Possible Projects Interest

[spydermann93]

Holy crap, I've actually had a toy of those blue "Plant men" as a kid. I had no clue where those came from or even if I was remembering it right, but there they are. Wow!

[cranlox]

I HAD IT TOO, THEY WERE CHARACTERS FROM TRENDMASTER'S TARZAN

[style]

Wyldfyre - you're gorna get get it for that one -


Hey Style!

He did a great job on all of those didn't he - a great modder for that game. I may also try to do his Duke Nukem - I don't think we have one for FF?

The original crew has already been imported and is up on my megasite, along with a shuttle.

Dean just did a TNG klingon, and Lionheart did a TOS one a while back; pic below

And a pic of McCoy, my very first import from back in 2011. The meshes for Elite Force come in three pieces = head. chest and arms, and waist and legs. Due to the base shape of the shoulders in the mesh, they look a little strange in FF, but still pretty good. All my imports are on Tommyboy's trek_t kfs, and have original TOS phasers, rifles and tricorders - maybe communicators too.

Oh ok what's your Megasite address?

[Randomdays]

Style - https://mega.nz/folder/bxoATQBA#zhsyE8hp1uwMeDk7r17BcQ

Cranlox and Spyder (Hey Spyder! - haven't seen you much lately!) - here's mine - I bought a bunch of them on ebay about 2002 or so - all still mint in box. Mine is a two pack with a Tarzan of Mars figure with the plant man. I just noticed that my Tars Tarkas actually has a floppy adventure game disk in it. It's for windows 3.1 but I wonder what kind of game it is. I don't even have a floppy drive anymore.





SA - I grew up on the old Tarzan movies, and in the books he's so much better. I think the closest to the book version is the 1970's Filmation cartoon.
       You should read some ERB if you get a chance - some old pulp goodness. The Tarzan, Mars, Venus, Earth's Core and Caspak series are all great.

Tried importing a TOS character from Elite Force and had some issues I didn't remeber from last time. I picked Lt M'ress from the animated series since I hadn't done her before. First you have to extract the Quake 3 md3 mesh files and the jpg textures from the pk3 pak. The skins are in jpg format and aren't square, so you have to change those.

Each mesh comes in the 3 body parts mentioned before, but each of those has multiple parts as well - IE her head had hair, face 1 and face 2 parts.

After I got everything into Blender and aligned with each other, I found that while everything had a uv, only some of the mesh had their textures assigned to them.

I finally got her exported as a skinned nif, but she's not rigged yet. And unfortunately, she's not in a good natural pose either. Shown below in her red Starfleet uniform - blue and gold also provided.

[spydermann93]

Style - https://mega.nz/folder/bxoATQBA#zhsyE8hp1uwMeDk7r17BcQ

Cranlox and Spyder (Hey Spyder! - haven't seen you much lately!) - here's mine - I bought a bunch of them on ebay about 2002 or so - all still mint in box. Mine is a two pack with a Tarzan of Mars figure with the plant man. I just noticed that my Tars Tarkas actually has a floppy adventure game disk in it. It's for windows 3.1 but I wonder what kind of game it is. I don't even have a floppy drive anymore.

WOW! That's the EXACT toy I had! All these years and I thought it was from Hercules or Xena, lmao

And how've you been doing, RD? I've been pretty busy lately, but I lurk from time to time. See you've been getting back into the swing of things. Been hugely appreciating the work on the skin list! Such an incredibly useful resource!

[Randomdays]

Spyder - a few ups and downs. There's a post under general that sums up what's been going on with me.

Glad to hear you're lurking around. I just had some pretty good convos with DJ and Style recently, and its good to see people coming out of the woodwork like Kommando.

The list is fun to work on - especially discovering something new from someone classic like Murs or LP, and finding a character that wasn't on the list before is a good find as well. I don't remember what character it was now, but I had found one with an actual "sit" animation for it.

The only frustrating part of it is trying to find messing meshes and kfs from sites long gone if I don't have them. dm's backup have very useful though.

Star Trek - Just had a look at the ones I did way back then and may tweak them - the head position looks a bit off on some, and rerigging may help with the stiff shoulder problem. From the look of the base files I still have, I may have gone thru Milkshape on them as a middle step - maybe for the skinning problem - I'm not sure I need to do that now.

Since I'm still a bit out of practice, we'll see how M'ress works out.

[deanjo2000]

If you want to send me the plantman I can add it to my list.

[Randomdays]

Sent Dean! Thanks once more!

[Randomdays]

A few things;

1) looking at the Star Trek meshes, it looks like a lot of them use the same body, legs and hands, just different heads (the Enterprise crew at least). I'm thinking that if a re-rig the male and female bases to look better, if I can, Then I'll just have to do head transplants and they should go quickly.

2) I think there's a mesh/skin/skope of Speed Racer out there, at least I saw a mention of one by Style. If I can get it, I'd like to try putting him in the Mach 5 if I can find a good model of it.

3)I've got a lot of neat skopes I'm thinking of doing, but looking for simple skinning help with. I've reached out to a couple of people and I'm waiting for a response at the moment.

[Randomdays]

I redid all the female Star Trek Characters and finished adding M'ress. Re-rigged Yeoman Barrow from the Shore Leave" episode and then did the head swap I was going to try on the rest, and that worked out great and save a lot of time.

These are all on Tommyboy's trek_t mesh, so part of the problem might be trying to put a female body on a male rig. Put I wanted the special animations that came with it - there's a dozen or so specials including pulling out and using a tricorder. Classic TOS models and skins are there for a hand phaser, phaser rifle and the tricorder.

I s there a female model with the special animations?

They are much improved from the original rig, but I'm still not happy with them. Further tinkering only seemed to make things worse so this is probably the best I can do at my present skill level. The arms still go out too far and the fingers on one of the hands are now bent. The arms and elbows are much improved though.

Anyone with meshing rigging skills are free to mess with them once they're posted.

Two pics below - Yeoman Barrows before and after, and a group shot of the 4 other female characters - Nurse Chapel, Marlena Moreau from the "Mirror Mirror" episode, and Lt M'Ress. M'Ress has some lighting and glossiness issues with her face - I tried fixing her up but its still there. Some one with some skinning skills needs to take a look at her. The heads for all are made of multiple meshes and skins - face, head and hair.

There's also some generic female crewmen that could be added somewhere down the line as well.

[SickAlice]

You don't have to use female you know? Like you could use Taskmaster Cordless or Deathstroke. Those have guns and a move where they pat their belt buckle. Then mess with that last move and make a move where they hit the heart/clavicle with the hand instead. The method I showed you for example.

On a side, I've never seen the models so I don't know if they're junk but speaking of animations isn't Star Trek Bridge Commander nif? I remember the very first plugins for 3d programs where just for that game. Maybe there is something you can use?

[Randomdays]

Thanks SA

Bridge Commander does use nifs, but they're limited from what I've seen - I think just the TNG bridge crew and ships. The nif version is 3.03 - lower than that of FF.

I thought of task mistress, but besides  losing the dozen or so special conversation animations, there's the fact that I never looked into how to make items like the guns and the tricorder appear and disappear with the animations. It's used a lot I know, but I never went beyond replacing the existing ones with replacements like the phasers.

[Randomdays]

I quick one;

PM'd DJ and got permission to work with his Lone Ranger.  Thanks DJ!



So - take DJ's Lone Ranger with Tommyboy's Rawhide Kid, plus the horse's skin from his Ghost Rider and you get.....

"Hi Yo Silver! Away!"

Other possibilities now that the door is open - Tonto, Zorro, Jonah Hex, and Tommyboy's indian_t and calvary_rifle_t and a cowgirl mesh. Maybe some others out there that I'm not thinking of. Anyone need a horse? We've got brown,black, and white skins. I could use a brown patch skin for Tonto's Scout.

http://www.westernclippings.com/remember/loneranger_doyouremember.shtml

Tommyboy's Black Knight 3 has some great sword animations for Zorro. You can shoot from horseback on some, but I don't think there's any for shooting a bow


Edit - If you saw it before, I've now changed out the saddle skin with the one from TB's "Kid Colt", and the horse from JKC's Valkerie.

[style]

A few things;

2) I think there's a mesh/skin/skope of Speed Racer out there, at least I saw a mention of one by Style. If I can get it, I'd like to try putting him in the Mach 5 if I can find a good model of it.

[Randomdays]

Awesome!. I've been pm'ing with Style so we'll see if I can get him behind the wheel

https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/49abc796-09d0-40a4-9f5c-74c8403b741a/Mach-5?hl=en

[Randomdays]

More riders...

I tried using Tommyboy's Black Knight 3 mesh, but it runs different than the Rawhide kid one - since its a flyer, its just not just running on air. His sword is always in hand as well in all animations.

Besides the ones mentioned before, I'll add some more possible skopes...

DC's Silent Knight - I sent a skope to Dean a while back for skinning; DC 's Shining Knight does ride a white pegasus ; Aragorn, and Gandalf on Shadowfax; Texas Jack has a wasteland cowboy and a wasteland gunslinger; "The Movies" game has a lot of Cowboy themed outfits to make a bunch of different riders with.

The Silent Knight, the Shining Knight and Gandalf all ride white mounts, so that makes thing easy.

And below - this guy and his friends...

"Ookla, Ariel - we ride!"




Bevo's Thundarr wouldn't import to Blender so I used Saturday Cartoon Squared's version . As far as I know, Bevo has the only version out there for Ariel, and Ookla has one more from SCS.

Ariel may be a problem since there is a female mesh on a horse - The Valkyrie, but the animations for a swords woman are different than for a spellcaster, and she's riding a flying mount. Ookla would need both some mesh work and some skinning. since he's not riding a horse

[Randomdays]

Another Rider finished....JKC's Zorro.

A bit more difficult than the other two - Zorro is based off a pulp versatile, while I think Tommyboy's mesh might be off a Taskmaster. And neither one is very friendly, but workable in the end, with Blender.

Wasn't sure if the cape would work, but it moves fine, both on foot and riding. Removed the right gun since his sword is in hand, but left the left gun and rifle, even though the rifle doesn't make much sense.

And since JKC's mesh comes with a bonus El Aguila skin, you get two for the price of one!

While I know both DJ's Lone Ranger and JKC's Zorro are originally for FF2, with the skopes, all 3 so far are for FF1. If you want an FF2 version, it should be easy to convert in Blender (hopefully)

[Randomdays]

A couple more riders to try - Conan and Red Sonja

Speaking of Conan - I think Nait did a version I don't have. And as a matter of fact, Nait's site is down and there's nothing on the wayback for it. If anyone can send me his Conan and or/ the rest of his work, or as a mediafire, that would be great. I know I have some of his work but probably missing a lot as well.

He hasn't been on the forums since October but I'll send him a PM and see if he responds.

Besides doing some talking with DJ and Style trying to get them back in there skinning, I got a reply back from one the original skinners/skopers for the game and he's willing to do some teamwork with me. Here's hoping it works out and you see some exciting things in the future.

Here's a hint - he has a section on Alex's site.

[SickAlice]

Sorry for the delayed response. I've been busy. That I know of for male at least a move where the character holds out their hand (right) and presses a button is the direct_boobytrap move from Gren's male fighter animations. Deathstroke also has this move but there are a lot of strings that have to be removed. I used this for the Ninja Turtles T-comms. Then add the tricorder and toggle the visibility/scale of course and add that to every keyframe with the visibility off.

For communicator I would use that DS or TM belt press move, that's their special animation and again there are a lot of strings to blank out. That's left arm. Adjust the rotation in Quarternion, looking at it probably left forearm and maybe the clavicle a little as well move the translation over a little so the hand hovers over the heart.

Phaser can either use the same direct_boobytrap or any gun keyframe, rifle animation for rifles of course (I'm using standard gun and rifle for Sinister currently).

That's how I would approach it. I would also have a single base mesh for everyone. A male basic and my female body would just be weighted to the male via Blender. I'm pretty sure I have already converted models like that available on my site else Crymson is female converted to basic male already. This way you only have to have one keyframe set made since again most Star Trek characters have the same sort of movements. I would then add teleporting as well (phase/burrow).

And you probably know but in any event I have a Conan and a Red Sonja made. On my Marvel page.

[Randomdays]

Thanks SA - I know what you mean by being busy, and you moving and and everything. Happy for any input. Your advice is usually good and always appreciated.

I think there's a Pyscho Man out there where he hits a button on a hand held panel

Basically I'm using two sets for the Star Trek meshes - Tommyboy's Trek T for the males and a body swapped version for the girls. All using the same kfs.

The animations have various right hand pistol  and rifle attacks. I found some good models for the TOS tricorder, the hand phaser and the phaser rifle.

The conversation animations are the dozen or so that Tommyboy uses a lot in his kfs.

I re-rigged one of the girls and then, since the bodies are all the same, just did head swapping for the rest. The males will probably work the same and make the rigging fairly easy.

When I start doing the other alien races, I'll have to swap out the equipment for non-federation looking ones.

So, to get back to what I was saying before, my main problem seems that putting the girls on the trek_t mesh is a little off. Even shrinking the armature and trying things to adjust the clavicle bones can't seem the fix the shoulder problem. Could be my skill level, the fact that the arms are separate meshes, or both.

I've stopped working on them for now and doing other things like the riders. Maybe when I get back to them a fresh look will help.

[WyldFyre]

Conan on the way.

Did you get the Valorine mesh? I think there are four different ones. I can send them all.

[Randomdays]

Never did....send them all!

And thanks!

[WyldFyre]

Sent.

[SickAlice]

I think Psycho Man was Tom. I don't see it fitting in my mind though. Kind of have me inspired to try my hand at making some Trek keys now. I was thinking about the Batman that uses a computer and combining that with a sitting animation for example.

The shoulders? It's the original model and bones, I think. I avoid Toms because they tend to be very specific. Looking at your screencaps, and I saw that right away, it's a common problem I run into. First the original models, generic hero which Tom used a lot as a base are actually male. They have athletic male based skeletons. It's not as apparent with native models because they are just sculpted versions of the male model themselves but if you try and import it becomes more apparent. Gren and INK later working around this by making very feminine looking idles but it's a matter of optics. In game things typically crunch together and look correct do to camera angles and optics. You should check them there for awhile and see they look better than in CTool or a 3d program.

If all else fails my method to work around stretching deformities is to sculpt the model itself to form fit the model it will be weighted to as opposed to using the Pose function to line it up. That way the model already has the portions used in the Freedom Force nif instead of being pulled like taffy to provide a visual by the rig itself. In fact I use that method more often, sculpting the 3d model itself, as opposed to the posing method you do a tutorial on. It may be worth experimenting with and see if you get better results, sculpt the arms of the actual model in Blender or whatever choice program I am saying prior to trying to pose, weight and rig I mean. That might end that shoulder problem.

[Randomdays]

I did a little bit with sculpting way back - I'll have to look at it again.

I'm trying something different than pose mode now, going at it from the other direction - instead of moving the armature to fit the mesh, I'm moving the mesh to fit the armature. It seems to work a bit better.

I line up the imported mesh with the donor FF mesh and do the weight copy to the import. After editing the groups to make sure they're good, I select the groups I need and then use the pivot point method I found not too long ago to bend the mesh at the joints to match the armature.

After everything is lined up, then I parent the mesh and armature together.

[SickAlice]

That's the way I usually fix it, yeah. Deforming the model to the model for the nif rather than posing.

Something you probably already know but it came to mind is another way around it is in Nifskope to select the model itself then look at the meshes NiSkinInstance. Opening that you can see all the bones listed and if you hover over the word "Bones" next to any a number will pop up. Then you move down to the models NiSkinData and find the same number then move the position from that point and save the nif. That will change the rest pose in the nif and the relativity of the keyframe animations positions. So for example you move the upperarms inward towards the body. It can lead to some ugly crunching on the texture but it can also fix the problem. It's the go to method for say making a longer or shorter neck.

[Randomdays]

I've been having some good pm's with SA and learning a few things. I did a couple of requests and SA looked at one and gave me some great input on one with issues on th eexport. He also looked at the M'ress mesh and looks like I'll have to do all the trek girls over again - they were really broken.

So we'll take a brief pause while I sort things out. Probably some updated meshes with fixes this weekend

[Randomdays]

So,

Briefly, or not so briefly. I had sent out to recent meshes for SA to look at. Now besides being a long time member here, and someone who's been a pretty good friends, he's smart. And not just smart sometimes, scary smart.

The M'ress mesh - the mesh has a 3 part face and a lot of gloss on it I couldn't get rid of. I had imported the Quake 3 mesh direct into Blender, rigged it to the trek_P armature along with the rest of the female trek characters, and exported them out.

While they seemed to be alright in the character viewer, they actually crashed either game when used.

Now part of this is due to fact (new for me) that th character viewers do not use the game engine to work. You'll see various meshes breaking up in the viewer that are find in game. I haven't tried anything yet, but SA has informed me that if you rename nifs and kfs from other game to FF standard, the viewers might play those as well.

So basically, going directly from a quake 3  import to a FF export is not supported, even though it may look good at first. All the new trek girls will have to be done again. Previously I had gone from Quake 3 to obj/mtl to nif and that seems to have worked so I'll try that again.

The Dragonzord - I had gotten a request to import a MMPR dragonzord and rig it Val's Mechagodzilla. The import went easier than I thought, but the export had, again, too much glossiness to it. SA was able to fix it fairly easily in niskope and then I found out something else new.

The Blender nif scripts for FF1/FF2 are not complete, and will almost always cause errors to the nif on export. SA is well enough aware of these errors to fix them, but it means almost everything anyone has done with Blender probably has errors  in them.

I've seen this a few times with exports I and others have done, but didn't know why. I've tested a lot imports in game and almost all of them see fairly stable, so in most cases I would guess, at this point, that they're still usable.

For myself, hopefully SA will post a way to easily see what needs to be corrected after an export. One way is too compare it with a similar mesh in 2 nifskope windows and see what looks different between the two.

I have a version of both Max and Gmax still installed, so I might have to up my learning curve and switch to them over Blender.

For now, I'll try to fix everything that I've done lately before upload. Everything done already I'll only look at if I use them  or get reports that they error out enough to be a problem.

This is a wealth of good, if troubling, info from SA and is fairly important in explaining some unexplained errors that have happened over the years.

Deep bow to SA

[SickAlice]

Eh ty but no biggie. And of course you know why I'm familiar with any of it is because I made mistakes a hundred times over easy. Well okay I still actually host stuff for download that's messed up on my site. I just never got around to fixing it. Fortunate and unfortunate about these games is they are limited, mostly because they are old. Unfortunate because their is much fun stuff we can think of to do but it ends up can't. Fortunate though because once you know the limitations it also makes for a lot less work to make anything for them. The later is part of why I never end doing content for other game mods (I did some private works for myself for other games mind you) or things like Second Life and such. I get a lot of requests for SL outside here as well for Elder Scrolls but I just feel like dealing with new complexities is all. That and I'm just at home in this community of course.

And yeah as elsewhere to I'll work up some basic tutorials and host them on my site, probably I'll end up hosting a lot of peoples tutorials in time. Index style. There will just be a lapse. I will be on the road travelling in one to two weeks so I won't really be on this stuff. Then spending time in the new house and having the family there for a couple weeks. So late Spring is my projected release time for everything.

And those Blender plugins. Though I am grateful anyone did that much as Nifskope and all else. But they just are incomplete for us is all. And myself I just don't want to pay for 3ds Max nor even have that program on my laptop at all for personal reasons so it is what it is.

Otherwise as  Trekkie I so can't wait to see the final Star Trek product here.

[Randomdays]

SA - No problem - you've done a lot helping both many in the community and myself Its noted.

Back to the Zord - Here's a pic of Val's Mechagodzilla and the base import of the dragonzord



The next two pics are the original glossy rig and SA's corrected rig. The rig itself isn't too bad but I found I had one thigh vertex rigged to the upper arm. I had to go back in and fix that but it should be good to go. SA added a glow and reflect texture.



Last, spent most of the day working on getting Style's Speed Racer into the Mach V. First rough draft pic below. He still needs to be posed and the car need a lot of cleanup and poly reduced - It started at 120K polys and at present its down to about 70K