share the same kfs- I'd really like the walk/run animation turned 90 degrees for a wall climb. Either a very simple explanation on how to do it, or if you could take the time to do it and add it in. Tomato tried to explain it to me a little but I couldn't work it out.

Dean is great to work with, and his skins are excellent. I really appreciate his stepping in and his enthusiasm for the project. The Saturday morning project has gotten some great additions to it. But feel free to add any you'd like to do.

RD

Randomdays

Update on new animation imports.

With really no progress being made on the UO or the Neverwinter games, I took a look at some of the links SA had listed for other games that use nifs. Some of these might be usable but are narrow in scope, and probably not much would be added over whats already available. A lot of the games also have a strong anime/ chibi feel to them, which to me doesn't really go with the overall feel of the FF games.

With all that, I took a look at a game called Atlantica Online. Its still an anime type of game, but some of the models looked generic enough to be usable. Also, for an MMO, it has a strong strategy mode to it with lots of different units from many cultures. The game came out in 2008, so the nif version and polycount isn't too extreme for FFvt3r. While a lot of the units might not be useful, I'm more interested in the new animations.

http://at.valofe.com/guides/game_overview

The client is a free download of a zip of about 4 gigs. Opening that you find a multiple part installer file setup and can delete the zip.

The game installs to about 15 gigs total. From there, there's some good news and bad news.

The game uses nif and kf files, and there's over two thousand different directories in the 3d model folder. Some of the nifs open fine in nifscope, some only give you the armature. Those nifs won't open in Blender or Max, but open fine in Noesis. For the kfs, some have a large kf with all the animations in it, some have  individual kfs for each action, and some have both.

The kfs have a standard mix - idle, attack, damaged, death and walk. Some have a 'tired' kf which could be used for stunned, and a 'magic' kf that might work for ranged or special attacks.

The last problem is that the game uses dds textures for skins, modified on the header so that they're unreadable by dds viewers. Luckily the modders out there had already found away around that and I was able to get some working textures applied.

I was able to import a working nif and individual kf in to Blender and back out again as a working set for FFvt3r. I picked a centaur ant soldier and walking kfs carrying a boulder. The boulder is supposed to be carried in his hands but appeared off of where it should be, so I removed it in nifskope for now.

Below is a pic of the ant in the FFvt3R character viewer, properly textured and animated. Poly count is about 1k ,and it uses two 256x256 textures for the mesh.





SickAlice

Really making strides. I still your on to something with taking any sort of animation type and exporting as this type, at least as a base to then messed with in Skope and such.

Tracking back a page to Camelot. Okay so native format. So I'm going to figure the game engine assembles it somehow, akin to tilesets. I've run into that before and with nif, Knight Rider speaking of. I'll figure it out, I'll just have to remember what method is used for this. I can see looking at the cyclops for instance where things should be, like you can see where the bottom of the feet is mapped and where the sole is on the texture. I know I've heard of kfa. I'll leave a note to check an old forum and see if I can find that.

Not sure what you mean by tested and working but if it isn't the crab then all that means is they already where set up in a way the engine reads them. The idea is to use them as a measure to fix the ones that don't. Just to be clear when I test I test everything. The bugs occur in odd places, usually when a specific animation and interaction happens. I know other people who test in game by looking at it and saying it looks fine. I've been tasked with fixing their animations on and off for the past few years by request of other users when their games/mods crash. *shrug*

Anyways what I was saying didn't pertain to ones you got to work, it pertains with how to get the NeverWinter stuff to work. For whatever reason (I'm not tuned into how Blender and it's Nif scripts work in detail of course) that format isn't making the changeover correctly but it is coming out as something. It just needs to be manually fixed past that point. That's all I was saying with that.

The other thing if you mean the car by the buggy to climb? I did it with something else and I "think" I used the fly or hover animation but changed the rotation in the keyframes is all. Probably a windblown subject there.

Randomdays

Camelot - I assumed that the engine did something like that. Double checked the other 3 test nifs - they did not have any mapping set up but they did map correctly once run through either Blender or Milkshape. I know the game came out with several addons after it was released, and maybe they changed the way things were done with the updates - for better or for worse.

Tested and working - I put them in game both as good guys and bad guys, gave them various powers ,and had them fight till there was a winner, all without any crashes. Collisions/pathfinding were mainly good with both the map terrain and other characters, but may need a little tweaking here and there.
Probably correct in that they were set up for the engine to read them. As Gamebryo kfs to start with they had a head start on the Neverwinter animations and probably didn't need a lot of changes to work.

Wildlife Park 2 uses a version of 10, Atlantica, Oblivion,  and EE3 use a version of 20; Civ 4 lists versions from 4 to 20 and Camelot uses versions from 3 to10, probably changing with the addon packs,

The only issue I saw, in game as well as with the character viewer was 1) sometimes after combat the loser would go back to idle mode after falling down and 2) after losing, the nif would be floating above the ground a bit. This is not present with all imports and appears to be due to the way the original kfs were set up.

Climbing - exactly - I need to rotate an existing set of kfs 90 degrees and rename them to climb - as said, turn the spider's walk animation into a climb one.

Thanks for all your input on this stuff. I know you've got a lot going on and I'm sure its taking at least a small piece of your time looking at this. Its helping putting things in focus and looking at things from a different angle.

RD

SickAlice


- mapping:
I haven't got a method down yet, just sat down. But one I'd ask about Camelot since you said they load in Blender (I have the wrong Nif plugins for Milkshape, going to have to try and remember to check my old drive) is if your finished product works then? Noting the native doesn't have assigned textures, likewise they have keyframes in the nif at what not. Just checking because if so then it could be exported from Blender after the fact, corrected then reweighted in Blender again. I know the method otherwise, I just have to remember it. Just for ideas though. I've gone as far as I could get one working in a 3d program or CTool even and just screenshotted the model with texture and went from there. There's always something though, one single model in my time and I probably could have but it was never assigned in the first place and it would have a massive job to fix (user has purchased this model so I considered it the job of the person compensated for it).

Usually just for your notes you have to flip it. Quickest method is open you're object/dae whatever in Noesis and export it with Flip UV's checked. I use PSK almost exclusively otherwise DAE with Noesis as it has the least loss. Sometimes when I'm not up to it I'll just vertically flip the texture even and call it day. Not the case here but again something you may run into and need all this for.

- keys:
Yeah the keyframes were fine for NW as I said for the most part, one wrong value in the header only and the string names didn't have that additional part. Just the nif was a mess. So you're saying you got those working? And yeah testing. My two to check areas are animation(s) in question, same vs collision specific (lift pole so life one), interrupted (knocked out during animation say or explosion so the animation changes in midsequence, this is why shared keyframes usually fail).

Those are the areas I run into freeze (character object/possible cyclic redundancy), freeze universe (whole game, not often), black screen of death (crashes/often) or glitch object (should hidden object does not, often when a sequence is interrupted in mid thus the object hangs out). Else the scale Biped bug (results in character freeze then to Black Screen Of Death) when the main Bipeds scale is off in the donated keyframe or signature mismatch, the key isn't legacy so the animation won't be usable in game (I keep meaning to start a list of what's what but end up putting it off).

Personally why I'm rigid about all this and to answer the same question from windblown elsewhere in addition to personally I look at how this stuff would be used when I'm gone. More important to me what people can skin, skope and mod from anything I do then what I do myself. And again I had a lot of skoped keyframes sent to me for fix. A to each their own maybe but I work by standard example, when it comes to keyframes I mirror whatever Gren does. His keyframes are always complete and streamlined so I personally stick with that. I don't really discourage anyone else's methods here, this is just the way I do it but when it comes to needing me to look at something this is the way I do then, with a fine comb. Always one setting I tell you, even one character is off in say the texture name in a nif (one of this games files even, can't remember though I do remember Time Masters Hourglass actually has the wrong texture assignment).

-Rotate: I think it's the R value in the Quaternion keys and whatever the main node is on Euler adjacent to the objects placement in it's scene. I usually just do a couple tests on a copy of the keyframes until I hit the mark. I downloaded your buggy and will have a look, I know this is as easy as it was for me to give that penguin a belly slide animation. I just never remember the exact math offhand. A handy chart below that I keep with my Freedom Force stuff at all times.

-
I don't mind mostly because I'm learning a lot of things myself here. Like I said I have a high interest in converting non-netimmerse animations to nif.kf and you made the first breakthrough I've seen now here. Also I had surgery on my tailbone so I'm laying here in bed with my laptop so not that much going on. This is me taking breaks between whatever I was working on anyways.

Aside the below applied to 3d dimensional space in animations in Nifskope and looking at the colored axis minding X = l to R (red), Y = back to front (green), Z = up to down (blue) as marked by the handy arrows in Nifskope and the relative values there (I often zero out weighted mesh nodes to make keyframes easier to work with). Likewise in the same Edit pop up menu are the needed Euler values for the math and as below, though I keep a check on the values might not be derived from the node but the editable poly itself, sort of hit and miss. Particle emitters are a problem for me there as I've been bugging about lately aside not being able to see them to work with all this. At any rate this is the method I'm going to apply to your buggy tonight, note what values I changed here so you can use it as a point of reference going forward.





Randomdays

Camelot - It looks like the nifs import with all weights intact. No animations due to the kfa issue. I can put up a couple more test nifs with their kfas that have proper textures when they're mapped if you want. I was thinking thy might animate if you renamed the armature/ bones to FF1/FF2 bone names, but not sure if tha would work.

Neverwinters/ UO - no, not working yet, or much progress there. The new working kfs and nifs were from Atlantica Online.

Since Windblown popped in I was hoping he'd take a peak.

AO has some new, interesting animations I've already seen. I've been using Sam the Eagle a lot for flyers, but AO has a couple of flying bugs with a much faster wing beat that would go better with the dragonfly and wasp I've just done. There's a good snake with animations as well, better that the eel I've used. A lot to go through.

The Spider Mobile is pretty much a mess. I need to load up a FF vehicle or map item and bond it to the mobile to help clean it up I think. Still haven't tried the FFvt3R ant yet - that may work for the rotation. The spider might be easier to work with for the rotate test. Besides, a bunch of spiders climbing up buildings would be creepy.




SickAlice

#427
Where did you find these Camelot files? One of two things are happening. These aren't the correct textures. May be for a different model of these characters used in cut scenes or something else. Either way I'm looking at Ettin and that mapping doesn't fit this texture. Second, the more likely I'm googling a bit. First thing that comes up is a texture conversion problem (indicates mapping is the error too). They come from .mpk package files according to their mod forums. I think they had to do something to convert them. The keyframes are inside the nifs as with the NW ones and need to be extracted from them.

Okay that's where my confusion was. I was talking about what the NW nifs need, probably that I got too thick into it. Though again doing a side by side with the ones you do have working and trying to make the NW ones match is a safe bet. Fair warning that crab.nif is a mess and needs a lot of work.

I'm giving your buggy a shot tonight, putting it in Val's jeep (from TF Hound) since it's a comparable scale and has all the decent keyframes. Should be easy actually once it's all in the node, it has no weighting requirement either, all static. Past this if you get the point suggestions are INK's Prof.X V.2 to have an animated Spidey inside the buggy. Else for rotation study just check any character keyframes Idle against it's flight position. The entire thing rotates at an angle there so if you look at the rotations in the keyframe associated with the main node it should be real visible. Though again when I'm doing your buggy I'll take notes for you and pass them along, it's a simple process when you done it a few times.

*edit: Ha ha. I got your spider-buggy working in a few seconds after I made this comment. I'll tell you how did it so easily when I'm finished polishing it up. You're going to laugh and I was seriously just guessing and it worked.

SickAlice

Spider-Buggy with climbing action finished for you. The funny bit was I chose that jeep nif, looked at all that stuff that was in the buggy and just copied it all at once into the jeep node. Fit like a glove, no joking and that was total shot in the dark just for lulz. I only had to move it slightly over. Else I made a few value and naming adjustments to make it easier for you to work with. Likewise made a custom climbing key, tested it in game and it works like charm. All the details are in a text document I stuck in the folder.

http://catman.freedomforceforever.com/temp/Spider Mobile RD Val.rar

Randomdays

#429
Thanks a lot for the spider-mobile ! - downloading now.

Going to look for the jeep. Sounds like it might be a good base for the other vehicles I've done.

Camelot - all files were extracted from DAoC mpk files. I had already extracted all the nifs and put them in a directory. Going through them all I only found the 2 ettins and 2  cyclops. No conversion done on them or the extracted textures. Cata_Ettin would be from the Catacombs expansion.

For the textures there are a LOT of mpk files for them . Each one is a mix of everything from monster skins to various character parts - hair, faces, armor, clothes, etc. Its possible that there are other skins for those meshes in different mpks I haven't found yet, and those are for outdated models. Those were just the first one I had come across.

The entire client is available for download here; https://darkageofcamelot.com/

I had bought the complete dvd, but the download is more up to date. If you do download it, I've got the mpk extractor if you can't find it.

Animation - from everything I've seen, the animation is in the kfa files, not the nif. I'll go ahead and put the other 3 test files up with their kfas so you can see. Apparently they used something called 'Iris shortened format' to make them. almost no information found on the web about how to work with that.

NWN - I think just about all the NWN meshes would turn out to be messy. Almost all the models are multi part, with each bone seemingly getting its own mesh part. For the characters, getting a new piece of chest armor didn't mean a new skin for the chest, but frequently meant getting a new chest mesh for that armor type.

I think there might be a few monsters that are a single piece that could be looked at.

NNW2 might be a better bet to concentrate on in some ways. While you can get the armature and animations going in Noesis with the granny 2 scripts, and then exported out as a dae, the mesh would have to be imported in separately with Neverblender, and maybe re-weight painted. Getting the granny2 files to work would also get the UO files going, and the best NWN creatures were already upgraded to NWN2 by modders.

I'll go ahead and send you a NWN2 gr2 skeleton, sample animation and mesh, and a noesis dae to look at as well.

Uploaded - under requests as 'SA Samples"




SickAlice

#430
If you need any help with buggy let me know but it should be standard stuff for you. I extracted and looked at the models, the mapping is straight forward. I would remake some of it but that's me, like how the tires are mapped so I could add tire traction. Some have more parts combined in one then should be. Tire example again also has parts of the platform chasis in it which are overlapped with the tire texture assignments. In my case I would move those texture assignments, both on black.tga and then create two separate models, copy and past the tires in the nif and import the distinct models naming the new one something like "platformchasis2" for those bits. Aluminum_Anod is another which holds several geometries between parts of the frame in addition to the metal portions of the head and tail lights. These mapped to Aluminim.tga. There I would repeat that. These pieces also have Specular channels and a glossiness of 12. Each their own but I copy the process I did with the tires and bodypanel giving them new standard material properties, texture properties (creating _refl and _glow Aluminum.tga for this), decrease the glossiness to 10 and get rid of the specular. I'd repeat it with several, this is just me.

Problem customer is parts that have no external texture though I'd leave them or reassign and make textures for them depending (looking at what the Spider-Buggy calls for). Leave the stencils where they are, parts like the tires for example depend on them to draw what is otherwise blank space. Leave the transparency on lightcovers and the clear exhaust fan and I'd say leave the window as is since that's a hard effect to pull off otherwise. Else I can do web shooters if need be or rather set up so you can finish the animations for there. Course there's parts you want out, I'd hide them so they're available for future use like the bumber for example and parts you want to make and put in like the license plate. Luckily this whole thing is static and nothing is angled so you can just export/import through Nifskope without any issue. Other things I'd redo the interior parts and dashboard imo. And else make some hubs that are over the lug wheels inside the tires with the spider-man logo on them. "Could" make duplicates, one having a rotating texture and one static then account for them in the keyframes via the scales as well. They're short keyframes so it isn't too much work. Anyways that's everything off my mind there, I'm willing to throw in on the modeling and texturing part of it if you want. I have a good idea how this should match.

For future use here's a better option being all of Val's Transformers thus all their alt forms. I also have his static models for maps from NPI, ask if you need them but these will otherwise double as map models using their Idle animation of course.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/41oyr7o168n8el5/Transformers.zip/file


Yeah, looking again at the Camelot ones and the keyframe animation is just a placeholder for their XYZ coordinate pretty which would otherwise be set in the node properties. I would maybe convert these as well like I did with the spider-buggy but that's up to you. I'll look at the files later but something is off here, that much I can see so there must be some other file that goes with these. Maybe something that point to material assignment like KR has.

NW I dunno though I would cheat and combine FF skoping methods there. Seems like a huge tasks to individually bring them over. That's another one on you. Like again I'd just assume bring the crab on to this games ant_soldier then work out the claw animations from scratch.

Randomdays

Spider-mobile - tinker away on it - I think it'll be awhile before I get back to it. None of the parts had mapping to them when I started; I left the unmapped pieces as they were since the original modder assigned them different colored materials, like the red on the engine. Of course it would be easy to add mapping to those pieces and simple skins like I did for the black.

Camelot - did a search through the entire game directory for ettin and cyclops and only came up with the meshes, kfas and skins - no possible set up files, though they could be in some master file.

I did find another set of cyclops skins in one the zones - a head and body skin. The body skin worked fine but still having problems with the separate head skin. I have a feeling that like you said, there's more skins somewhere that will work, and I just haven't found them yet.

I'll upload that for you to look at.

Also, you had said something about the Doc Ock mesh/ kfs and them being on the do not touch list. Don't know if you want a traditional octopus set, but AO has a rather nasty looking one with two different skins. I started on the kf imports and did the idle and walk, but for some reason parts of the legs disappear while animating.

I'll send that up for you to check out also.

NWN - agree that since it seems that's there's no easy way to get the animations into FF, probably best to import the old way. For the ant, I tried using that for one of the beetle imports. The problem is that the ant legs go very high above the body before bending back down. That's why I used the scorpion for most of the beetle imports, and the Civ 4 Spider for most of the Spider imports. The crab will probably go on the Oblivion mud crab, or the Civ 4 scorpion since they have the claws. AO has a nice scorpion and a crawfish as well.

RD


Randomdays

For the HB Heroes project, there's not much left for me to do - trying the get Dr Zin's Spider, the flying Kaboobie from Shazzan, Speedbuggy, and Godzilla and Godzooky from the HB show. Other than that, I'm ready to support Dean or anyone else who needs some help with some missing characters.

Missing so far: (wish list, though some are being worked on by Dean or others I'm sure)

Jonny Quest - Jade, Dr Zin; I'd like to do an alternate pack of the team with jetpacks on, but would need some skinning done to add the harness, and an alternate Race done., since I'm not sure on SMS permission on kitbashing. Also; the bad guys from "Calcutta Adventure", "The Fraudulent Volcano" and "The Quetong Missile Mystery"; The monsters from "The Sea Haunt" and "The Invisible Monster"

Space Ghost; Blip (In Process), the space coup and the rest of the Council of Doom; Dinoboy, Ug, and Bronty (in process)

Moby Dick and Mightor  - Tog and Moby (both in process)

Birdman - Birdgirl

Shazzan - Chuck and Nancy. If they get done, I'll do a mounted version of flying Kaboobie with them on board.

Herculoids - I'd like to take a look at Dr R's Zok, Gloop and Gleep and see if there's anything I can do with them

Samson and Goliath - In process - if the normal versions get done I've got a few motorcycles I can put them on.

Frankenstein Jr - Buzz and his dad.






Some new aquatic encounters, for Moby or anyone else under the sea.

From WP2, a Bluetip Shark and a re-release of the Hammerhead I had done years ago, both now on their own kfs.

A Kua Toa from a modder on NWN2, both by itself and on the Hammerhead. Trident from Gren's Aquaman.

On the bottom, the Sea Demon and Dragon, from users on Turbosquid. Those and the Kua Toa are on the male_swimmer kfs.

The two sharks and the shark rider are in the key frame transfer folder. The sea monsters are in the others folder.

A few more underwater things to do - some alternate crabs from NWN2 and DAoC, a couple of lobster/ crayfishes from same. Some of the map items - caves and ruins that are being worked on would work well, and I'm trying to get an old sunken ship for a lair.

RD




SickAlice

Those are pretty wicked looking.

Like I said if you could send me a PM as a reminder where to download the things I'd appreciate it. Else I forget some of this stuff in the day to day. That tracks about cyclops, it has a separate head and body mesh and that was part of what made me think it couldn't be the right texture.

If you mean an actual octopus I can't think of a use for it though I'd look at it. Benton would probably love that being sea creature and all though.

The buggy was textured. I had to export the pieces individually from the nif out of Blender to obj's for the texture to show. Some have good mapping, some terrible. For your reference. I'm scrapping most of it myself sans a few pieces I want to swipe like the cool headlights and otherwise I'm building a new one from scratch. I didn't like the buggy and I mean the model is to die for but it isn't the Spider-Mobile's distinct shape. So I'm doing something with that, more skinner convenient mapping and a lot less polys. The last especially, the buggy has a ton of faces and tiny little parts inside that aren't seen really. If you don't mind I want to host it on my site as well, credit given where it goes of course including yourself. I have a thing for adding as much stuff to my Spider-man page and trying to get those rare characters and props made for that series (racking my brain about Kindred currently speaking of, those centipedes though).


Randomdays

#434
No problem at all on the Spider-mobile. Host away. Happy to see it getting a proper release.I picked the one I used since it seemed the closest I could find. The polycount on it was way higher in the beginning before I reduced it in Blender. Most of the vehicles I've imported are the same, since they were never meant for the FF games to begin with.

Glad to see you're giving it a proper texture as well - mine was a mess since I'm definitely not a skinner, and the mapping was all over the place as you said.

Looking forward to the finished project. Will you be adding the posed spider-man back in?

Sending you a pm for a reminder on where the files are.

Speaking of obscure Spider-man, has anyone ever done the villain "The Fly" ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Fly_(comics)

I'm asking because I just ran into this mesh/kfs in AO. I was thinking of bring him over as is, but I could also replace his mesh with a male basic so it could use his animations. I will be doing that for the wasp and dragonfly creatures if I can, to get the better wing animation.

He comes with two skins, and there's a different version there as well. So far all I've done is his idle kfs, which are a little creepy. First he rubs his hands together, then his feet.......like a fly.



RD

SickAlice

Leaving Spidey in of course and giving him a passenger. Both have alpha channels so they can be textured out and it used as a map object as well or with I think the amalgam trait in FFX where a character combines with another entity to create the illusion of driving a parked vehicle (not sure if something better has been scripted, can't install it like I said). I'm near finished with the modelling now and just working out the frame and little details.

Dunno about the fly, if so an oldie like Kenn or maybe recently someone like daglob, if that one is then it would be over at Alex's with the rest of the vintages. No reason ever not to do your own take on a character though. I'm interested in looking at that one for Baxter from TMNT as he's on my list.

Bit of trivia since on the subject of Spider-mobile and links you shared. Reviewers missed a beat about the name of the company, Corona Motors. I scrapped most of it like I said to make it look signature and part was the engine where I said I was working with an air cooled engine as came with the 3d model. Noticed the engine in the comics was different so I started researching to make my model of it. Yeah, it's a corona engine which is a DIY yourself project akin to making a Tesla coil at home that doesn't use gas. So that company name was a nod as well them making the "non polluting engine" as a promotion for his buggy. Just a little Easter Egg the writer tossed in there.

Randomdays

The Flyman is finished and is being uploaded to the keyframe import folder on the mega site. He came out very well with no glitches beyond that the wings need alpha channel setup for the transparent areas, and the recurring problem of the character standing back up after the fall animation is finished.

The animations are very nice - especially the fall, one of the pain animations where he gets knocked on his butt, and the idle mentioned above.

Since this was the first flying mesh I've imported, I was able to double up on some the animation to add to the base - idle doubled and renamed to hover, etc.

Comes with the two skins, an alternate  "spikey" version, and I left in the original mesh and kfs if anyone wants to see what they look like - he will animate with them in nifskope. They can be deleted otherwise.

Randomdays

Kaboobie the flying camel....flying. A bit shiny but animates well on the dependable Sam the eagle kfs.



SA... read your walkthru on rotating the spider-mobile - or any mesh - 90 degrees for climb. Still  foggy since I've never done it and doing research on it isn't helping. Can you send me a more detailed step by step, maybe with a couple of screenshots?

RD

cmdrkoenig67

#438
Hi RD,

I don't know if it's just my bad (using my phone's tethering connection to my computer) internet or what, but several of the zips/rar files from your Mega site say they are corrupted or damaged? I've been able to download a few successfully (like the the rabbit, butterfly, green sea turtle, hyena, Christmas tree, fireplace, window, etc...), but quite a few, give me the "damaged error". for example: all the items on the "Map Items" page, all of the new NWN meshes and new creature meshes, you recently uploaded.

again, I'm not sure if the issue is on my end or with the files?

Dana


EDIT: the error message actually says, "the archive is either in unknown format or damaged", I thought it said corrupted or damaged.

I also just tried to download files from the keyframes folder again, the flyman, most of the animals, like the elephant, kraken, mammoth, the mudcrab, all the spiders, scorpion, etc...they're all giving me the error message.

SickAlice

Maybe I'll make a page on my site but else how do pull off multi post threads? For you're question. I gave thought about just giving a run down of the basics of all this since I know it's problem area for people though it shouldn't be asides the higher math end of it (and then there's a calculator for that). Shortly, we don't need a picture because you know this stuff, you open a nif in nifskope and go to a spot that shows geometry values. Transform > Edit is going to be commonplace for most here. There you see values in a pop up window, the first being Translation, the second Euler. These break down in a various specific ways when choosing which setting but just keeping this basic Translation is where on a 3d plane and movement in it, Euler is rotation. Over in the keyframes you find the same thing, XYZ and Euler. That tells the program to move the object by V (varies by selection from on it's axis, that being the center point of the node to it's own triangles and so forth). So it moves the thing by said amount but then the math comes in against it's original location.

So in this case the main node which is Dummy01 when you look at the nif (Transform > Edit). I chose this because I want to move the bounding box and everything else including the model in game, that helps with contact so the model doesn't fall through a wall and so on. Looking at it again in Nifskope at the axis (Render > Draw Axes) there's arrows. Red, Green and Blue. Looking at the Translation values are X, Y and Z. Looking at the Euler values are Y, P and R. For the Translation those arrows are:

Red = X = left to right
Green = Y = back to front
Blue = Z = up to down

Just getting that in your head as a guide, we're working with Euler because we want to rotate it instead of move it. Over in the keyframes we find the same sets again. Looking at the Idle animation (because this is what I copied to make a Climb) at the keyframes for Dummy01. Looking Quarternion, Translation and Scales. Rotation, Translation as above and Time (visible/not visible/so on). So Quaternion is where we go. Since it was different type of key and not the usual type (this has XYZ Rotation) I changed it our desired Linear.
That made clean sets. I made two values and matched up the time on the last one to the rest of it (0.3333). Clicking on the values switches over to Axis and tosses in a 4th value of A. Lets avoid that here. Clicking on the button that says Axis switches it back to Euler. Our Euler values minding the arrows is:

Y = up-down
P = front-back
R= left-right

So our math is we went to turn 90 from the position it is Idling in. Negative in this case so -90. And up/down so value Y. There's a value of 0.00 in the Euler slot of our two fresh keyframes. So enter -90 right? No, because we have to triangulate it against the position of the actual (virtual, whatever) object. Back over in our nif the Dummy01's Y Euler reads 90.00. Right so pretty simple then, subtract -90 and we have a value of 0.00 to enter in the keyframe we want this rotation to happen for the Climb keyframe which is the default. So there's no other work to do.

This is also why I talked before about zeroing out nodes in a nif. The way I pull it off and easily is using the weighting method you taught me in Blender. When you copy and paste the new weighted model as you see it drops into the nif exactly. That's zeroed out. If you drop it into an already existing node usually it will turn in all different directions that you wouldn't want it at. So you'll look at Transform > Edit at the node and model already inside it and at those values then adjust the new weighted model to the old models values until it matches that position which itself is against the values of the node it rotates around and the keyframes around that. Phew, that's going to be a lot of polynomial based math when making animations isn't it? So how about this though, the new weighted model is already zeroed out and we aren't keeping the old one, just it's node. So drop the new one into the node, delete the old model and zero out (0.00) all the values of the node itself (also the string name called upon by the keyframes). Now in our above example we would be entering -90.00 into that Y value in the keyframes. No need to do a bunch of calculation or work.

Anyways I hope that clarifies, it's simple when we get it down especially minding the arrows and the shared values between the nif and keyframes, looking at the keyframes as mirror to the nif you want to think of it that way. There's a lot more specifics that can be added here to create a variety of effects that the engine allows for but just getting the basics down and what anyone would normally be using and want to use to speed the process along.

Randomdays

#440
Dana - just downloaded the flyman and he opened fine for me. I used winrar 6.0 -64 bit to rar him up - not sure what you're using to try to open him. When I get home I can try uploading an alternate version with winzip or 7zip. No one else has reported a problem, but then maybe no one else is downloading?

The newer items are on a different computer and years later, so probably a different version of winrar. If you haven't got that, maybe try to download.

SA - I'll look things over also when I get home and see if I can wrap my head around it.

Thanks for the input

RD

Panther_Gunn

I'll echo what RD said about Winrar versions.  I've seen in the past that older versions won't properly recognize anything created with a recent version.
The Best There Is At What I Do......when I have the time.

Randomdays

SA....

So Transform > Edit on the nif - got all that from before; resizing, moving. zeroing out, etc. I usually do that in Blender when I can.

"Over in the keyframes we find the same sets again. Looking at the Idle animation (because this is what I copied to make a Climb) at the keyframes for Dummy01. Looking Quarternion, Translation and Scales. Rotation, Translation as above and Time (visible/not visible/so on). So Quaternion is where we go. Since it was different type of key and not the usual type (this has XYZ Rotation) I changed it our desired Linear. "

This is where I'm stuck. Looking at idle, walk, etc, I don't see these options anywhere. For a FFvt3R kf, are they on the main NiControllerSequence, the NiTextKeyExtraData, the Controlled Blocks? Are things different depending of if its a FF keyframe or a FFvt3R kf? Do you need to right click somewhere to bring up a menu?

For the Spidermobile you're rotating on Val's transformer kfs, which I think are  using FF keyframes. I'm looking at the spider which is using converted FFvt3R ones.


Randomdays

A few upcoming creatures in process, If I can get them to work.

Two Crabs - one from NWN2 and one From DAoC. They'll probably be rigged to the Oblivion Mud Crab. If not, maybe to the spider or a scorpion.

A Scorpion from AO. Should be able to use its own keyframes.

A Lobster from NWN2. It'll probably be rigged to one of the two scorpions.

RD



SickAlice

It's a spider-signal projector, you're right. I bought the digital comic for a few cents. My question had been whether the nubs where part of the metal, the art again is rough (reading that Andru did that on purpose to sabotage it, thought it was dumb and a forced move by a toy company and noting his art on the Spider-man and the scenery is otherwise detailed and immaculate). So lenses is what I'm looking at with no real life counterpart. Else I'm taking some liberties given the inconsistent art around the interior. The dash only has a constant of speedometer/fuel gauge (in spite of the fact it has an engine that doesn't use fuel?) left of the steering column (some later artists draw it to the right or both), a camouflage switch (shown once otherwise never appears again?) and radar (mid to steering apparently but never shown?). And the backseats, well just look at the art clips online even from any single issue, it varies by panel or sometimes they don't exist in the same book. Going with the first Andru design for them, otherwise there's a blank hole on a large part of the work and likewise Spider-man has been in the backseats more than once as has a second passenger in the recent Black Cat series. Phew. Just so when you see it you know, basically going with what looks nicest and works in physical space (the design is otherwise impossible, you're feet would be inside the hood for one example.

On keyframes, no not using FF. I can't, they don't drop down in Nifskope so I always convert them to the second game. Likewise I only work with the second game anyways so I convert everything first that needs to be. Right then so, you see what's in the Nif. Now in the keyframes looking at Idle which is what the Climb keyframe first was. Open everything Dummy01 is the first NiKeyframeController. Open that inside is it's NiNiKeyframeData. In the Block Details (F3 to view) are a keyframes Quaternion (listed as XYZ type here), Translations and Scales. I then copy this keyframe for climb and changed the type of Quarternion from XYZ to Linear. Now head over to Climb at look at the Quartenion for Dummy01 in the same place, open it's drop down menus, there's two values I added so it has a matching start and end time to the rest of the animations (otherwise parts of your mesh flicker in and out in game, crashes and so on). Right there you see values of 0.00. That is Euler scale and coordinates to the Euler in the Nif. Clicking on it though and it changes to Axis but clicking on the button that shows up that says Axis changes it back to Euler for editing that scale. So for up to down rotation, represented by the axis in the screenshot you put up in those nice looking bugs is Y. To rotate the nose we just use basic math we learned in grade school, that's -90 degrees. So looking back at the Euler in the Nif at Y we see 90.00. So subtract and 0.00 achieves the rotation.

Just to review our math (number 2 pencil optional):
30 - position 0,50,50
60 - position 50,0,50
90 - position 0,-50,50
120 - position -50,0,50
150 - position 0,50,50
positive or negative then of course depending on which way for zero point or factor we are going in geometry/plane coordinates.

Randomdays

#445
SA  - that helps a bit, I'll experiment a bit and see if it works.

Two interesting things when working with the AO scorpion;

1) when trying to import to Blender, it gave the following error; "Corrupted nif file; Invalid NDoors version." - NDoors being the makers of AO. From the pic above you can see that nifscope opened the mesh just fine. There might be other ways to get around this, but I imported the nif to Max 8 with no problem and then exported it out as a FFvt3R nif, which cleared the problem in Blender.

2) In nifscope, the mesh appears skinned no matter where it was on the hard drive. After conversion, the skin no longer showed up. It turned out in this case the skin was embedded in the original nif. Going back to the AO nif in nifscope, I was able to right click on its texture and export it out as a dds. Pointing the FFvt3R nif at the dds, like normal, applied the texture again. Animation conversion though Blender seems to be working normally.

Also, for the HB Heroes project, I was able to find a free stl of Captain Caveman - not as nice as the one found a few pages back, but you can't beat free. I had been talking to Dean a while back about the odds being low on find meshes for 2 other classic shows - Secret Squirrel and Atom Ant, and this site had them as well. They had a nice Zok from the Herculoids among other items.

Unfortunately, while very nice, the prices are a bit out of my range.

https://cults3d.com/en/search?q=hanna+barbera

RD






SickAlice

I'll have to work on a page sometime outlining basic values, too many images for this thread. Just remember the files are mirrors. Same value present in the keys as are the nif so to effect one you just change the other with the same name and value type.

Just to keep you in the loop in SM I'm replacing the body mesh. The thing is broken and can't be textured properly, some cases in a vehicle it wouldn't matter but it does to anyone texturing Spider-man since things need to line up. Also doing this lets me get something else of my to do list. Anyways I imported Grens basic fingered male here in it's place, got tricky and posed it in Blender to match the position of the old model by bone so it wouldn't have any odd stretching like the old.

Captain Caveman model can be found in one of the Wacky Races based games. Not sure the specifics, I only looked into that just so much but if you can find the game that does and rip the model you'd be clear there. Else CC is actually on my to do list and has been for years. I could make one from scratch (the shape is simple) though it would be awhile out and animations would be on you. Let me know.

cmdrkoenig67

Hi RD,

Thanks, you're probably correct and I'm a derpyhead (I usually am, when it comes to tech stuff)...LOL! It has been a while since my computer had internet, so yes, I have to update those programs. I feel silly that it didn't occur to me.

Dana  :doh:
Quote from: Randomdays on September 20, 2021, 09:03:47 AM
Dana - just downloaded the flyman and he opened fine for me. I used winrar 6.0 -64 bit to rar him up - not sure what you're using to try to open him. When I get home I can try uploading an alternate version with winzip or 7zip. No one else has reported a problem, but then maybe no one else is downloading?

cmdrkoenig67

Yeah, PG...it's very probably that, since I haven't updated those programs in a long time (my computer being without internet for so long).

Dana

Quote from: Panther_Gunn on September 20, 2021, 06:04:45 PM
I'll echo what RD said about Winrar versions.  I've seen in the past that older versions won't properly recognize anything created with a recent version.

cmdrkoenig67

Quote from: Randomdays on September 20, 2021, 11:20:30 PM
A few upcoming creatures in process, If I can get them to work.

Two Crabs - one from NWN2 and one From DAoC. They'll probably be rigged to the Oblivion Mud Crab. If not, maybe to the spider or a scorpion.

A Scorpion from AO. Should be able to use its own keyframes.

A Lobster from NWN2. It'll probably be rigged to one of the two scorpions.

RD



Those are very cool!

Dana