Vice City map import chronicles

[Randomdays]

I'll be trying to bring the Vice City Map into FFvt3R to play around on. Hopefully members can learn enough to make their own maps, and teach what they know as well.


To start with, just some basic info that might help some of the newer modders;

Most everything below is stuff I've learned from others here and on the web, and trial and error. I could be wrong in lots of areas. If anyone knows I'm incorrect anywhere, or if they have anymore helpful info, please chime in below. Some of it has been gone through before, and if you've been around awhile, you can probably skip down to the next entries.

Freedom Force, and its sequel FFvt3R, are games that use 3d models, also called a mesh. Almost everything you see is a mesh - the characters, the maps items, the ground you walk on, I think even the cutscenes and comic book covers.

Each mesh is made of points (vertexes). Two vertexes can connect to make a line, and three lines can connect to make a triangle, a polygon (poly for short). Most programs seem to follow this standard, though there are some out there that use four sided polys instead.

These games came out a while back and are considered "low poly". High poly models can have hundreds of thousands of vertexes/ polys, where FF is usually around 1-2 thousand. I think the max the game can handle is about 10,000 vertexes. Both games use meshes in the "nif" format for its standard.

This limit is for a single mesh. You can have a nif with multiple meshes in it - like a main character with a helmet or cape attached, and have a nif with a total way above the limit, since each piece is separate.

Each nif usually has up to 4 main parts in it;

1) the mesh, the 3d model itself, with any add-on pieces for it.

2) The armature - this is a skeleton inside the mesh. Each vertex is tied to a bone in the armature. When the bone moves, the vertexes move with it. Vertexes are usually in groups to make it easier to see whats being controlled - IE the "Left Foot" vertex group assigned to the left foot moves when the bone does. Tying the vertexes to the armature in an editor is called "rigging"

3) The selection box - this is a simple box tied to the armature and overlapping the main mesh. You don't see it in game, but it allows you to select the mesh and interact with it - move to it, attack it, pick it up, etc.

4) The bounding box - another simple box that is placed around the mesh. This lets the game know that the mesh is solid. Without a bounding box on the character, it could walk through another character, or a wall on a building. Besides characters, map items should have these as well so you can't walk through them, and it lets you stand on top of the map item, like a building.

Some characters have a "head" nif with it. The is a higher detailed model of just the character's head with more bones in it for the head. This is used in the "talking" scenes at the top of the screen when they're called up by the game.

Besides these 4 parts, there can be a few more, usually as separate files, but some can be "baked" into the nif itself

5) the kf file - the "keyframe" file lists all the animations assigned to that nif. It controls the bones in a series of motions in game. They can be one shot animations, like throwing a punch, or a "looping" or repeating animation, like "melee idle" or "running"

6) The "skins" or "textures" files. Each nif is a basic grey color without a skin (I think pink in FFvt3R). Putting a skin on a mesh means assigning a picture, or part of a picture, to each poly on the mesh. Think of it as taking a wallpaper and wrapping it around the mesh.

A simple rectangle lying flat can become different things depending on what texture you put on it - a road, a river, or a patch of grass for instance.

Characters have their skins in separate directories off the main one. The "standard" skin comes up by default, but there can be many more. One of the original meshes, "male_basic" has dozens of skins for it.

Freedom force uses textures in the "tga" format, and FFvt3R can use "tga" or "dds". In both cases, the texture MUST be a square, and MUST be a multiple of 2. 500x500 would not work, but 512x512 would. 64x128 would not work, but 128x128 would.

transparency - their are two main types of transparencies in the game;

a) the texture can have a transparent part that's invisible - like a chain link fence you can see through. For textures, this is all or nothing - either a part is transparent or it isn't

b) a mesh can have transparency on it at an adjustable level. You can use nifskope to move a slider to determine how much you want it, making your own ghost. This applies to the entire mesh. You can add this to the mesh and change it in nifskope.

Most of the above applies mainly to characters. Each character has its own folder with the mesh, its kf, and subfolders for its skins in it. If you check out the "Civilian" characters, you'll see

For map items, its a bit different. Most map items don't have an armature or kf file since their mainly static. The meshes are stored in one group folder, and the skins in another group folder. Kfs are usually simple if present and might be "baked" in, like the roof fans on the buildings.

One last thing to talk about from above is the bounding boxes. There was a lot of talk a while back discussing their use and limits. Goggles probably put it best when describing it a large blanket draped over the map. You can go around it, or walk on it, but not under it. Even a thin square above the ground prevents you from walking under it. This is why you can't enter any of the buildings on the map. If you could, you wouldn't be a able to stand on its roof

I'll get more into the the actual map building once I get myself back up to speed.

[Randomdays]

I think that map editing for both games are very similar, and the lessons for the first should work pretty well for the sequel.

As a start, the FF lessons mention the "testmod" file as needed during modding. This was almost unattainable until Goggles posted a link to it a couple of years ago. That link has died as well, but luckily I grabbed it when it was available. It's now on the megasite in the "requests" folder.

The lessons are available on the original game's website on the wayback machine here;

I have a folder with the docs for editing in it, I think the same as on the website but with the pictures intact. I'm not sure where I got them from, but there's a 20 meg download called "FFVT3R_Mod_Tools.exe" that might have given it to me. I can't use it on the new laptop since it says the game isn't installed.

On the old laptop, I installed the game from the disks and then applied a no CD patch. On the new laptop, I'm just running the game fine without install - but no registry entries means its not officially installed. I'm uploading it to the request folder also - it might have what you need for editing in it.

Edit - I think the file does have everything you need for editing. Though I can't extract the file now, I think I'm good to go from doing it on the old laptap

For these lessons, once you've installed them, the setup should be in "Help/FFEdit"and run the "index.htm" file

http://web.archive.org/web/20060202004200/http://www.freedomfans.com/modforce/

http://web.archive.org/web/20030609183155/http://www.irrationalgames.com/modforce/editor/index.htm

and here's some good info;

https://phantombunburyist.freedomforce4ever.com/tempest/modtutorial.html

https://www.freedomreborn.net/archive/index.php?topic=40940.msg571668#msg571668

[Randomdays]

I'm going through the official files with the editor download now. It seems fairly complete in the documentation

1) The first thing you need to do is create a folder for the mod. Following the lesson, create a new folder called "TestMod"

2) Create subfolders "Data" and "Missions". Create a subfolder under "Missions" named "Test"

3) Copy the ".dat" files from the "Data" folder to the "TestMod" folder - in the example -

attributes.dat: contains attribute names and costs
campdef.dat: campaign definition
characters.dat: character info
fx.dat: effects data
objects.dat: object template information
powers.dat: power definitions
res.dat: resource definitions
sounds.dat: sound templates

4) Open the FFEdit program. It should start on the far left "options" tab. Set it up to look like the pic below, changing the path where needed to match your install. With this setup, your original game should be safe from any changes you make while modding.



5) Create subfolders under data "Lang\English". Copy the 3 text files from "Data\Lang\English" into the new folder. The text files are used to create the 3 dat files used in the game

6) Go to the second tab, "Campaign".  Delete all the missions making up the campaign since we're making our own for the mod.

7) Now we need to start making our own first mission. Go the the third tab, "Mission", and click create on the bottom. Using the popup window, got to your "Missions/test" subfolder and click okay. This will create your mission.dat and mission.py files.

At the top you should now see the new mission.dat file selected. Now we need the Level Layout file on the second line. I think these files will tell the game what map items, characters and events are on the map and their location.

When you installed the editor, it should have setup some "blank" terrain maps to work with - maps with nothing on them.  According to the lessons, they should be in "Data\art\library\terrain" - 4 of them - blank city, desert, park and snow. I don't have them there, so I don't know if its something I changed way back. I do have them in my FF install, and under Tommyboy's "Legion of Superheroes" mod, so at least they're avail;able. If you don't get them on your editor install, I can probably put them on the megasite.

The lessons are setup for the blank_desert map so we'll use that. It looks there are 3 subfolders used - the layout file, the nif, and the textures.

Setup the following subfolders under "Testmod - "\Art\level layout\blank_terrains\blank_desert\" and copy the txt file there from the original level layout subfolder. There's also an "extent.txt" I believe this is the range of the map that it uses.

If you look at the level.txt, it only has one line at the moment - the location of the blank desert nif. We can copy it to the Testmod folder or leave it where it is, but the path must be correct for the mod to find and use it. I'll copy it from the LSH mod to the standard  Data folder, to"library\terrain\blank_desert\blank_desert.nif" per the lesson. I tried putting it in the TestMod Folder, but the game wouldn't see it.

The "_textures" folder is the standard one used for almost all of the game, mods or not. If you use custom textures they would go here as well.

At this point, I was able to use the "Edit in game" button and see the rocks on the desert map. I couldn't see the rest of the map for some reason. I did try the blank city map, and it did show correctly, so it might be a problem with the desert map itself, or something I'm doing wrong.



On the blank city map, I could not scroll to see all the map, but it was visible.. I think this is due to the "extents" file that set the map size. Since the desert map is smaller, I could only see its dimensions.



The next steps are to rename the map to "Vice City" and follow the lessons a bit more to add items and characters to the map

[Randomdays]

Renaming the map is simple - just enter the name you want in the field at the top

The Mission Objects field below that is blank since there's nothing on the map.

To add items to the map, press "C" to bring up a menu of things you can add. You need to quickly double click the option you want.

So, I clicked on "character" and then "El Diablo" and he appears on the map. You can grab him to move him or rotate him. Hitting "N" will let you rename him.



Exiting the in game editor, you'll now see him in the Mission objects list. You can also move and rotate him from the option on the right side of the screen.



If you save and then click on "Run", at this point you can play the map and fly El Diablo around the empty map.



From this point on, you can continue adding to the map to populate it. Besides characters, you can add;

map items, like trees and buildings

markers - markers can be a set named for a character and give him pathing. The civilians on the map follow their markers, moving from one to the next. Vehicles are set similarly with a different type of markers. Markers can trigger scripts to run for encounters. Besides adding things to the map itself, you can add them using markers.

Lights and sounds.

At this point, While you can play the new map through the editor, its not playable just loading up the game and running the campaign. Everything is not set up yet with scripting, like how you can win the level.

Benton could probably give a bunch of pointers here.

[Randomdays]

doing some searching on the site and looking around, making a campaign map might be over my head. Since I already got a modified MP/ Rumble room map working I think I'll go for that instead. You'll be able to move around the map and check it out, but having an actual mission with an ending probably won't be happening.

The only other alt to that would be to take an existing campaign map, like I did with the rumble room map, and change it up.  My best bet would be to get the map built with all the terrain/ buildings/ people in it, and talk nice to Benton to get him to finalize it.

Experimenting a bit - I bent part of the map down below the 0 on the z axis, your nominal ground level, to see what the character would do. He went down a bit but stopped short of the end of the map as it was too low for him.

Extents - I read a bit on extents. It appears that the extents file that goes with the map sets the parameters of where you can go., preventing you from going off the edge of the map, and also may how high and low. From the posts, its a bit flaky on how it reacts though. I increased the size of the blank city map, but instead of merely stopping the character from going to the extents edge, it really restricted his movement.

I've tried using the biggest maps I could find with their extents - Tommyboys New York and Megacity maps - but even testing them with their extents files, I couldn't go all the way to the edge.

If Dana, Benton, dm, or one of the other surviving map makers would step in, that would help.

I did see that dm was having similar problems awhile back and I don't think he ever got a fix.

[Randomdays]

Starting to work on the Star Trek Enterprise map;

1} In your data/ missions folder, pick one of the missions there and copy the folder. I had added a version of the "New Beginning" map from FF that someone had made when I was working on my "Theme Park map" so I'll be using that. Paste the folder in the same directory and rename it. In this case "TOS Enterprise"

2) Do the same with the level layout in the "Data/ Art/ level layout" folder.

3) Open the editor.  on the options tab, in this case, I set the primary and secondary Data tab to the same, main game one. On the campaign tab, I left it alone.
   On the mission tab, load the mission.dat from the "TOS Enterprise" mission folder, and point the level layout tab to the one for "TOS Enterprise" as well.

For some reason I keep getting set to a "Shodan" folder and subfolders, and have no idea why. Make sure you're set to the right folder.

4) Rename the map to "TOS Enterprise"

5) On the left side of the tab there's a list of everything on the map - nifs, sounds, movement nodes, events, etc. Make sure both the "layout" and "objects" choices are checked at the bottom. I'm going to start deleting everything I won't need for the Enterprise map. I'm be keeping the civilians, the civ nodes for their movements, and the sounds. I'll be converting those to Star Trek civs and sounds later, and keeping the old ones is better than making new ones from scratch. Besides deleting them here, you could delete the lines from the level.txt. file. Its a simple txt file with one line for each item

Save your work and check things out with the "run" button. You should see a city map with the streets and sidewalks, some civs walking around, and a bunch of dirt where the buildings used to be. If you run the game normally, you should see "TOS Enterprise" in the list of Rumble Room choices, and be able to select heroes and enemies to play on it.

Now, for some reason, the updated map with nothing on it is showing up in game, but the levels.txt has not been updated and still shows all the items on it.

Continued on the second page, since I ran out of room.

[Kommando]

Once you sort it out, I wouldn't mind taking a crack at the NIF texture.

[Randomdays]

Not sure what the problem is with the ground texture. If I put the nif together with the textures in nifskope, they show up fine. It only appears to have the problem with the FFedit program, testing in game. and running the level.

Just checked the other 2 blank terrains - park and snow - and they appear fine.

[Randomdays]

The blank maps SHOULD be in the FFvt3R editor exe I put up in the requests folder. I know the dersert one is in the testmod folder.

I think the textures are standard ones included with the game.

[Randomdays]

It looks like I'm stuck on the extents problem. The largest map I can use, "mp_03_city_large" still isn't close to being large enough. Even slightly increasing the size of the map nif in nifskope messes it up.

Tommyboys's megamaps are playable, but I can't get anywhere close to the edge even with making a new mod for it.

What I really need is one very large simple map with a single dirt or sand texture, in sections, so I don't stretch out the texture. With a working extent to get me to the edges. Even with that, I don't think I can get all of the game map from Vice City onto a single FFvt3R map.

I think I'm up to speed again though on taking an existing map for multiplayer or rumble room, and either adding/ deleting items from it, or deleting everything and making a new one from scratch.

Edit - I might have some hope after all. It looks like none of the FFvt3R level layouts use extents files. Only the one converted from FF. I'll have to try messing around with a FFvt3R map tomorrow and see what happens if I change the size of the map.

[Kommando]

Can you make the buildings into separate placeables? Why not find out what the biggest simple map you can make is, then see what you have room to place? Just use a simple texture like grass or concrete, and see what buildings can fit and look nice. Then you can use screenshots of the diorama to figure out how to skin the ground with roads and sidewalks and such. It's great that you're trying to import that, but I think importing pieces might be a better way to go.

[cranlox]

There is a Contest of the Champions map that Detounme made that looks very good and I, who am terrible at maps, was able to load and use it. Maybe you can look at some of that and get an idea.

[Randomdays]

Cranlox - I'll take a look at it tomorrow.

Kommando - yep, that's exactly what I'm trying to do.

If you look at the map for Vice City with the 2 main islands, I'm dealing with the Northern Part of the Western Map, everything above the northernmost bridge heading east. This is part of what you see on the post on the other thread, though you're looking east on that pic. The large stadium at the bottom of the pic is actually the farthest western point for the area.

So far I have about 80 nifs representing the buildings, roads and such. The palm trees, street and traffic lights, and things that are in FFvt3R, I'm skipping to use those instead. Though part of the problem is some of the buildings ramble a bit and are more of a group than a single building.

I had thought to put a sand or dirt texture under everything, breaking the map into pieces so the texture isn't stretched. If you look at the map for just about any level for the game, that's how the designers did. it.

Unfortunately, the largest single map I mentioned above won't go very far. Even the single stadium from VC would take up most of the map.

The complication as I talked about above is the extents file that's linked to the map. It's a simple two lines of code. One line looks like it gives you the highest positive x/y/z position you can go on the map, and the other line is the highest negative values. But simply increasing these values doesn't change the maximum size allowed on the map as you think it would.

From some of the old posts that came up with search, even some of the mapmakers like detourne me were having problems with this.

Now the last 2 things I noticed tonight was that 1) only the FF maps, and those converted from FF to FFvt3R, have extent files. The maps for FFvt3R don't.

2) there was note in the changelogs for the nif scripts for Blender that mentioned a "ninode" on the exported nif dealing with extents.

So, maybe exporting the map as a FFvt3R nif builds the extents with it, or maybe for FFvt3R they're no longer needed.

I'll look at it tomorrow. FFvt3R has 4 sizes of maps - small, medium, large and huge. I'll try one of the huge maps to see what I can get on it, and see if I can increase the size, with nifskope or Blender, and hope I don't break it.

Now I want to thank you guys for your input. I think it would be neat as heck to get VC into the game to play around with, and this is a good learning experience for me no matter what.

But if not, I'll try going back to finishing my theme park map and maybe working on a couple of others that I don't think we have a map for. I'm thinking maybe a movie studio, or a jungle with a native village and some ruins in it for a Tarzan type adventure. We've got a lot of maps that people have made over the years, but I thik there a still a couple of types missing.

I've got a great looking model somewhere of the Legion of Doom's fortress that could go on a swamp map, as well as a model of the Super Friend's Hall of Justice that I already converted over

I'll try to update tomorrow with what I find out

[Randomdays]

Update - the FFvt3R maps do not need the extents files. I was able to use a large map and travel to all the edges of it.

Its still way to small for VC though, and enlarging it in nifskope or Blender still breaks it.

I have 24 buildings done so far, some average size and some pretty large. Below are a couple of pics of one of the large ones.

The first pic is a side view of the front of the building. The black figure under the yellow awning is a standard male_basic.

The second pic show the entire building complex from above. The black square around it is one of the largest maps I was able to work with.

The building might be a bit off scale for FF, but even shrinking it a bit still would require a larger map to get all the buildings onto a single map

It also shows why it would be hard to setup and allow destruction of buildings. Even a normal building is not that easy to setup.

[Randomdays]

Since the VC import is probably at a stand still till I can figure out how to get a bigger map, I'm going to switch over to some smaller maps

I've got a good start on one already - something I've had the files for for years - a Star Trek TOS map of the Enterprise.

I've had a sketchup bridge set for quite awhile and I was working on it, but then I found one from a modder for the "Star Trek Bridge Commander" game

The game uses an early form of nif, so it was fairly simple to get running - I had to export it out of nifskope as an obj file, import that into Blender, and then back out again as a FFvt3R nif.

I lost some of the panels since they were animated tga's somehow, but I replaced them from the file I had from sketchup years ago.

Not sure if it will work beyond that, but I've got files in various formats for the transporter room, sickbay, captain's quarters, engineering, and the shuttle bay. If I can I'll set them up as a series of "underground chambers" that you can move from one to the next. The turbolifts would have to act as simple doorways. I'll need a ship's corridor as well.

Finished pic in Blender below, with the black figure being a standard male_basic again, used for sizing

This might be good for a digital diorama as well with all the crew in place. I actually had a model of this as a kid.

[Kommando]

TOS stuff looks really fun. I might want to try something.

[Randomdays]

Neat.

Most of the models I have aren't too bad, but they're from the old Elite Force Game and are a bit dated.

One of the newer trek games, Fleet Command, has some nice models, but they're hard to get.

[Randomdays]

For further down the road, Bridge Commander has a total TOS mod with some good models (all nifs!) of most of the ships and stations from TOS, as well as bridges and some crew uniforms and models. The crew are fairly generic, so no Kirk or Spock on anyone recognizable.

The original game would have the same for TNG = Federation, Klingon, Romulan, plus Ferengi and Cardassian and such.

[Randomdays]

Almost done with the transporter room. Much more complicated than the bridge with lots of little lights to skin.

Across the hall I'll try to do the briefing room.

After they're all imported I'll go back to the map, placing them and adding corridors to connect everything.

The almost finished Transporter room is below

[cranlox]

Those interiors are turning out very well,
Here's this Spock in case you didn't see him.

https://rigmodels.com/model.php?view=Man-3d-model__Y8R27747ONB8TJF8YQEICKV6U&searchkeyword=spock&manualsearch=1

[Randomdays]

thanks cranlox. Hope you're feeling better

Transporter room - just a couple of minor items to work on, but they can wait till I'm ready to put it on a map.

The briefing room - also almost done. Composed of 3 main parts - the empty room with the ceiling removed, the table from another download, and the chairs from the bridge layout.

 The problem with these imports, especially those from sketchfab, the 3d warehouse, and jaz3D, is that instead of using a skin on a mesh, they change the color of the mesh's material itself. The computer buttons and toggles in the pic below used its material for color. In FF this works fine, but from I've seen in FFvt3R, any part of a mesh without a skin will show up pink.

I had to go into milkshape with the obj file of the transporter console and assign simple "color" skins to most of the buttons.

Luckily with the briefing room, only the computer at the end needs this done - everything on the table IS skinned.

After doing some more work here, Sickbay is next.

[cranlox]

great job, it seems that on Thursday if everything goes well I will be discharged.
The scenarios you are doing are very good, I hope you can leave them to use in the rumble room, which is what I use the most to play

[Randomdays]

That's the plan. Making a mission with scripting and an ending is a bit over my head at the moment.

Though for the Star Trek map I think you'd be a bit limited in battle options and it would be more for walking around and enjoying. If I can I'll add some crew members to wander the halls, put McCoy in Sickbay, Scotty in Engineering, and the bridge crew at their stations.

On the Spock Mesh, still using the Elite Force Meshes I imported a while back. They're a little low poly compared to FF but overall fit well.  I have skins/meshes from this for just about all the main characters for TOS/ TNG/ DS9/ Voyager and Enterprise



Though the ones from Fleet Command as I said before are very nice

https://www.deviantart.com/wolfblade111/art/Model-DL-Star-Trek-945604758

[Kommando]

That's the plan. Making a mission with scripting and an ending is a bit over my head at the moment.

Though for the Star Trek map I think you'd be a bit limited in battle options and it would be more for walking around and enjoying. If I can I'll add some crew members to wander the halls, put McCoy in Sickbay, Scotty in Engineering, and the bridge crew at their stations.

On the Spock Mesh, still using the Elite Force Meshes I imported a while back. They're a little low poly compared to FF but overall fit well.  I have skins/meshes from this for just about all the main characters for TOS/ TNG/ DS9/ Voyager and Enterprise



Though the ones from Fleet Command as I said before are very nice

https://www.deviantart.com/wolfblade111/art/Model-DL-Star-Trek-945604758

Those are simultaneously awesome and awful. I downloaded that Spock mesh. I still need to take a look at it but I'm deep in making a music video. The skin was interesting.

I need to see if I can get specific faces on a specific texture. I kind of got face-swapping to work for my 2D stuff. That Spock image I did above was a 10-second render. Obviously, it wouldn't stay that way but the image has bits I can use.

Those skins are awesome because someone did a really good job with photoskinning. I might be able to enhance and upscale those.

I should point out that I REALLY like The Original Series stuff. So playing around with some of this really interests me.

And I just blinked when I was admiring the job done on Sisko and then I'm like... wait a minute... and then... wait a minute. And I remembered the episode of DS9 and now I'm really impressed with those skins.

[Kommando]

thanks cranlox. Hope you're feeling better

The problem with these imports, especially those from sketchfab, the 3d warehouse, and jaz3D, is that instead of using a skin on a mesh, they change the color of the mesh's material itself. The computer buttons and toggles in the pic below used its material for color. In FF this works fine, but from I've seen in FFvt3R, any part of a mesh without a skin will show up pink.

Maybe for walls and larger surfaces, if you can assign a texture to it, I might be able to help generate textures. Surfaces aren't as meticulous as living beings.

I'm thinking for the Trek Uniforms, I might try doing some on male basic with pants. Gally or Taarna could work for the female uniforms. I'd like to do the garments in layers and then have accessories as more layers, like the badge and the rank stripes on the sleeves. Though I will check out any meshes you have, because those photoskins are awesome.

[Kommando]

great job, it seems that on Thursday if everything goes well I will be discharged.
The scenarios you are doing are very good, I hope you can leave them to use in the rumble room, which is what I use the most to play

Good luck, I hope you recover quickly.

[Randomdays]

Same here with TOS, all the way back to the 60's

If you can find it, check out Tommyboy's "trek_t" mesh and kfs. If not, I should be able to get it to you.

For the rooms and such, I've been assigning simple single color textures to the mesh pieces, like "red" or "grey. The pictures above all have textures assigned to every mesh piece where needed,down to the smallest button or switch

Most of the TOS skins/meshes that I imported are up on the megasite.

The mesh is broken up into 3 main pieces with the original Elite Force models,probably due to rigging concerns - the head, the chest and arms, and the waist and legs - and each is further broken up into more pieces - the head is broken into more pieces itself - 2 halves of the face, a half face skin with mirror for the other side, and most of the head. Each body piece has its own skin. I know you don't like mirroring too much from your comments, but its all like that.

I haven't done a lot of modding with with Elite Force/ Quake 3 models, but from I've seen they don't use armatures for animation.

These were the first meshes I worked with when learning to import, and McCoy was the very first one done. They were rigged to Tommyboy's "trek_t" armature, one that became a favorite of mine for social animations and the phaser pistol, phaser rifle and tricorder extras for attacks and animations. The drawback for me is mainly the shoulder areas as they come out a bit squared.

Here's a pic again of the McCoy model from way back when



With more experience under my belt I'm thinking in a lot of cases it might be easier just to take the head and transplant it onto an FF/ FFvt3R body, if others would skin it to match. I think they're at least a place to start from.

As for "awesome and awful" they are a mixed bag - some very good, some not so much. Most are by a modder called "Laz Rojas" and another called "toonloon". I think toonloon's Gorn I did a few pages back on the other thread came out looking very nice.

One of the things I really liked about the Elite Force stuff as mentioned above, is there is so much of it for all the series. They're low poly, skinned, easy to work with, and best of all - free! A lot of the characters can't be found anywhere else that I'm aware of, and a lot of them have alternates from the various episodes, like the DS9 characters going back to TOS to deal with the tribble problem.

Worf - "They are our mortal enemy."

Laz Rojas still has his site active after all these years.

That's here; the links still appear good and there's pics of all the characters.

http://lazrojas.com/elitefarce/bots/index.html

and TOS subpage;

http://lazrojas.com/elitefarce/bots/toscast/toscast.html

I wouldn't mind working with you or anyone else on improving these with head transplants or whatever is needed. You guys take a look at Laz Rojas page or whatever I've done already, and let me know if there's anything you'd like to work on.

[Randomdays]

Oh, and here's a pic of the models coming out of Fleet Command. They're coming out with more and more characters from the various show, but they're hard to find to download. I might have to try installing the game and see how easy they are to capture.

https://www.deviantart.com/fleetadmiral01/art/Star-Trek-Fleet-Command-TOS-Crew-2-13-2021-870275348

[Randomdays]

Sickbay about finished. It was originally about 120k vertices, but there was a communicator on the table that was almost 100k by itself, so it had to go. Removing that, the doors, and the ceiling brought it down to a nice 17k. The only thing it needs is a standard chair behind the desk.

Added transparency to the glass cabinets. Replaced the medical beds with one from another download and added McCoy for sizing. Added textures to everything that needed it.

Looking at McCoy, his head was a bit father back than it needed to be, so I moved it forward. Once I get done with the map, I should look at all the other Trek characters I did and see what needs adjusting.

It turns out both Laz Rojas and Toonloon did the TOS crew, so I might compare and see if they're about the same or if one set is better than the other.

Engine room next.

[Randomdays]

Engineering finished. This was pretty complex. One main mesh and the center dilithium chamber area from another.

 Two shots with Scotty for sizing.

I posted a small rar on the requests folder on the megasite for the grillwork, "Fencing.rar" I need transparency turned on for the red and grey grillwork if someone can help with that.

I think 3 items left to do....

1) Crew's quarters

2) Shuttle Bay

3) A main corridor to tie it all together.


Then I can start putting everything on a map. Crew's quarters next.