Updated model viewer with skin support

[Kaiyodo]

I've just uploaded a new version of the model viewer to http://www.geocities.com/Kaiyodouk/ which can view and export the old-world character models correctly (Luclin models still don't work). It's also got support in for exporting the skin and bone information to 3dsmax via a Maxscript export option.

I've updated the readme and added another readme which just deals with the maxscript export. Shouldn't be too hard if you've used the viewer before :)

K.

[fnemo]

/clap

Nice work :)

Merry Xmas to you, Kaiyodo !! :)

[jbj3]

Hi,
I have downloaded and installed the latest version. It seems
to run without a problem. I have also done a fresh install
(from a fairly old EQ disk) and patched without problems.
It shows the .s3d files and loads them (I did not see a chequip.s3d
though, but several global*_chr.s3d type files). When I
load the .wld file I get a list of files which are obviously character
related. If I choose one, the textured model shows, but much
of the geometry is displaced (imploded?). The exception
are head files which seem to be ok. I have also looked at
some zone files and the object files within. The problem
occurs when looking at local monster models there.
I have tried turning scale off, but model is so large I can't
really look at it (no apparent zoom in the viewer window?)
I have also tried exporting, but the problems persist in
the exported model when viewing (I do not have studio max
to try that however).
Any help on what I am doing wrong?
Thanks,
J.B.

[Kaiyodo]

If you don't have a chequip.s3d file then you're a bit stuck. This is the file that contains the character models that the new viewer can view and export, i.e. the pre-luclin model files. The global_xxx.s3d files contain the luclin models as far as I know and they won't work with the viewer.

chequip.s3d is a pain to find in the list of 3ds files, I've stared at the list for ages not being able to see it so I made the viewer auto-select it on startup :) Maybe it's only installed with one of the expansions, I'm not sure to be honest, I've got them all installed on my machine.

There is a scale in the viewer by the way, it's on the middle mouse button I think, if not then it's on the right button :) It has some problems when viewing really big models such as the dragon model, it's so big that by the time you've zoomed out enough to view the whole model most of it has dissappeared behind the back view plane. It doesn't affect the export though which is the only time you really need the 'scale on load' option turned off.

K.

[Baron Sprite]

:worship:

[jbj3]

Hi,
Well, I was lucky and found chequip.s3d on a computer at
home with an old install. Not sure why it wasn't on the
new install, but may be that it wasn't on original disk and
is no longer patched as same file (will look into this some more).
After looking at chequip.s3d with model viewer it became
clear that the model files that display are the .spk and not files
from the .wld which all seem to be image maps.
I am curious as to whether or not any other .spk exist, though
so far no other file I've checked does. The problem is that only a
limited number of image maps associated with the .spk model
files are included in the .wld found in chequip.s3d. No way
apparently to get them from other files for different faces I
guess.
I couldn't try the middle button to zoom because my trackball
doesn't have one. I thought there might be a keyboard
alternative.
Thanks again,
J.B.

[Kaiyodo]

I'll give you a little history about the model file formats first to try and explain what all the different file types are for.

Originally the old world models were stored as SPK files inside the s3d files, these are text files that contain all of the geometry/bone/texturing info about a model. Sometime in the past VI decided this was bad and moved them over to a binary format, they used the same format which they store the zones in (.WLD format) which is a semi-encrypted binary format.

As you can imagine, trying to read a model out of .WLD files is a lot more complicated that parsing a text SPK file. I've not done too badly with the WLD files so far, the only thing I can't work out is where the bone information is stored in the skinned models. Non-skinned models like the weapons work fine from WLD files. Because I can only obtain the bone positions correctly from SPK files, they're the only skinned models that come out correctly.

Interestingly, within chequip.s3d there is a single WLD file which contains binary versions of all the spk files. I presume this is the file that the client loads the old world models from so you don't have to have two code paths for loading models (one for wld and one for spk). The models within this WLD file won't display correctly in the model viewer.

To answer your questions specifically, as far as I am aware there are no SPK files other than those in chequip.s3d. I'm guessing that format has been obsolete for a long time. WLD files can contain pretty much anything except image maps. Zone geometry, models, material libraries, animation data, zone object position/definitions etc. can all be stored in WLD files. The image maps are stored individually inside s3d files with either a BMP or DDS extension (some of the bmp files are really dds files in disguise).

The image maps you say are missing from the WLD file inside chequip.s3d aren't there, you are correct. They are stored in chequip.s3d itself, if you extract it you'll get thousands of texture files. The alternate faces won't show up in the model viewer as it only picks the first texture it finds, you can alter this if you export the models to 3dsmax. The textures for the faces and armour types are all numbered (e.g. GNMHE0001.bmp might be the first gnome face, GNMHE0001.bmp would be the second).

And, yeah .. I just sort of assumed everyone would have middle button, sorry about that :)

K.

[jbj3]

Hi,
Thanks for the additional info.
I found that the chequip did not install from my original
(1999?) EQ disk, but did install from the Kunark expansion
(the only one I had).
I've tried the POV export, using ver3.5 to render, and I
get a strange result which obviously had origins from the
original model and .bmps, but not a correct render. I'm
no expert on POV ray so not sure if I ran it wrong or
need a different version or what.
I have successfully loaded the .obj file into MS3D, but
as expected this gives no uv map. I am going to see
how easy it may be to do one as I have no other way
to get a model out at present (don't have 3dmax).
Thanks,
J.B.

[Kaiyodo]

I'm no export on POVRay either I'm afraid, in fact I don't think I've ever run the program. I used the POVRay format as an intermediary for exporting models so I could pull them into 3dsmax with a povray import maxscript. This was before I wrote the maxscript export option of course.

I basically wrote out the pov file in the same format as mitselplik's EQZoneConverter files came out, I just presumed those rendered in POVRay correctly :)

K.

[DeletedUser]

http://zi0.boggletech.com/stuff/scarecrow.jpg

Without it playing like live, some of the models are funny. :mrgreen:

[Lucid]

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA sorry that was in pure joy... lol
THANK YOU SO MUCH KAI i love you lol..... uhm hmm you ever mess with Bryce 3d any? currently im "trying" to learn how to work 3dsmax 4.0 ne way i was thinking would it be possible to convert the models to bryce 3d format? if not its cool im sure i will figure out max eventually lol.



[crappy] 3D artist,gamer,musician,writer

Lucid =p

[jdankanyin]

:D Hey Kaiyodo im working on a converter from the s3d to max format so we could have better 3d engine beofre they come out with eq2 if you got any suggestions i would love a reply to this

[mudman]

can the model viewer show character models?
how about pop characters too?

Thanks Mudman

[Kaiyodo]

mudman: The model viewer can display the old world character models, but not the PoP ones yet. I still need to work out how the bone positions are stored for those so they don't come out collapsed.

jdankanyin: If you use Mitselplik's zone converter and the maxscript from my site you can already get zones from s3d into max. After that it should just be a matter of exporting in a sensible format for your engine.

K.

[mudman]

Hi,
The old world models were collasped / crushed or am I doing something wrong. Seemed they looked same as the POP models. Is there any way to see the entire character? even old world?
Thanks Mudman

[Kaiyodo]

The latest model viewer can display the .spk models in chequip.s3d only. If you load anything from a .wld file then the models will be collapsed.

K.

[Aerinn]

Kai, for starters you're my hero. You're doing what I have been struggling with for ages, but haven't got the programming expertise to accomplish. That said, I notice that you mention zones can be pulled from a wld file with Mitselplik's tool (which is brilliant imho). I'm using his tool now, but my only gripe is that it converts all of the textures to bmp, losing the transparency. If your script goes to max (since it uses the compressed directx files), do you bypass the bmp conversion completely?

Anyway, that was probably a question I'll answer as soon as I get your proggie installed and working, but it's something that'd be a fairly straight forward mod...or so it'd seem (to a non-programmer).

Anyway, keep it coming guys, it's well appreciated and you're reaching God-like status to this little Aussie!

Regards,

Aerinn :D

[Kaiyodo]

I don't bypass the conversion, I just undo it :) I had to do a search and replace BMP with DDS for some of the POV files for the newer zones so the texture names matched up. You have to make sure your version of max supports DDS textures first of course.

The latest maxscript on my site has support for transparency, it puts the same texture in the diffuse and opacity slots in max so you get the transparency in the viewport too.

K.

[Aerinn]

This may sound like it's coming from someone very much in the unknown, that's because it is. From what I've been reading about formats and such (which is a lot before I finally found this board which actually knows something specific to EQ), I noted that a lot of places that develop with Max (as VI does) utilise the DirectX 8+ format export tools that are out there.

Now, I realise that VI probably has an enormous budget to custom develop such things, but the models we get no access to (i.e. they come out in a garbled mess) are models from the same period where they moved to DX8, isn't it? I'm 99% confident that you've already verified that the file isn't in standard dx8 format, but I wanted to point out the coincidence just in case.

Thanks for you work, again. I'm playing with actually getting the models into Max5 today.

[Kaiyodo]

The EQ models are all in VI's custom format, I think we're talking about dx5 time when EQ was released so the xfile format didn't even exist back then. I've got most of the format sorted out, the only thing that's missing is the bone positions for luclin modes, if they even have bones. I should really look to see if they changed to vertex animations rather than skinning, it would certainly explain the insane memory requirement for the animations :)

K.

[Aerinn]

Perhaps an interim solution is to put a clicky box that ignores bones altogether. If I can get a clean mesh in I don't mind dropping a biped in the centre of it and making some adjustments. Biped makes animation pretty easy....almost a no brainer. (almost)

Okay, I'm making Max models now (and are they ever huge). Oh well, they move well in wireframe mode. Where I'm curious, though, is why aren't trees and such imported? I'm either doing something terribly wrong, or trees and buildings and such aren't coming in. I AM, however, getting some objects imported, though...like archways and such. I'm a bit stumped, or ignorant in this case. Please describe what I should be getting out of the POV importer, because it doesn't look like I'm getting the same thing in Max that I was seeing in Pov.

[Kaiyodo]

Unfortunately I already ignore the bones if I can't find them. That collapsed mess seems to be the neutral position of the mesh.

If you're not getting objects in your zones in max there are a few things to check. Make sure you've clicked the 'process includes' button before you import the pov file, and make sure you have an 'objects.pov' and '<zonename>_obj.pov' in the same directory as the zone pov. The zoneconverter should have generated these if you clicked the option to process objects.

I had problems with objects, the pov files for them came out empty so you might want to check they have stuff inside them. In order to write the bit of code that imports them I had to have the objects pov files sent to me by someone whose converter worked. If that's happening, I've no idea how to get round it :(

K.

[Aerinn]

Thanks for the info. With it I managed to get things working okay. The method was a bit unorthodox (I think I may have gone the hard way around, but it's the only way I got all the textures applied). Instead of following the method posted when you first created the tool (which allowed you to export the actual DDS files), I just used Mitz's proggie directly to convert a zone straight from EQ's directory. It created a sub in Mitz's program directory that I used your program to convert (I just pointed it toward the zone converter working directory).

That may not be quite the right way to do it, but I am getting zones textured, sorta. I just brought in the nexus (other ones I tried were HUGE and kept giving Max 5 a hard run...which is a pain). It looks good with the following quirks:

1. transparent stuff isn't (bitmaps causing this one, so it's no biggie, I can follow this logic.
2. Walls are holey....like swiss cheese, not like the Pope. I can't figure that one out, but I seem to be having troubles patching the holes. Maybe my Max ignorance is just showing a bit.


Any advice/thoughts/pointers/etc. I can work on? If you need my help, mate, just launch me some instructions and I'll give it a go.

[Kaiyodo]

I've heard of people having problems with missing polys before and I'm not sure what would cause it. Only thing I can suggest is checking the options in the zoneconverter to make sure you haven't got the roof removal turned on :(

K.

[Aerinn]

Kai,

After digging into the models a bit deeper, I noticed that many of the missing polygons aren't actually missing, rather they are internalised or squashed to a point that they leave a hole in the walls. Further, on items (like the big spires) I noticed there are quite a few internalised polygons. Now, it's very likely that VI put it out that way....I know my first attempts at 3ds Max modelling had its share of internalised polygons. Hopefully this will help you in locating the culprit code.

Also, not trying to be nudging or anything, but how high on your priority list (I know you code a LOT of tools) have you placed fixing up the Luclin+ models? Is it closer to doing your taxes important, or more like calling an old mate from grade 3 for a catch up?

Regards,

[Kaiyodo]

Thanks for the info, I'll see if I can see why the polys are getting squished.

As for the Lulin models, I'll fix them when I know how :D I don't know how the data is stored yet. By the way, last count was 9 tools :)

K.

[Aerinn]

9 tools!? You're a VERY active developer...especially for that to include only your freeware stuff. 8)

I wasn't wanting to seem pushy at all, I was only curious. I don't suppose any readers out there are in with anyone at Verant? Sometimes I wish I knew more about it all, but so long as people like you are on the job, there's no need for me to start down that path of x# years of learning to get to where you have already been.

Take care, and thanks again.

[Purcevil]

Is there any way to convert the .wld files from Mitselplik's zone converter to... oh say .obj for use in Bryce? I don't have 3D Max and can't afford 3K atm. =)

jdankanyin: If you use Mitselplik's zone converter and the maxscript from my site you can already get zones from s3d into max. After that it should just be a matter of exporting in a sensible format for your engine.

K.

[KI-Revenant]

:shock: Is there anyway to like have the Spire Spirits the Ringwraith wanna be black ghosts from luclin to roam around in Greater Faydark? or such other oddities? I cant seem to find a way to get them as all I get are humans.

or is it Possible to make all models be useable in all zones?

[NetShira]

I'd like to try playing around with these dds files if found, but have yet to find the proper set of files for the Vah Shir model.. I realize this awesome model viewer might not view them but I'd still like to isolate my target before I start trying to figure out how to convert it to something I can use in a 3D Modelling object.

NetShira