Freedom Reborn

Edit/ update of the original post 12/1/2011

For those who don't want to go digging thru all the pages below to see what's been going on since I started.

Right now, it ought to be possible to use almost any building or vehicle type from another source and use it in FF. If the mesh is not aleady a nif, it can probably be converted to nif. Almost anything from Googles 3d warehouse for sketchup for instance ought to be able to be imported with Blender turned into a nif. Things I've learned since august have opened up a world of possibilities and almost ANY mesh,from any source can be imported now I believe.

For animated objects, if there is an existing nif in game already, the new mesh can be weight painted to its armature and use it kfs in game. Anything without an existing type would be beyond my skills to use since I have no skills to make new kfs from scratch. I could add a tiger, an elf or a horse, but not a shark. There are some screenshots (if they're still up) on page 5 showing some trek meshes imported succesfully into the game and are fully working.

For anything I personally add, I will make sure that the original creator of the mesh is credited as I am only taking their work and moving it to a different platform.



Original Post
----------------

Some people are already following in Dana's thread
http://freedomreborn.net/forums/index.php?topic=53054.0
But I'd thought I'd make a new thread here to get more attention.

How does over a thousand new meshes and skins sound? Buildings, animals and people from around the world, from prehistory to the future? Dinosaurs, robots, sealife? They're on the way, but I need help.

While reading over the wikipedia entry for FF, I noticed at the bottom of the page they had a list of other games using the same engine and I wondered if you could import/export resources from game to game. I didn't really do anything about it til reading Dana's thread and that got me looking into it again.

So far, it looks possible to import animals from Zoo Tycoon 2 into FFVTTR. The meshes and skins work fine in Nifscope.

In the Empire Earth series, While EE1 wasn't possible, EE2 is easily worked with and maybe EE3 as well. Goggles reports that Civ4 is also easy to work with, at least with buildings I've already got a skinned mesh to show up in Character Viewer

What I would ask for now are people who know more than me( which is porbably just about everyone) about nifscope, a bit about keyframes and working with them. EE2 and EE3 both have kf files, but unlike FF, each action has its own seperate kf.

Bearded and Goggles have already kindly stepped in to help, but with over 100 animals in ZT2, and probably a thousand plus meshes in EE2 and EE3, its going to take awhile.

Anyone with the EE games or ZT2 and is interested, let me know and I'll run you thorugh on setting up.Its fairly easy after figuring out how to start. Anyone else interested in looking at some meshes, let me know and I'll send one over to check out.

I'll try to get some screenshots of the imports actually in FFVTTR, although they'll look a little stiff without a working kf. Screenshots of the actual games graphics can easily be found be doing a web image search.

The Freedom Force page on wikipedia has a list of other games that might also have possible resources.

Thanks for any and all help.

Update. Bearded has uploaded the croc with a couple of basic animations. In the rumble room he appeared about the right size. I also loaded a camel riding nomad into the rumble room. In the character creator he looked fine, but in game I could only see the camel and he was small. My attempts at screen capture didn't work. The EE3 nomad didn't work and the mesh is not supported by the game. Probably needs converting

I have 4 buildings from EE2 ready to send to Dana. A buddha, temple, market and castle.

This is an awesome idea...Like I PM'ed you RD...I can take a look at the buildings...I'm no good with animal and people meshes, though.

Dana

Test buildings sent to Dana. Hopefully we'll get some screenshots soon. Most of the buildings have an alternate snowy skin as well as the main skin

I believe the strange pcpcache textures are actually the color piping used in game to designate which team the unit is on. Probably unneeded for our use.

adding up units,buildings, fx, terrain items, etc. there a little over 1600 nifs available

I'll take a peek at what you sent, RD.

Dana

Update. Lots of things going on. Was able to grab do a few screenshots and will post later.

Installed all of the ZK2 addons and was looking at the sea life for Benton. The Walrus skinned okay, and there are skins for male and female as well as sick and dirty conditions. He looks a little weird since I think his face is alpha'd for whiskers and they have some strange file format for it.

Tried looking at a few other animals and while the skins were present, the mesh wasn't. Not sure what's up with that but will look some more.

On a possible up side, since I was having issues with ZT2, I started looking at Wildlife Park 2 Deluxe. It has about 60 animals including some that ZT2 doesn't.

Dana will will be happy to know that this includes a rat, pig and some farm animals.

Even better, it uses kf's like FF. Each animal has 3 skins of high, medium and low res, a nif, and a kf and kfm file.

Which brings me to question. Both WP2 and EE3 have nifs that "are of an unkown nif type." Can they be used? Can nifscope convert them to a different version, does it need blender or can it be done at all? Also, the three animals I looked at in nifscope for WP2 had missing vertex Weight errors. Not sure what that means - maybe my version is too old and I need to grab the latest version

Sent the WP2 croc to Bearded to check out. Anyone else who wants to check out an animal please let me know.

And last, sent 26 buildings to Dana for him to look at

I think we're making progress, but all help is appreciated

I posted this in the other topic, but since it seems to be shifting over here, I'll double post it here:

Just a little more FYI on the buildings. The can be placed in the game relatively easily, however characters can walk through them. Building don't necessarily need a bounding box, but I tried adding one anyway. Didn't help. One or two of the buildings I tried appear to be slightly more physical, but still suffered from the issue of not being target-able by melee attacks.

It's all very weird.

The structure of each nif was very similar, but slightly different among them. I going on the assumption that Civ4 and the like were a bit more forgiving with the nif format than FF is. Im gonna try loading each one into blender, and then exporting back again using the FF export settings to see if that somehow sets the nif properties correctly for the FF games.

To be Continued...

I'm wondering if thats due to the nature of the game. If I remember in civ, the units moved onto a building to occupy it and get advantage of any bonus it supplied. When CK checks in, maybe we'll see if he's having the same problem with the EE2 buildings. If you want, I can send some your way later if you want to check it out

Figured out the building issue (I'm pretty Sure).

Loading the nif files into Blender, doing the required scaling and re-exporting them fixes the corporeal "Look ma, i can walk through walls" problem. Characters can stand on them and avoid them. To get them to interact and take damage, they need to have a valid formed "destruction" version. I knew this at one point in time :doh:

So anyway, it appears buildings can be done.
The only caveat I have found is the tediousness and issue of breaking them apart into sections and having to create new geometry in the empty spots and map the new geometry with textures etc...  is way more time consuming and difficult an ordeal than I am willing to do (if others want to, more power to em), so I'm perfectly content having a building that just collapses when the health gets to zero as opposed to collapsing into 3 or 4 sections.

I hadn't even considered that part of it. Thanks for looking into it and figuring it out.

Ahh, good news Goggles.  Great work man, and I agree, to have a greater variety of buildings, it should be okay for them just to collapse in one piece.

Not a lot of time today, so only got a couple of things done.

It turns out that besides using a special bf file instead of kf's , sometime ZT2 uses a special bfb file instead of nif, that can only be hex edited. This means certain animals can't be converted - so far that means no shark, dolphin or stegasaurus, among others.

WP2 still looks promising if I can get some help importing. Went ahead and posted in the tech area to see if I can get some help there. Other than that, updated nifscope to the latest to see if it would help and took a few screen shots

(http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/1062/whale1.jpg)

A whale from EE3, shown in nifscope

(http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/94/walrus1.jpg)

Side view of a Walrus from ZT2, shown in nifscope

(http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/9377/walrus2e.jpg)

another view of the walrus, showing the white area where the whiskers would be added

(http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/7291/camel2.jpg)
Shot at 2011-08-25

A bedouin with rifle on camel from EE2, shown in character viewer
Original mesh was about a foot high - 5x brought it up to about normal

(http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/3854/croc1.jpg)


and last, the croc from ZT2, shown in game witth kf's from bearded

Ha!  Awesome!  This is looking better and better.  It's a shame about the shark and the dolphin, though.

i was able to import the kf that you sent me last time, but they were animation gibberish. gonna try a couple of tricks, but i think i am going to have to animate it all myself. the good news, the best news, everything you have sent me is set up to physique perfectly. the poly count is perfect for ff, and the vertex's are all in the right place for physiquing.

Thanks Bearded..... I guess that's good news and bad news. Is the second croc simular enough to the first that you can use the same kfs for both?

On the kfs I sent, I was able to open them in nifscope okay, and saw that they were multiple action like FF. I was really hoping they would be plug and play, or easy to convert.

And on the second croc, what did the "vertex weight" error mean, did it effect you, could you skin it, and could you import back to work with FF?

And last, it it did work, could you give me a quick and dirty walk thru on it. Since all the WP2 meshes are the same I could start getting the converting done to speed things up.

Thanks again

i do all my importing with max, and the skin worked just fine, after i converted it to tga. i'm not getting a vertex weight error, but again, that's something i can set in max. the second croc's bones imported much better, with no distortion, so it will be easier to work with. i'll probably focus on that one. plus, it has teeth skinned right on it. i've got some more tricks i can try, to get them to work but it's almost easier to make them myself. even if i get them to work, i have to hand write the animation sequence text. and it looks like they are running super fast. i'll have to figure out how to slow them down, i don't know if there is a max setting for that, anybody know? otherwise, i'll have to manually drag each animated keyframe.

Thanks bearded. I thought it might be something simple that could be done in blender. As long as you're willing and interested, maybe I'll leave the animals to you and work on EE3. With what Goggles has told me I might be able to get that rolling.

Thanks again

update - I guess nothing is simple. I thought the whale might be ready to be released. It converted with blender and Goggles helped out with a texture problem, but from what he's telling me, FF kf's files are different from anybody else's, and importing them to FF is unlikely. So everything imported may look good, but kf's will have to be done from scratch or an FF set found that matches.

Bearded, are the 2 crocs close enough that the kf's would work for both? Also, I think theres some other lizards in the games, a monitor lizard and komodo dragon, maybe more. Do you thing the kf's would work on these as well?

If new kfs have to be created, we should definitely try to get a set created that would be as versatile as possible.

i'm on it. animal versatile.

Maybe lizard versatile? I think the bears, elephants and dolphins (oh my!) might move a bit differently, but could still have their own groups.

Bearded would know best, of course.

Quote from: bearded on August 27, 2011, 06:37:08 AM
i'm on it. animal versatile.

Precisely, but as RD pointed out, there may be some limitations.  At the least it seems like similar animals would be able to share simple keyframes.  Most of the sealife should be able to have a simple "swim" animation.  You might even be able to adapt the animations from that beastboy dolphin mesh or from the mermaid.  I really don't know enough about how all of this works to be certain any suggestions of mine wouldn't be nothing more than idle fantasy.

Looking through both ZT2 and WP2, we have a lizard, lizzard (?), monitor lizard, komodo dragon, saurian (frilled, maybe iguana?) and nile monitor. most of the dinosaurs are not usable, but a couple have their female variant in nif format, like the triceratops. There's also a few turtle/tortoise variants that might have simular walking types.

Quote from: BentonGrey on August 27, 2011, 04:33:28 PM

Quote from: bearded on August 27, 2011, 06:37:08 AM
i'm on it. animal versatile.

Precisely, but as RD pointed out, there may be some limitations.  At the least it seems like similar animals would be able to share simple keyframes.  Most of the sealife should be able to have a simple "swim" animation.  You might even be able to adapt the animations from that beastboy dolphin mesh or from the mermaid.  I really don't know enough about how all of this works to be certain any suggestions of mine wouldn't be nothing more than idle fantasy.

Keep in mind fish swim differently than sea mammals (like dolphins and whales)...Perhaps a fish keyframe set (with vertical tail swim anims for sharks and smaller fish) and a mammal keyframe set (with horizontal tail anims for orcas and dolphins, etc...)....But Benton of all people, probably knows this.  BTW, Beard made the mermaid mesh.

Also, do fish and sharks really need all that many keys?  An idle (kind of swimming in place above the ground), a melee bite (or two?), melee tail slap(?) or maybe like a flying melee attack (like I've seen some of the superman keys do), a power/area (could be the same for both...maybe a spin), 1 ranged attack (?), dodge, fly anims (just swimming faster perhaps), a run (a medium swim speed and why would a walk anim also be necessary?) and a fall (floating upside down ?)...BTW:  Couldn't the croc/lizards and the fish/sharks all share a swim anim?  They all have that kind of side-to-side undulating swim style.

Many toed quadruped land mammals (small to large sized) move in a very similar fashion (bears, pandas, armadillos, rodents, badgers, even skunks).  Ungulate (many have hoofs, some have toes) mammals like Rhinos, bovine, horses, goats, elephants and giraffes all have almost a galloping walk and run (a bit different than many mammals)...That might prove to be a challenge in creating the different types of anims.

All in all, animal versatile keys would be great to have.

Dana

Quote from: Randomdays on August 27, 2011, 05:43:35 PM
Looking through both ZT2 and WP2, we have a lizard, lizzard (?), monitor lizard, komodo dragon, saurian (frilled, maybe iguana?) and nile monitor. most of the dinosaurs are not usable, but a couple have their female variant in nif format, like the triceratops. There's also a few turtle/tortoise variants that might have simular walking types.

Monitor lizards (or any lizard, really...Including gators) would share a lot of the same moves as the croc (I still think the croc's fly anim should be a swim and most other lizards swim too...That's just my suggestion, Beard).

Dana

Quote from: cmdrkoenig67 on August 27, 2011, 06:32:26 PM
Keep in mind fish swim differently than sea mammals (like dolphins and whales)...Perhaps a fish keyframe set (with vertical tail swim anims for sharks and smaller fish) and a mammal keyframe set (with horizontal tail anims for orcas and dolphins, etc...)....But Benton of all people, probably knows this.  BTW, Beard made the mermaid mesh.

Yep, I know. :)  I may not be quite the expert in marine biology that Aquaman is, but growing up on the Coast was an education unto itself.  Neat that Bearded made the Mermaid mesh, I'm hopeful that it will give him a shortcut....though I may be showing my animating ignorance there. 

Quote from: cmdrkoenig67 on August 27, 2011, 06:32:26 PM
Also, do fish and sharks really need all that many keys?  An idle (kind of swimming in place above the ground), a melee bite (or two?), melee tail slap(?) or maybe like a flying melee attack (like I've seen some of the superman keys do), a power/area (could be the same for both...maybe a spin), 1 ranged attack (?), dodge, fly anims (just swimming faster perhaps), a run (a medium swim speed and why would a walk anim also be necessary?) and a fall (floating upside down ?)...BTW:  Couldn't the croc/lizards and the fish/sharks all share a swim anim?  They all have that kind of side-to-side undulating swim style.

My point exactly, Dana.  For my purposes, I'd be content if the fish ONLY had a swim animation that doubled as movement and flight.  However, idle, swim/fly, fall, and melee (bite or charge) would make for a completely functional pack.  Anything beyond that would be icing. 

I'm really likng the work done by the artists for EE3. The game itself got bad reviews, and EE2 is a much better game, but the artwork for EE3 feels right for FF

Benton, here's a fish swarm from EE3. night make a good background or a good fx

(http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/1474/fishan.jpg)

Ah...See I was thinking a school of fish would be a great fx for maps (like the pigeons/crows and toucans already in the game), I think I mentioned it in my animal request thread.  Just kind of swimming around the map as a somewhat in-synch group.

Dana

Yes and yes!  It would be great for maps, it would also make a pretty neat FX.  Prev, where are you when we need you? :D

Fish day, fish day...Gotta get down on fish day...So excited, so excited... LOL!

Dana

Quote from: Randomdays on August 27, 2011, 07:20:29 PM
I'm really likng the work done by the artists for EE3. The game itself got bad reviews, and EE2 is a much better game, but the artwork for EE3 feels right for FF

Benton, here's a fish swarm from EE3. night make a good background or a good fx

(http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/1474/fishan.jpg)

Ever been nibbled by a school of gar? It didn't really hurt, but they were quite annoying.

Dana , for the fish, that's basically what they do in game, just swim in an area for you to send your fishing boat out to for a food source. Of course, like the rest of stuff, they'll have to be reanimated.

On the houses, are they usable for you? I've got a few from EE3 almost ready for you to check out. There aren't as many as in EE2. but I think some fit what you need really well.

On the animals, I think most will fit in general categories, but a few oddball ones will need extra anims. The bear could use a paw swipe as well as a bite, plus standing attacks. The elephants some trunk attacks. I think dolphins do a ramming attack. The seals, walruses, sea tutrtles, etc would need a land waddle as well as a swim.

I'm not sure about the houses yet, RD...I just started looking at them.  There is also the whole issue that Goggles brought up (with them having no substance in game)...He may be able to "fix" them in Blender, but I'm not really skilled enough to do that.  I'll keep looking at them though and see if I can do something with the ones I like.

thanks again for sending them.

For the animals, As I suggested, perhaps all swimming anims should be the fly animation in most of the sea-going animals (especially for turtles, walruses, frogs or what-have-you, etc...).

Dana

Dana, the problem Goggles had with the building was with Civ4, so might not be an issue. If it is, I just reread what he wrote before to fix it and it sound pretty easy. Since EE3 files have to converted anyway, I'll convert a house and let you check it out. If you do have the problem with EE2, I'll convert one of those too and send that over as well.


It should just be 1)import to blender 2) adjust scaling to get the right size 3) export back out. Done.  If there's more to it, maybe Goggles will put in some input

Quote from: Randomdays on August 27, 2011, 10:08:18 PM
Dana, the problem Goggles had with the building was with Civ4, so might not be an issue. If it is, I just reread what he wrote before to fix it and it sound pretty easy. Since EE3 files have to converted anyway, I'll convert a house and let you check it out. If you do have the problem with EE2, I'll convert one of those too and send that over as well.


It should just be 1)import to blender 2) adjust scaling to get the right size 3) export back out. Done.  If there's more to it, maybe Goggles will put in some input

Oops...I misread that about the meshes being from Civ4...I apologize.

Dana

So...I just tried to get a couple of the houses into the game...But for some reason, the nifs aren't showing up when I try to make templates for them.

Dana

maybe they do have to go thru conversion then. If you don't have blender set up, I'll send you a couple converted nifs when I get home later.

Quote from: Randomdays on August 27, 2011, 11:22:31 PM
maybe they do have to go thru conversion then. If you don't have blender set up, I'll send you a couple converted nifs when I get home later.

Thanks...I tried several times of trying to find the nif via the FF Editor, but it just wasn't seeing them.

Dana

No problem.

I was also wondering about something else from what Benton said. He had wanted the whale about the size of a bus. I never tried, but if you hopped on top of a moving bus in game, does it keep moving? If so, maybe the whale could be set up with a path to follow on the map, and have Aquaman or Namor riding on top, looking like he was directing it. Might be good for a cutscene. Or I think I saw a cover somewhere once where he had the reins on 2 side by side dolphins, with one foot on each

RE: Buildings.
Make sure that in addition to setting them up in FFEdit, you create a text template file to put in the directory containing the nif. They wont show up without it. 

Also for them to actually interact properly with the world, you need to have a damage version. The simple way to do that is to just make a copy of the nif, name it nifname_destruction. Then in nifskope create a NiNode named "building" right under the root. Then create a child NiNode under building called "section1" (I think, double check on an existing one to be sure) and make sure the building mesh pieces are all children of that node.

Thanks Goggles. I just sent Dana an email with 4 test buildings. the only thing I wasn't sure about is whether it mattered if you resized them in nifscope or in Blender.

Quote from: GogglesPizanno on August 28, 2011, 10:41:03 AM
RE: Buildings.
Make sure that in addition to setting them up in FFEdit, you create a text template file to put in the directory containing the nif. They wont show up without it. 

Uh...Duh, Goggles...How long have I been making maps?  I kid, thank you...I simply forgot to change the .nifcache to .nif...RandomDays set me on the right course (thanks again, RD).  I'm able to see the nifs now.

Quote from: GogglesPizanno on August 28, 2011, 10:41:03 AM
Also for them to actually interact properly with the world, you need to have a damage version. The simple way to do that is to just make a copy of the nif, name it nifname_destruction. Then in nifskope create a NiNode named "building" right under the root. Then create a child NiNode under building called "section1" (I think, double check on an existing one to be sure) and make sure the building mesh pieces are all children of that node.

I was able to get Alchemiss to stand on the building I put on a map...It's still a bit wonky, so it might need a bounding box or something.

Dana

Dana, did you have to convert the nif for it to work in FF? The wonkyness may mean it needs to be converted. Try one of the converted nifs I sent and see if it acts the same way.

Update - where we're at. It seems longer, but its been 1 week today. So far, I've loaded and began to learn nifscope and blender, thanks to Dana, Goggles and Bearded.

Of the 4 games being looked at, all look like they'll be usable, but all will need some work.All 4 will probably need kfs built from scratch.

(http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/7326/snowpa.jpg)

Snow Leopard from ZT2, Druid and House from EE2 and Camel Rider from EE3

EE2 and 3 have tons of characters, vehicles, scenery and buildings.

ZT2 - some animals not available. Buildings, vehicles and scenery hasn't been looked at yet.

WP2 - all animals avaiable. Buildings, vehicles and scenery haven't been looked at yet.

Dana is working on the buildings, Bearded is working on the animals and Benton is waiting.

Still looking for people who can do conversions and kfs, if anyone is willing.

Quote from: Randomdays on August 28, 2011, 09:03:36 PM
Dana, did you have to convert the nif for it to work in FF? The wonkyness may mean it needs to be converted. Try one of the converted nifs I sent and see if it acts the same way.

Do you mean the first group you sent (Marienburg Castle,  market, etc...)?  I tried the castle, but I had to change it's size up (from 1 to 3), which made it the perfect size (HUGE!) and I had to convert it from .nifcache to .nif.  Unfortunately, it has no substance, characters can't stand on it and they can walk right through it.

Dana

Any of the groups really - first group, house group or the house 5 group, but that's interesting about the castle. Both the castle and the houses are from EE2. I'll run the nif through blender and send it to you, see if that fixe's the walkthru issue.

What you guys are doing here is awesomely impressive. The possibilities brought about by this project should be astounding for our community's modders. I'm definitely watching how this plays out. Great work guys!  :thumbup:

Thanks Cyber. I'd like to again thank Bearded, Goggles, Dana and Benton for their help and enthusiam. It's turning out harder than I thought, but progress is being made. I can't skope, hex or make kf's, so I'll concentrate on trying to get the word out and working on non animated things like vehicles,scenery and helping Dana with buildings.

One BIG update happened, for me at least. I'm not really into making mods or setting up battles, but I do enjoy taking old stories, be it comics or books, and making machinima from them. One of the best tools for this, along with FF, is Lionhead's " The Movies" game that came out awhile back. It's got a sim/tycoon part to it that I ran through once to unlock everything, but the meat of the program is making your own cutscene type movies with it, done totally in game without scripting like FF and most games.

The game uses .msh files for its meshes, but I found a pdf this weekend online on how to import nifs into it, using blender. The writer actually used Tommyboy's Black Panther as an example. With the blender scripts, not only can you import in, you can export out. For me it means I can do full movie like conversations, as an alterative to FF's talking heads. Plus, the option of adding in the other stuff as props or scenery.

For everyone else, its another good source of pretextured meshes.

I hope that anyone reading through this topic will take a look at the games mentioned, as almost all are great games by themselves. Since most are more than a few years old, they're pretty cheap as well. I think GOG has all the EE games.

Zoo Tycoon 2 and Wildlife Park 2 are good if you enjoy the simcity/ tycoon types of games. While The Movies has a good sim part to it, modders and story tellers will like the movie part the best.

While Empire Earth 3 didn't do too well, EE1 and 2 are great games. If you enjoy RTS's like Age of Empires or Warcraft 1-3, you'll enjoy these, plus they use full 3D instead of sprites.

I hope to do a first release of a bunch of vehicles this weekend. Each will have a nif for FF and FFVTTR ,plus both dds and tga textures, and a readme giving credit to the original game source. I'll probably set up a Yahoo group unless someone would like to host them.

Once again, thanks for everyone's help and anyone who wants to join in ,your help is appreciated and needed.

i need help. i took the rat nif from inside the ff engine and animated it with raptor, it looks really good ingame. set it up with cop ai, and private army 3 on a character, and you get a swarm of them! really neat looking to see them running around. the polycount is super low, but it looks pretty good ingame.
the problem is, none of his bites work, they are all dodged or blocked for some reason. any thoughts or suggestions? i do have a bounding box included in it.
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Beardedinlairmeshes3/files/ (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Beardedinlairmeshes3/files/)
named rat.ace
i've decided to try and animate the croc using the ant as a base.

Maybe its the small size to begin with?  WP2 has a rat if you'd like to try it

(http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/6497/ratnw.jpg)


Update; I was able to import 8 cars rather quickly (about an hour) into nif format, now that I've got the hang of that part of it. I haven't set up the crumpled forms yet, not sure if I'm up to that yet. The main question is what to do with them sinceyou can see inside. Someone with more skills can try to opaque the windows out, or try to skope a driver behind the wheel. The convertable would look great if someone could tweek it into a classic batmobile and put the dynamic duo behind the wheel.

TMG has about 20 or so cars in game, mainly by Chrysler, from 1900 to the present. I could probably knock out the rest by the weekend, as is.

(http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/2695/cars1o.jpg)

5 cars from 1900 to 1960

i would be happy to take the rat, and a car. i can make the rat, for sure, and the car, i can import male civilian behind the wheel.

one car and one rat....coming right up. The one thing about the driver though, is what happens to him if the car get crumpled, thrown down the street or destroyed? I'm guessing the best bet would be just to not show him in those meshes, or somehow show him jumping out. Superman thowing a car with someone in it  - no way!

i think the damaged version can be made without the person in, but it would take a spawn code to make him move out. register when vehicle is damaged, spawn civilian. but i don't think it is damaged when picked up?

This is some very interesting stuff guys!  Bearded, I'm not why the rat wouldn't be able to hit.  Send me a .zip or .rar version and I'll test it a bit for you.  The size shouldn't have anything to do with it, as tiny figures like the Atom and the Wasp can hit alright.  I'm definitely interested in us getting a working rat model.  That will have a lot of uses, including serving as the Rat King's minions!

Bearded, have I told you how awesome you are, lately?  Well, you are...Bravo, buddy!

Does the rat need a selection box?

Dana

Quote from: bearded on September 01, 2011, 09:15:36 AM
i need help. i took the rat nif from inside the ff engine and animated it with raptor, it looks really good ingame. set it up with cop ai, and private army 3 on a character, and you get a swarm of them! really neat looking to see them running around. the polycount is super low, but it looks pretty good ingame.
the problem is, none of his bites work, they are all dodged or blocked for some reason. any thoughts or suggestions? i do have a bounding box included in it.
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Beardedinlairmeshes3/files/ (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Beardedinlairmeshes3/files/)
named rat.ace
i've decided to try and animate the croc using the ant as a base.

Benton, there's a link to the rat in Bearded's first post about it

Yep, I can't open .ace files.

Opens with winrar for me. try it out

Always have selection and bounding boxes. Always.  :doh:

Oops...I opened the rat up in NifSkope and he does have a selection box...Sorry, Beard.  I just thought I'd ask.

Dana

here he is, a completed project. there are a few things not quite perfect, but a good start. nothing noticeable ingame, anyway.
all i want to request is some different colors, black, white, grey, brown, etc.
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Beardedinlairmeshes5/files/animals/ (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Beardedinlairmeshes5/files/animals/)
rat.zip

Boy, that was quick. He's great Bearded ! Thanks so much for helping with this project.

Holy rodents!  That new rat mesh conversion is great, Beard!  I might make a few skins for him, B.

Dana

are there any scorpion nifs? also, any fish for aquagrey?

I think there is a scorpion. Will look when I get home. Tons of fish. Both ZT2 and WP2 came out with an aquatic animal addon pack. Sharks, dolphins, walruses, octopus, etc.

the rat still can't hit anybody with his melee...his str is normal and the damage is low, that should register, that's not the problem. it's not size, cause i made him bigger. maybe the range setting on the melee power? i have it at 1 5, just like everyone else, maybe something different?
also, my friend mentioned that melee_3 looks  like he is sneezing, so now i'm imagining a range, cone, or area with disease as damage.

maybe check out and see how male_tiny works in game and see if he can hit with melee. if he can, maybe copy his setup

I have a scorpion that someone imported to The Movies from Fallout 3. It's about 7000 polys, but it was turned into a prop - no skeleton

(http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/7938/scorpionq.jpg)

On a possibly brighter note, Being a big D&D fan from 1st edition on, I've got a full install of both NWN 1 and 2 on my laptop. NWN 1 is close to FF in polycount, but uses a version of mdl mesh and tga for texture. Not sure about what the animation files are.

Bearded, you said you have Max? If you look here;

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=GlobalSearch

and do a search for mdl, you'll see a bunch of plugins for max to open mdl files.

The best is probably nwmax, which has a version for gmax and another for 3ds max

I'm downloading gmax and the gmax version of nwmax to see if I can figure it out

I've converted the Fallout 3 mesh to a nif if you want to check it out, plus i've extracted a bunch of different sized amd textured scorpions from NWN if you want to try the max plugins and give it a shot.

Great work Bearded!  I just tried out the converted mouse from the other game, and he works perfectly.  Not only that, he looks great.  You were able to adapt the raptor's keys, hmm?  How did that work?  Was it easy to convert them?  If so, then we should be able to use those basic keys for most biting-type animals. 

I'm excited about this, having a useable rat model in the game means that the Rat King finally has some minions...now all I need is a Rat King!  Also, Liberty Bay's future story arc involving rats has minions that can be scalled to various sizes.  Excellent!

I was able to get gmax up and running, installed the scripts to read Neverwinter models and was able to import a scorpion. For exporting, I've got the obj scripts and I'm trying to set them up, but is there anything easier? I tried tempest, but it errored out - I guess you need Quake 3 installed for it to work.

Edit - may have found the answer. niftools has a max plugin for nifs. If it works, I could go right from gmax to nif.

Bearded, I couple of thoughts. On the rat, maybe try making a hero rat and put him up against another rat and see if they can hit each other. If not male_tiny, take some other mesh, like the raptor, and shrink it down and see if it has the same problem.

If you're still working on the male civilian in a car for me, can you send a seperate nif of him in the sitting position with hands up in the grab wheel position. I could just take him and plug and play him into the other vehicles. The only one that ought to be different is the army jeep. It would probably need a soldier in it.

Thanks and good luck with the rat. Hopefully I should have some scorpions by tomorrow.

benton, does the rat attack properly for you?
i'm going to make a driving animation also, and export it with that included.
if you can send me nwn scorpion, i can use the shape and the animations, i just have to write the animation sequence and make sure they are set for the proper keyframes. it's quite a chore, but can be done. my original plan was to take the shape and apply it to the ant keyframes, and custom make the tail movements.
the rat animations did come from raptor, but i had to adjust a lot. size, shapes of the bones, and the movement, all the front leg run movement is custom. the hardest part is the physiquing. the good news is, every new animal i make, i can base on the rat keyframes and improve as i go, each better than the last. the way i like to do projects. the bad news is i have to physique each animal. oh well. anybody want a squirrel next?

Bearded, How would driving animations work? Since vehicles have no kfs, would the driver be a seperate nif in the car nif, riding along inside? If so, and he's scripted like the civilians in game, he could panic and run away, which would be great if he could get out of the car, and strange to see him struggling inside the car.

Also, if not too much trouble, could you do the same for female civilian? Either as passenger or driver.

For the scorpion, I have to get home and see about installing the max plugin from nifstools and finding what the animation file is in NWN. Do you want the original mdl file with its anims to work with in gmax, or the converted nif files if I can get them?

all i need are the mdl files, animations not really necessary, but i could add them. i was talking about making the animations for driver and exporting them as part of the character nif, not as seperate animations. you should be able to simply skope the nif into the car, and the animations will remain intact. think of it like the animated fx that's been created, like the various golem attacks.

Quote from: bearded on September 04, 2011, 04:28:45 AM
anybody want a squirrel next?

Uh oh...Squirrel Girl fans will go nuts....Groan, I didn't just say that, did I?  You did a great job on the rat keyframes, B.

Dana

This is really exciting stuff and a great way to inject new life into the game! Great going, you guys. I'm really looking forward to the things you're able to create using this new information.

Thanks LP

Bearded, a rar with various sized scorpions is on its way. Doing some lookup on NWN, I think the animation might be stored inside the mdl file.

Not sure if you're familiar with NWN in max or not, but this is what i've found so far.

When opening in Gmax with nwmax installed, it will ask for nwnmdlcomp.exe . This program turns a regular mdl into a ascii version that GMax can use. I can't get gmax to see the file, so i'm having to do it manually. I had to make a directory, put nwnmdlcomp.exe in it with a front end and convert there. Once I did that, Gmax accepted the converted file.

I'm having problems on my computer using any version of niftools nif max plugins past 2.15 - any version past that cause a crash. Latest version I could find is 3.5.5

Testing now to see where I get.

Edit  - the scorpion looks good in gmax with 4 different views. Don't know how to combine all the parts into 1 nif. Tried to export as a nif with a single kg and it crashed the program. tried without the kf and it worked, but nifscope and blender showed it as a bunch spikey parts, nothing close to a scorpion

Any help?

I think Bearded can handle it, RD...I think he ported his big spider mesh from NWN a few years ago.

Dana

That was him with the spider? cool.

Wasn't sure if he had ever worked with NWN files or not, so that's good to know.

But trying to learn as much as I can also. Bearded's by himself so far and if I can help then that could speed things up. Since the last post I've already learned a few more things and was able to export a complete scorpion nif out of GMax. Not textured yet, but working on it. He's about 1200 polys and looks like a good fit for FF.

Learning is fun!

Bearded, looking over the scorpion files I sent you, the dds files turned out to be portraits. The textures turned out to be in a different hak file. They've been found, converted to tga with a nwn converter as it turns out NWN's dds are different from normal ones, and unrotated, as the converter rotates them as it converts. Besides the normal skin, there's also 2 alternates - red and green

I've done some learning on Gmax and can do a few things like joining, texturing and converting into a FF nif. I notice though that the nif doesn't appear to have a skeleton and the animations in Gmax seem to work only before joining the parts together.

It looks like converting an animated creature from NWN to FF is as complicated as the other games, but if there's something easy that can be done that can speed up conversion let me know. Though once again it looks like converting static objects, buiilding and scenery should be easy.

Dana, there should be tons of medievil items for you to use from NWN, considering what type of game it is.

Alright guys, what's the status of that gator?  I've got an offer from a skoper to take a crack at Leatherhead, and he wanted to know if the gator might be useable in a skope.

The gator is still over with Bearded.

my weekends are usually tied up. i know what to do with the gator, i just have to make time for it.

a squirel would be awesome! I am a huge fan of squirel girl!....hmmmmmm

No hurry.  I'm not entirely sure what the skoper wants to do with it, so it might not need to be animated or anything.

Regarding rat skins.

The orignal skin is a repeating fur pattern.  It looks fine.  However, I started a black rat last yesterday, making a wiremap in Nifskope, and there seem to be a weird thing going on with the tail section where the tail meets the rats body.  Now, I think I can work around it, but out of curiosity, is there a way to redo the skin layout on a mesh using Nifskope?  It would be better if there was less stretching in certain areas.  If not, I'll have to change the approach I first took and go with something more like what the orginal skin looks like.  The same thing happened with Arnim Zola, I started skinning him but couldn't figure out what the wire map was showing me.

Nope it does not need to be.  ;)

For the scorpion keyframes -- take a look at the two Brood meshes.  I'm fairly certain that one of their melee movements makes it look like the tail over the back is moving in for a hit.  I think it was based off of the ant, and it might be adjusted in a way that it could make things easier on whoever works on it for a scorpion.  Would still need something added for claw attacks, though.

i appreciate all the kind words. important to me.
just created a new fx, shotgun blast. it uses a cone shaped particle system. and it made me realize, if there a small animal, like parina, i could easily make a particle fx with it, for a ranged attack, or maybe even an area attack. aquaman surrounded by a cloud of biting animals? i think i can even make them have a whirlpool effect.

The particle cone would be awesome for Porcupine alone.  I was never really satisfied with my cone effect.

For the rat, NWN has at least 3 different types that i remember; giant rat, sewer rat and dire rat. They're for a differnt mesh, but I could send the skins over if anyone wanted to try to cut and paste them on

For the squirrel, I think I have two different meshes, WP2 and NWN. Will have to check to make sure. The WP2 would be a 20.0 nif and NWN a mdl that would have to be worked in gmax or converted over.

Once we get the basics worked out on how/if everything can be converted from these various games, I think it might be a good idea to compose some running lists of what's available so that we can focus our efforts on what's most useful to the community.

Good idea, but some of those are going to LONG lists. NWN has just about every D&D creature known , plus animals, buildings, scenery, skies, etc. I don't have excel but I could make a text file up with item and game name if someone wanted to take the time to put it in excel to make an easy searchable list. Everything static should convert easy, it's just the kfs that are proving to give us trouble.

I think i can get it to work out okay. 

Speaking of NWN, are any of the community built critters usable in the game?  I'm think of stuff on the Neverwinter Nights Vault.  http://nwvault.ign.com/fms/TopRated.php?content=creatures

There is also a modern d20 community expansion.  http://nwvault.ign.com/d20/  Maybe some things coudl be pulled from this, as well?

The scorpion is custom built, pulled from the CEP. It's not an official release. The CEP takes tons of custom made items/creatures and organizes them into a package for installation, this prevents any conflicts from different custom downloads.

Anything custom built in the way of meshes should be able to be read in Gmax. You just need the Gmax scripts to recognize the mdl file types. Textures are a special type of dds but there's a converter to turn them into a standard
tga. The converter also rotates the image so it will have to be rotated back.

From what I 've seen, most NWN meshes are not single meshes, but many parts. I think the scorpion had over a dozen pieces. I'll have to test more to see how standard this. They do combine into a single mesh under gmax, but when I tried, it messed up the built in animation. Instead of moving/attacking, he just shook like he was paralyzed and trying to move.  Bearded would probably know a lot more about this.

There are some Blender scripts called Neverblender, but I couldn't get those to work. So right now its mdl into Gmax and nif back out.

finally got the rat working properly. it was the power setup that was messing me up. i did notice it needs to be moved up a tiny bit with nifskope.
edit instead of double post:
would anyone like the rat max file? someone could tighten up the physiquing and animations if they wanted.

That's great that you got him to work correctly, B.  Congrats!

Are you going to re-release him?

Dana

no, i meant that it was my fault, his powers weren't created right. the only thing he needs is a little boost up with nifskope, his feet and tail drag into the ground some. it's an easy fix tho, i could do it and re release.

My bad, I misunderstood.

Dana

Quote from: Randomdays on September 07, 2011, 01:27:42 AM
Good idea, but some of those are going to LONG lists. NWN has just about every D&D creature known , plus animals, buildings, scenery, skies, etc. I don't have excel but I could make a text file up with item and game name if someone wanted to take the time to put it in excel to make an easy searchable list. Everything static should convert easy, it's just the kfs that are proving to give us trouble.

That's a good idea.  I suppose we could also just put together a general list, like "NWN: Medieval buildings, D&D monsters, etc., Zoo Keeper 1: Copy and paste list from wiki, etc."

I've just completed a very long list of everything in WP 2 in a text file. Animals, buildings, statues, people, scenery and items. The only thing not available is the plantlife, as it is an unknown filetype.

Anyone interested, let me know. Maybe someone can host it in their group to make it easier to get to.

I'll be adding ZT2 next.

Someone mentioned a while back a making an fx of fish attacking for Aquaman.This might work

(http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/9562/fishmg.jpg)

There's also another one of fish circling - this could be an fx of some kind of protective field around him.Anyone want to try working with this?

Weekly update, for those who are following.

Bearded released a nice rat after working on the keyframes for it. He's also working on a scorpion, a crocodile and some seated civilians to go in the cars I've converted.

Dana has over 20 houses to work with on some of the maps he's working on

I've converted over 20 vehicles and a dozen ships. The vehicles need a driver, resizing, destruct models and bounding boxes. The ships need resizing and bounding boxes. I was able to get a handle on bounding boxes this weekend and the complete nifs should start coming out soon. The WW2 submarine is almost ready.

Can any of the bipedal monster meshes from NWN be placed over existing meshes using nifskope?  I have a vision of placing a troll over the shurale mesh.

Stilll learning but I think if the skeletons are close enough that the kfs would work. When Bearded got the crcodile, the kfs for the raptor were close enough it would animate at least partially. If the skeletons aren't close, I think you would either have to reanimate it step by step like Bearded is doing with the scorpion, or remove one skeleton and fit the other one in. I don't think you can do that with nifscope, but I've got a tutorial somewhere on how to do it in Blender.

I have NWN and I was thinking it would be cool to get some of the things into FF, but I had no idea how to convert the mdl files to nifs.

Dana

Not sure how many different ways there are, but I installed Gmax, a free gaming version 3dMax. Then I found some scripts on Neverwinter vault that allow you to inport/export NWN mdl's into Gmax. The animation is buit into the mdl. Last, I found some nif import/export scripts for Gmax. They allow you to export for a number of games that use nifs, including FF1 and FFVTTR. So I import the mdl into Gmax and export the nif back out. Buildings, scenery and such are easy since they have no animation. Creatures would be harder.

If you need help setting up, let me know and I can walk you thru. After the first one it should be easy.

Quote from: Randomdays on September 12, 2011, 09:47:56 PM
Weekly update, for those who are following.

Yup, following very closely. Thanks for the updates.  :thumbup:

i just started reading this thread. youguys are doing some killer stuff hear. what your're doing will open a whole lot of doors for new maps,mods, and meshes.

Could someone send me that alligator mesh?  It doesn't have to be rigged or anything, I just need the mesh itself.

Is the one that Bearded posted in his Yahoo group still there? If not, I can send it to you when I get home.

Ohh, I completely missed that he posted it in his Yahoo group.  I can't seem to find it.  Which one is it in?

It was posted on Dana's animal request topic
that this was started in.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/beardedinlair/files/testing%20area/

If it's not there anymore, let me know

Thanks RD, I got it!

Another weekly update. Dealing with what I've learned and still learning, sent a WW2 submarine and a modern fishing ship for Dana to check out for his maps. Worked a lot with Blender, bounding boces and making things solid and have a better idea how things work on that end. For a machinami I'm working on, was able to get a classic Ford trimotor plane from sketchup into both FFVTTR and The Movies game, so I would say that the sketchup library might be open for use with FF.

Haven't heard from Bearded for a while so I took a look at animation. Converting kf's from either Blender or Gmax isn't working for me.They convert but don't work in character viewer.Still over my head in most things for building or converting. I was able to get the scorpion to shimmy and ahake in character viewer once his pieces were joined into a single mesh, or have the pieces do normal animation if not joined, but some of the pieces were misaligned, no list of actions on the kf list and trying to mess with it locked up the character viewer. I think I might be able to replace a skeleton and use the new skeleton's kf and have it work. I'll try to replace the snow leaopard's skeleton with big_cat_versatile or Bearded's rat and see if what happens.

I would say that unless there's something already out there with kf's like a fish or dolphin that I can switch with, those might be out of reach for awhile or some more help arrives. The good news for Dana and any other modders/map builders is there appears to be countless new buildings,scenery and vehicles of all types that can easily be imported into the game

i'm still around, randomly busy, random projects. i was thinking if you released the parts seperately, they could be of use to the community. different animal heads and things.

No problem Bearded. Even if all you did was the rat, that's already been a big help to Dana. Any help is appreciated.
As for heads/parts I haven't looked into that at all, but it looks like if anybody wanted something like that, the NWN meshes would be the best source for that. If the scorpion is an example of how thing are put together, you could probably grab a claw and put them on a characters arm and get a crab like creature.

It's lucky that the meshes are so easy to work with and unlucky the kfs aren't

I've tried looking over the simple kf for the Whale from EE3, which uses version 20 nifs, comparing it to a FFVTTR kf, and I can't see a difference. It works fine in nifskope, but using it in character viewer with a converted nif doesn't work. tried it with the unconverted kf and with the kf converted to FFVTTR from Gmax and Blender and still no good.

Sigh.

i put a lot of energy and effort into converting keyframes, and really, the easiest solution is using already made kf from ff. if you could use the different parts from nwn to skope onto the big cat, or the wolf, or even the godzilla, dragon, or voltron you might get some working animals.
i've started back on the croc. the hardest part at this point is the physiquing.
gonna make a squirrel next, i can see it being based on the rat with a bigger tail and some new animations.

I thought of that, but was going more for replacing the skeleton and then doing bone weight painting, but since I've never really done that or skoping, I'll have to see what happens when I can sit down and find some time. I have a good tutorial for for the first that I had bookmarked.

And unfortunely, I think that will work for a lot of animals, but not something like the scorpion which is pretty unique, or the fish and dolphins which have no ready made analog as far as I know. I was hoping that if I could get a simple kf for the whale, I could base other sea life off of it.

For the squirrel, ZT2 has a nif and skin if you want to take a look at it.

Quote from: Randomdays on September 20, 2011, 11:41:50 AM
I thought of that, but was going more for replacing the skeleton and then doing bone weight painting, but since I've never really done that or skoping, I'll have to see what happens when I can sit down and find some time. I have a good tutorial for for the first that I had bookmarked.

And unfortunely, I think that will work for a lot of animals, but not something like the scorpion which is pretty unique, or the fish and dolphins which have no ready made analog as far as I know. I was hoping that if I could get a simple kf for the whale, I could base other sea life off of it.

For the squirrel, ZT2 has a nif and skin if you want to take a look at it.

Well, at least with the scorpion, Beard might be able to use the keys from his NWN spider conversion for most of them.  All that might be needed are some claw and tail/stinger animations (oh...And a fall animation, since the spider doesn't have one).

Dana

I know bearded is working on his experiment in Unity right now, but did Dana or Randomdays ever get the static objects working in game? I was more interested in that over the animals -- no offense to Benton and his need to make Aquaman seem cool by giving him control over a deadly schools of goldfish :P

I've been working on a few things, but static objects seem to work fine. I took a WW2 sub from EE2, added a bounding box from a FFVTTR mesh, took it into  Blender, resized it and shaped the bounding box to the mesh. I exported it back to FFVTTR and placed it on a map and the nif was completely solid with the pc character walking on it and jumping onto the tower. I don't know if its normal, but the bounding box, while invisible in game, acts solid to the characters. If I left it as a box, a flying character would land on it and appear to be standing on thin air.

For damaged versions, I' m trying to take some of the game damage decals and resizing them to fit the mesh and applying them to the skin, so it looks like the item is damaged, holed, etc. but is still the same shape.

I'm unable to get FFEdit for FF to work on my XP machine or my WIn7 laptop so I'm only able to work with editing for FFVTTR, which works fine on both.

I've got about a dozen ships I'm finishing up, but the main thing with the static items is which ones to do? There's probably over a thousand buildings, plants and vehicles than can be converted and added. Probably a lot more since I figured out how to convert sketch models as well as the game models. I'll probably work on the ones I need for the projects I'm working on, plus any that are requested, but I think there's just too many to just convert them all.

So if anyone needs a item from a certain age, region or culture, I can most likely supply it. The original item probably wouldn't be too hard, but then you would have to add in resizing, bounding box and damaged version which complicates things.

As a partial list, I've got the following that seem to work importing/ exporting out of.

Sketchup
NWN
Zoo Tycoon 2
Wildlife Zoo 2
Empire Earth 2 and 3
Civ 4
Xplane
The Movies Game

Games like Sims 2, NWN2 or Morrowind might work but I think the polycount is probably too high for FF. I think a car for Sims 2 I looked at was about 15,000 polys.

For Benton's fish, there's a simple swim kf for the dolphin form of one of the Beast Boy/ Changling meshes. If I can grab that and attach it to a true dolphin mesh, it would at least have a swim action to it.

I haven't got very far...I apologize guys.  School has taken a lot of my free time and unfortunately, I just had to reformat my computer this past weekend.  I'll get back to it once I have the new objects copied from my backups.

Dana

The Doctor is in!

Haven't updated for a while, but I've been doing some major learning. Working with Blender, I'm now able to strip a skeleton/armature from a FF mesh and add it to a mesh from another game, tieing the bones to it and letting it use the kf's from the FF mesh. Tested ingame, it works fine, but looks a little weird due to the body shape. Weight painting is a pain and it's still a little off.I also haven't figured out how to add the proper lighting to the mesh so it appears dark in game. Anyone who can give me a headsup on that would be great. I think these are minor fixes and the hardest part is done.

I have a request if someone can help. I have a mesh fully animated and textured, ready to go, but before I release it I'd like the weapons swapped for some new ones. The new weapons are not part of a mesh but are seperate items. Anyone willing to skope a couple of guns around please let me know and I'll send them your way.


This is from a mesher named Toonloon, done for Elite force back in 2002. Each mesh is in 3 parts:

1)"legs" - feet, legs, waist
2)"torso" - chest, arms, hands
3) head - head,neck, hair

The parts are interchangable and if McCoy gets finished, all I have to do is swap heads to get most of the bridge crew in game. While Elite Force was a ST Voyager game, the meshers/skinners have created meshes for all series and there's lots to work with. Elite Force is also based on the Quake 3 engine, so any mesh for that or Q3 Arena ought to be able to be worked with. I've done two versions of McCoy - one using Tommyboy's Star Trek T mesh which has kfs for conversation, a phaser rifle, phaser and tricorder, and one on Gren's Punisher, which has uzi, dual uzi and rifle anims.

(http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/4083/drmccoy.jpg)

if someone could import a good cat mesh some of our great meshers and skinners could make a great Daxstarr red lantern

There's already a big cat versatile done by Valendar and a hexed version by Zuludelta with the lion's mane removed and a bunch of big cat skins with it

Update; Not sure why I was having problems with copying branches in nifskope before but was able to figure it out. Using Tommyboys's trek_t for a basic again, I replaced his phaser, phaser rifle and tricorder with ones from Elite Force. I tweeked the weight painting as far as I could but its still a little off. Still haven't figured out the lighting problem.

Using McCoy for a base, I now have a bunch of Trek meshes ready to be released. They all have kfs and a armature based on Tommyboy's mesh. Ready right now are;

Kirk
Spock
McCoy
Scotty
Sulu
Chekov
Gary Mitchell
Kevin Riley
Commodore Mendez

Some have 2 different versions and some have alternate skins. I'm trying to find all that use the same basic mesh before I move on and start on a different body. I'll try to post a few pics later.
 

Not sure about the lighting as I have never used Blender and am practically illiterate with NIFSkope as well.  In Max, the skins are assigned through a material editor that allows some manipulation of the light properties of the geometry as opposed to directly altering the skin files (DDS or TGA).

It is the NifTools Shader and it has entries for "Ambient", "Diffuse", "Specular" and "Emittance".

"Ambient" RGB values are all set to 255 out of 255 OR TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY: Hue 0, Sat 0 and Value of 255.

"Diffuse" is also set to 255 in FFv3R but roughly 128 in FF1 .

"Specular" is left white (255)

"Emitance" is an RGB of 20/20/20 in 3R (or 0/0/20 for Hue/Sat/Value) but a Zero (black) in FF1

Generally, a dark mesh in 3R is due to too low of an emitance. A dark mesh can often be compensated for by altering the value of the skin's glow file.

I hope this helps.

I'm not a big Trekkie, but new FF stuff...always cool.

As for what YL said, I believe that the lighting could also be changed in Nifskope.

Quote"Ambient" RGB values are all set to 255 out of 255 OR TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY: Hue 0, Sat 0 and Value of 255.

"Diffuse" is also set to 255 in FFv3R but roughly 120 to 125 in FF1 (can't remember the exact value off the top of my head)

"Specular" is left white (255)

"Emitance" is an RGB of 20/20/20 in 3R (or 0/0/20 for Hue/Sat/Value) but a Zero (black) in FF1

The tools are there, I just don't know where to change the numbers.

The advice on lighting helped a lot. I had already messed around with the material dials in nifscope, but wasn't sure how they changed things. I couldn't find where to enter the numbers either, but adjusted the dials to what looked good to me. Looking at Milkshape, I find the lighting there a little easier to work.

(http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/6286/newmccoy.jpg)



I created a yahoo group and placed McCoy in it for now. The rest of the Trek meshes will be up as soon as I adjust the lighting on them as best as I can. As mentioned above, they are all using Tommyboy's armature and kfs, and the phaser pistol, phaser rifle and tricorder done by Toonloon for Elite Force. McCoy is also done by Toonloon and some by not all of the other meshes. They should all have readmes taken from the original zips to give credit to the original creators.

Considering the amount of spam mail I've gotten from joining other FF groups and how some of them have been ruined, anyone can join but no messages  are allowed and no one else can see the member list.This is the first group I've created so any suggestion will be welcomed. The address is;

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/FF_Swap_Shop/

I like the title of the group. I'll check this out when I get home.

All of the Trek meshes mentioned above are online and ready to be used in game. They look a little weird in the character creation/select screens with the component parts, but as the McCoy shot shows they look okay in game.

9 files up so far and working on more.The female crew, Captain Pike and some Klingons next.

Haha, very nice!

Is it possible to get these for FF1?

All the Trek meshes should be for FF1. I checked them out while working on them in the FF1 character viewer and the McCoy screeenshots are from level 1 of FF. So they worked fine for me. Let me know if there's a problem if you grab them.

The only thing I didn't do which I may fix is that none have portraits with them.

cool. Wasn't sure, because when I opened it in nifskope, there were alot of numbers associated with various nodes, in way that is similar to FF2 meshes. Sorry about the confusion. Thanks for your efforts.

Cool Stuff.

Might be because of the process. I took the original Quake 3 files from Elite force and imported them into Milkshape. I used Milkshape to set the skins and lighting as its easier for me with Milkshape than with Blender. I exported the meshes as objs from Milkshape and imported them into Blender, weight painted them to the armature, added the weapons, and exported them back out as a nif. There might be an easier way but this is the best I can figure out so far.

Small update; The female trek characters were a lot more difficult than I thought they would be. I would up using the same armature as before, shrunk down and resized a bit. The rest of the bridge crew should be up later today.

http://freedomreborn.net/forums/index.php?topic=55106.0

The girls are online but the other thread got locked before I could put their pics up. See below

(http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/7132/uhurachapelrandruc.jpg)

(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9459/barrowsmarlena.jpg)

After that, I have a few requests for vehicles and someone had asked about the Hall of the Justice League fron the original "Super Friends" show. Hopefully these will go quickly and I can add a few more trek meshes after that.

Another update; I was able to convert an Eagle from Space 1999 and 3 different 1966 batmobiles. I'm trying to get the sizes right and then I'll post them. I had to drop the poly count waydown on them to get the file size down and just to get them to convert and they need a little work because of that. The glass on the windshields will need to be alpha'd and a few polys need to be adjusted. Hopefully someone can help with that.

Benton, I think I found a work around for your sea life. I'm going to try tieing the dolphin mesh to the Sam the Eagle armature and see what happens. If it works it should be easy to do the other mammals - whales, walrus, etc the same way.

I'll put a few pics up and put them in the yahoo group probably tomorrow.

Cool can't wait to see the Batmoblie.

Very neat...The Trek lady conversions look great, RD.

Dana

Those lines running down the arms and legs appear to be either unwelded vertices or separate geometry. If unwelded then welding the overlapping vertices (set weld distance for something like .001) and that line will be replaced by a smooth shading gradient.

Thanks... I'm not sure thats the case, but a little more info on that? The original mesh is pretty low poly (Elite Force came out in 2000) and the mesh is kind of "squarish" because of that.The legs and arms are really just long 4 -sided rectangles. I was able to get it to look better in Blender by using "set smooth". The legs and arms are each one piece, but the torso is seperate. All together the mesh is 9 different pieces - 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 hands, skirt, torso and head. I've joined meshes in some cases, but I'm still not happy with the shoulder joints or where the neck is "slotted" in the collar bone.

I think I used weld vertices in 3dsmax a while ago, but I've mainly been working with Blender. Is there a weld vertice function in blender under edit somewhere? I'm not at home to look and have never used it.

Thanks for any help.

Update - worked on the batmobiles till I ran out of time for the day. Of the three I converted, two were workable and one had major issues. Here's the working one from sketchup. This was posted by Marcelo Negrão in 2007 and I would guess he's Italian  from the page ^_^.

Original version here for comparison - http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=c4cf04c13f6822c659470f7f1600b519&prevstart=24

Pic of the converted version below, taken ingame from FF1. Looks a little small to me so may need a little more resizing. I'll do that tomorrow and then look at the Poser mesh some more.

(http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/3329/batmobile1.jpg)

Update - The one batmobile is basically done - I've resized it to what looks about right, added a bounding box and tested it in game. Should be up soon. The other one needs work and may be posted "as is". The converter for Poser to Blender is limited to 16 materials so that affected the mesh.

The Eagle just needs resizing and its textures converted fron png to dds.

In the world of fish, I'll be posting in a day or 2, but I was able to do a few things. I rigged a dolphin mesh to the Sam the Eagle skeleton - its a basic link as I assigned the whole mesh to just the spine bone. He works - hovers a little and uses all the actions from the kfs. I have a manta ray mesh that would probably look much better with more bones linked.

I also rigged the dolphin to the Trtion swim armature, once again to just the spine. He's much more "bouncy" and looks better in game. I deleted the idle, walk and melee idle form the kf, as he's upright in those frames, and replaced them with the frames from the run action,which is lying flat. He looks good ingame as well, but most of his attacks send him underground a bit - I'll have to work on that to see if I can fix it. This combo should work for all the mammals - seals, whales, walruses, etc.

Last, I turned the Triton armature on its side and did a simple rig of a shark to it. Where the dolphin had an up and down bob, this gave the shark a side to side movement. It looks good and can probably be used for all the normal fish.

Excellent news RD!  That sounds like just what I need!  Nice work on the Star Trek ladies, by the way.

Update; Getting ready to release a few meshes; Screen shots up at ;

http://freedomreborn.net/forums/index.php?topic=55119.0

Furthur update; All files now up.

update - updated the shark mesh to bring the nose up a bit. Redownload if you already have it. Added a Grouper mesh with 2 nifs in it. One with a side to side motion and one with a "slanted" bob. Rename from "character1.nif" to "character.nif" to use. Both use the same kf's

Benton, let me know which you prefer and I can start making a lot more fish quickly.

The grouper only took a few of minutes to make now that I have a base to work off of. Same should be true for most of the sea mammals.

I would like to use the big cat versatile for things like the seals and walruses, but even just importing and exporting back out of Blender, without changing anything, breaks it and it stops responding to its kf's. If anyone knows why, please let me know. I had the same problem with Tommyboy's female versatile as wel.l

Fantastic!  I've finally got fish!  These are great RD, and they move really well, especially considering the work-around animation you've given them.  The dolphins and sharks give me most of what I really needed.  If I can get some whales I'll be all set for the necessities.  I do hope you can get the sea lions to work, as I would love to bring 'ol Tusky into the game.  This is a red letter day for Aquaman!

5 more meshes done and getting ready to post - maybe a few more as well.

Great Grouper - done and already posted - two different meshes with 2 different "bobbing" motions

Humpback whale - resized to be slightly bigger than the FF bus. The game seems to having trouble with the bounding on this - people walking thru the ends of the mesh but walking around the selection ring in the middle.

Blacktip shark - also has an alt whitetip skin

School of fish - a bunch of small fish, moving as a single unit.

Walrus on land - Seems to work well, but since I can't get bigcat versatile to work, I'll have to do a swimming version seperate. The selection ring is obscuring part of his flippers due to his size.

The dolphin - will be uploading with a smaller bounding box and changes to the kf file.

Screenshots and files up soon.

Excellent!  They all look great, and that gives me pretty much all of the fish I've been wanting for years.  Now I've got to salt these away until I've got time to work on my Aquaman campaign! :D

Files are up - screenshots and link at -

http://freedomreborn.net/forums/index.php?topic=55127.0

Benton, more on the way. Besides getting Gren's wolf to work, the animal forms of val's dinobots and predacons may work as well. Then I can look at some land animals for Dana and maybe give him his killer rabbit.

update - was able to do 8 more fish last night using the same setup. Should be up soon.

dorado
humphead wrasse - 4 skins
parrotfish - 5 skins
blue marlin
sawfish
hammerhead shark
tiger shark - 2 skins
bluefin tuna

That's probably about it for fish. Might do the whaleshark and a couple of others though

For sea mammals, going to try to work with the dolphin set up and add the beluga whale and narwhale to it. The killer whale mesh isn't usable so I'll have to look  somewhere else.

The walrus looked good, so I'll look at doing the same setup for the sea lion.

The octopus might not be possible - I'll try using the ant or bearded's spider and see how it looks

Going to try to work the manta ray and sea turtle onto the Sam the eagle mesh

Holiday's over so I'll be slowing down due to RL and work.

Quote from: Randomdays on January 03, 2012, 12:10:17 AM
Files are up - screenshots and link at -

http://freedomreborn.net/forums/index.php?topic=55127.0

Benton, more on the way. Besides getting Gren's wolf to work, the animal forms of val's dinobots and predacons may work as well. Then I can look at some land animals for Dana and maybe give him his killer rabbit.

LOL...Hopefully, you'll work out something, RD. 

Dana

Benton, Not sure what you had planned for your Aquaman mod, but here's a thought.... I can take the manta mesh, blow it up to 20X size or whatever looks good and look for some kind of black metallic texture for skin. Give it the FF car kfs, and you have Black Manta's ship.

Absolutely.  I will need a Manta ship eventually, although my outline doesn't have Black Manta showing up for a while.  A manta ship would be awesome!

Here's a link to some pics from the 70's. I think adding tne antenna to the top and reskinning might be good enough, or it might need some engines skoped on the back as well. The front pieces could be shortened or straightened.

http://superfriends.wikia.com/wiki/Manta's_Sea-Saucer

Update; released 10 more fish meshes, link and pictures up at ;

http://freedomreborn.net/forums/index.php?topic=55196.0

More fish than I can shake a stick at.  I still have a hard time believing this is true.  Haha, so awesome.  Anyway, the Manta sub probably won't need too much modification.  The Filmation version from the link you posted is probably the best design there, so perhaps skoping on some engines would be good.

Almost done with the fish. A couple of things I want to try out, so at the most, probably another half dozen or so.

Not totally happy with the way the manta and turtle move, but the eagle wings move a lot differently than them and I moved things around the best I could. Anyone who tries them, let me know what you think.


I'm thinking this might be a better choice for the mantaship, if I can convert it;

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=4849f9c4f7bfc06577740ef99100bc7&prevstart=0

I'll try to test the manta and turtle out a little later this week.  Ohh!  That would be perfect for a Mantaship!

Probably not to msny more posts here, as I would  say the project is a sucecss. I've learned how to grab practically any model from numerous sources and import them into Blender. I can now rig them to an existing mesh setup and use its keyframes - anything truly exotic, like a scorpion or octopus is still out of reach in that regard, although a workaround was used for Benton's fish. I can resize it to any size desired, apply the existing skin(s) and export it out to either FF or FFVTTR. While the 1st Star Trek McCoy mesh took me days to figure out how things work, I was able to do 2 requests last night in the 3 hours I had after work. There are far too many possibilties of things to add to the game now, so I'll limit to things I'm working on and any requests - As these come out they'll probably show up in the Releases or Meshes forums.

Currently working on ;

A secret project for myself - 3 done out of 30 or so meshes
Sherlock Holmes and Watson for GamingBoyReborn
A Seahorse for Sioux City Dynamo - and maybe a jetski
Animals for Dana - the rabbit ought to be ready tomorrow - I hope.
A few more fish for Benton
A walkthru on adding some content to the game for other people, like me, who can't mesh or skin.

If anybody needs a building, vehicle or character, not likely to be worked on by anyone else, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

The fish conversions are pretty darn good, RD...The walrus is fantastic (i don't recall if I told you that).  It's great to see that you're trying to put out other new animals too (BUNNY!).  :thumbup:  :thumbup:  :thumbup:

Dana

The rabbit is rigged the same way as the walrus on the new wolf armature. He already looks good and hops around good, but his butt is dragging a little low and the hind legs need a little work. Comes with an Artic Hare skin, but might be some alt skins too. Maybe another hour's work I hope.

Spent too much time this after work looking at another project I've been thinking about. I'nm thinking I might be able to lift the GTA Vice City Map and put it in Battlefield 1942. 32 player multiplayer in Vice City!

did u ever find that google sketchup of the hall of justice

This one, correct?

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=fe119f587b794a8d7c62c6420fd61efb&prevstart=0

Never got a reply so wasn't sure if you wanted it done or not.

It's a little different for the hall, since its the building plus the fountain and trees. I can do it a couple of different ways;
1) Just do the building and the fountain as 2 seperate nifs, let you add the trees and the rest with normal FF/FFVTTR placeables

2) Do everything as 1 giant nif. That would mean if you set it up for destruction on the map, it would all go at once.

Let me know how you want it done.

option one would be best

Got it. I'll start looking into it when I get home

Mystic - Hall of Justice and fountain done. Need to convert the textures to dds and should be ready.

Dana - Rabbit is done probaly as best as I can get it. It looks like his front legs may cross as he walks/runs but not sure, and not sure how to fix it if he is.

Probably will post tomorrow.

Added to the list of things to do  -

Forgot Benton's turtle blimp and manta ship

Someone  asked for a squirrel a while back - possible

Looked at Dana's old list -

Crocodile - going to go back to the one BIL was working on and finish it up

Lizard - possible - there's some Gila monsters, Komodo dragon and others available

Bullfrog - possible

Pigs - so far a warthog and a potbelly, looking for one myself for Monk's Habeas Corpus

Dinosaurs - possible

Cow/bull - will have to look around, but possible, maybe on the horse kf's if they work.

Scorpion - can get the mesh, but out of luck on the kf's so far

Dana, thanks for the compliment on the walrus and fish, but the only thing I can take credit for is the idea of bringing in outside work and finding a way to get them in. More credit is due the meshers, skinners, kf'ers and the people here who offered help and advice.


The rabbit is online and in my yahoo group. Fixed the front leg problem. He looks good out of game but I didn't check lighting on him.


Mystic - Hall of Justice and fountain also in my group - they look okay in nifskope but have disappearing issues in character viewer. Might be the large size, material, skins or something else. Not checked in game.Also, did not check lighting on them either. Could not convert to dds as some were not a power of 2, so I made them tga

I'll do a pic of the rabbit at least when I have more to post.

first off, great job RD! keep up the good work!  :thumbup:

in the first few posts, i saw a mesh for a crocodile/alligator...
where can i download that?  :huh:

Welcome to the forums dot31ph, I think what you want is here:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/beardedinlair/

Check the file that says "Testing Area".

Thanks for the help cyber burn! :D

Quote from: Randomdays on January 25, 2012, 12:46:58 PM
Dana, thanks for the compliment on the walrus and fish, but the only thing I can take credit for is the idea of bringing in outside work and finding a way to get them in. More credit is due the meshers, skinners, kf'ers and the people here who offered help and advice.


The rabbit is online and in my yahoo group. Fixed the front leg problem. He looks good out of game but I didn't check lighting on him.


Mystic - Hall of Justice and fountain also in my group - they look okay in nifskope but have disappearing issues in character viewer. Might be the large size, material, skins or something else. Not checked in game.Also, did not check lighting on them either. Could not convert to dds as some were not a power of 2, so I made them tga

I'll do a pic of the rabbit at least when I have more to post.

Thank you, RD...I'll check out the rabbit.

Dana

Quote from: Randomdays on January 24, 2012, 11:30:31 AM
Mystic - Hall of Justice and fountain done. Need to convert the textures to dds and should be ready.

Dana - Rabbit is done probaly as best as I can get it. It looks like his front legs may cross as he walks/runs but not sure, and not sure how to fix it if he is.

Probably will post tomorrow.

Added to the list of things to do  -

Forgot Benton's turtle blimp and manta ship

Someone  asked for a squirrel a while back - possible

Looked at Dana's old list -

Crocodile - going to go back to the one BIL was working on and finish it up

Lizard - possible - there's some Gila monsters, Komodo dragon and others available

Bullfrog - possible

Pigs - so far a warthog and a potbelly, looking for one myself for Monk's Habeas Corpus

Dinosaurs - possible

Cow/bull - will have to look around, but possible, maybe on the horse kf's if they work.

Scorpion - can get the mesh, but out of luck on the kf's so far

For the cow/bull...I'd suggest either Valandar's Transformers bull (Tantrum), Rhino (Headstrong) or triceratops (Slag) keyframes?