Major Mesh/skin release possible...with help

[cmdrkoenig67]

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

[Randomdays]

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.

[BigAl1984]

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

[Randomdays]

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.
 

[yell0w_lantern]

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.

[Cyber Burn]

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.

"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.

[Randomdays]

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.





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/

[Cyber Burn]

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

[Randomdays]

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.

[BentonGrey]

Haha, very nice!

[doctorchallenger]

Is it possible to get these for FF1?

[Randomdays]

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.

[doctorchallenger]

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.

[jeremy355]

Cool Stuff.

[Randomdays]

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.

[Randomdays]

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





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.

[Randomdays]

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.

[jeremy355]

Cool can't wait to see the Batmoblie.

[cmdrkoenig67]

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

Dana

[yell0w_lantern]

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.

[Randomdays]

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.

[Randomdays]

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.

[Randomdays]

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.

[BentonGrey]

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

[Randomdays]

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.

[Randomdays]

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

[BentonGrey]

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!

[Randomdays]

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.

[BentonGrey]

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!

[Randomdays]

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.