Major Mesh/skin release possible...with help

[Randomdays]

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.

[Randomdays]

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.

[cmdrkoenig67]

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

[Randomdays]

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

[cmdrkoenig67]

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

Dana

[Randomdays]

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

[GogglesPizanno]

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...

[Randomdays]

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

[GogglesPizanno]

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

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.

[Randomdays]

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

[BentonGrey]

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.

[Randomdays]

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



A whale from EE3, shown in nifscope



Side view of a Walrus from ZT2, shown in nifscope



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


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




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

[BentonGrey]

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

[bearded]

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.

[Randomdays]

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

[bearded]

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.

[Randomdays]

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

[Randomdays]

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?

[BentonGrey]

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

[bearded]

i'm on it. animal versatile.

[Randomdays]

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.

[BentonGrey]

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.

[Randomdays]

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.

[cmdrkoenig67]

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

[cmdrkoenig67]

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

[BentonGrey]

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. 

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. 

[Randomdays]

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

[cmdrkoenig67]

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

[BentonGrey]

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?

[cmdrkoenig67]

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

Dana