Yeah it's very strange. All of my textures are in the root folder of the .obj file and the paths are perfectly correct. I even import the obj into other programs without any texture issues which is why I am confused. I also tried moving the entire project to D:\zone\ to reduce the path lengths and it made no difference.

I threw together some basic logging, mostly just during imports and particularly around the parts dealing with textures. We'll see if we can at least pinpoint which part is failing on you :|

[07/28/14 11:12:57] Loading UI
[07/28/14 11:12:57] Loading zone EQG from 'D:\Zone\nexus.eqg'
[07/28/14 11:12:57] Could not open zone EQG
[07/28/14 11:13:10] Creating new EQG file at 'D:\Zone\nexus.eqg'
[07/28/14 11:13:10] Successfully created new EQG file
[07/28/14 11:13:23] Starting IMPORT from OBJ format
[07/28/14 11:13:27] Found OBJ file with 964690 lines at 'D:\Zone\entire_zone.obj'
[07/28/14 11:13:27] Attempting to read MTL file from 'D:\Zone\entire_zone.mtl'
[07/28/14 11:13:27] Found material 'terrain_diff'
[07/28/14 11:13:27] Found diffuse map name 'Terr.png'
[07/28/14 11:13:27] Found material 'terrain_object_opaque'
[07/28/14 11:13:27] Found diffuse map name 'obj_txr.bmp'
[07/28/14 11:13:27] Found material 'terrain_object_alpha'
[07/28/14 11:13:27] Found diffuse map name 'obj_txr_alpha.png'
[07/28/14 11:13:27] Found material 'base_flr'
[07/28/14 11:13:27] Found diffuse map name 'base_floor.png'
[07/28/14 11:13:27] Finished reading MTL file
[07/28/14 11:13:36] Finished reading OBJ vertices, normals, texture coordinates and faces
[07/28/14 11:13:36] Searching for texture files to import from directory 'D:\Zone\'
[07/28/14 11:13:36] Searching for images to import for material 'terrain_diff'
[07/28/14 11:13:36] Material had diffuse map 'Terr.png' listed
[07/28/14 11:13:36] Attempting to find file 'Terr.png' at 'D:\Zone\Terr.png'
[07/28/14 11:13:37] Imported 'terr.png' successfully
[07/28/14 11:13:37] Searching for images to import for material 'terrain_object_alpha'
[07/28/14 11:13:37] Material had diffuse map 'obj_txr_alpha.png' listed
[07/28/14 11:13:37] Attempting to find file 'obj_txr_alpha.png' at 'D:\Zone\obj_txr_alpha.png'
[07/28/14 11:13:46] Imported 'obj_txr_alpha.png' successfully
[07/28/14 11:13:46] Searching for images to import for material 'terrain_object_opaque'
[07/28/14 11:13:46] Material had diffuse map 'obj_txr.bmp' listed
[07/28/14 11:13:46] Attempting to find file 'obj_txr.bmp' at 'D:\Zone\obj_txr.bmp'
[07/28/14 11:13:53] Imported 'obj_txr.bmp' successfully
[07/28/14 11:13:53] Searching for images to import for material 'base_flr'
[07/28/14 11:13:53] Material had diffuse map 'base_floor.png' listed
[07/28/14 11:13:53] Attempting to find file 'base_floor.png' at 'D:\Zone\base_floor.png'
[07/28/14 11:13:53] Imported 'base_floor.png' successfully
[07/28/14 11:13:53] Import from OBJ complete
[07/28/14 11:13:53] Loading 'nexus' from 'D:\Zone\nexus.eqg' after import
[07/28/14 11:13:53] Writing gui/settings.lua
[07/28/14 11:13:53] Attempting to save 'nexus.ter' and 'nexus.zon' to active directory
[07/28/14 11:13:53] Error writing to active directory: attempt to index a nil value

I threw this together yesterday. The textures are sloppy because I didn't put a whole lot of time into it. I made this in an attempt to replicate my problem. So I created these models from scratch, unwrapped and textured them. The walls are simply duplicated copies. Here's the kicker... I was able to compile the zone before I started duplicating the walls. After duplicating the walls to surround the court-yard area - I started getting the nill error. So I deleted the duplicated models with the exact same results. I don't get it. I've gone ahead and uploaded this model (which im importing as zone geometry) to my webserver if anyone wants to try to compile this as a zone. I'm curious if it's just me.

Download: http://xonos.net/zone/base/Aztek.zip
(PS: You're free to take this model and use it if you want it. I probably won't even use it as I hate the textures. If you do, let me know if you want the normal maps for bump mapping.)

http://xonos.net/zone/base/ss1.png
http://xonos.net/zone/base/ss2.png
http://xonos.net/zone/base/ss3.png
http://xonos.net/zone/base/ss4.png

Even if the textures could be nicer it still looks really nice.

Think I figured out the issue with Zaela, you have to use an existing eqg v1 file (crystallos.eqg or something) and import to that until Zaela fixes the tool.

http://puu.sh/axESD/3276eed869.jpg

Issue with importing to newly-made EQGs should hopefully be fixed now. Not sure why it seemed to be related to certain files for you, Packet, but it could be a coincidence, or it could be that attempting to import into a new file for a second time technically plugged the issue from then on.

Where is that custom pvp server with your starcraft map, bro

My body is ready

http://xonos.net/zone/success.png
YES!!!!!!!!!!!

The zone importer crashes for me every time I try to convert an s3d to eqg.
I've tried running the program as administrator but it still crashes.
Anyone else having this problem?

I may have overstated how easy it would be!

The conversion feature is not complete. I found where highpass is crashing it but some things are unclear -- seems like the first texture reference in each mesh is invalid, but necessary to line everything up correctly. Stuff around the top of the zone and all water surfaces aren't getting textured as a result (although some of that might be related to animated textures -- which I'm not sure how to do for EQG zones yet, although I think it's possible). Will need to take a closer look at all that.

KLS pointed something out to me yesterday which should be noted for server admins intending on incorporating custom zones into their servers. You will need .map files if you intend on having line of sight + other things such as proper npc pathing.

[4:08 PM] <KLS> the problem was you named the terrain file
[4:08 PM] <KLS> nexus
[4:08 PM] <KLS> instead of TER_nexus
[4:08 PM] <KLS> but im adding a fix atm

KLS is going to fix this with azone2 however, if you have an older build - this is why it might fail for you.


Zaela, any ideas on how one might add global lighting to a zone manually while you're working out light placement. Anything that I import does not seem to respond to sky light.

I guess it needs the vertex colors to have any lighting at all. Not sure how much influence they have on how things'll actually look. If you just want to try whatever for now: create a binary file, set the first 4 bytes to "EQGP", next 4 bytes is an integer equal to the number of vertices in your zone TER (should be on the info screen in the tool), then that many 4 byte integers filled with... let's say 0xFFFFFFFF, I think that should be pure white. It's 8 bit ARGB or RGBA or something like that. Then give it the same name as the TER file, except with .lit as the extension, and import it into the EQG.

My internet died a couple days ago (problem's with the wires underground, joy) so I'm not sure when I'll be able to update again.

Well phone connection can handle a painfully slow upload now and then I guess.

I put up a fix for this. The animated textures aren't animated yet, but they show a texture at least.

Weirdness turned out to be an inconsistency in a structure depending on whether textures were animated or not, which wasn't noticed in the WLD bible. Solves the mystery of where the timing information comes from, though.

I can't actually get in game to verify it works since I didn't have the foresight to make a fully local test server. But it looks mostly right in the viewer, so it should show up fine (unless the hardcoding is really really specific, I guess). Although, what I thought was bugged textures towards the top of the zone seems to actually be a zone ceiling (to prevent climbing?). The converter doesn't handle transparencies yet, so the zone will probably seem to have a white or black shell for a sky unless you mess with it a bit ;p

I'll try that out. Btw, I heard you mention you're messing with EQ character models. That true?

Yeah, working on an EQG animated model importer. Will handle Mob models as well as weapons (animated or non) and static things.

The GUI and viewer are basically done, just need to decide on an animated mesh format (was thinking COLLADA but that seems more annoying than it's worth, might go with B3D) and write the import routines... and decide on some standards for how to set things up (whether different animations should be imported from wholly separate files, etc). Also want to let the user select particle emission points in the tool and have it show where that is in the viewer in real time, but that was proving more difficult than expected -- we'll see.

If there is anything I can help you with, let me know. I can provide rigged characters & animations as samples to provide with your tool. If you want... :)

A rigged model with an animation for me to test with would be helpful. Been burned out a bit lately, haven't accomplished much. The prospect of having to both figure out a format and how to make animations in blender (I have a skeleton hooked up to a cube at least... I think) is just daunting enough to hold me back ;p Need both to test either.

I'm curious if people would be interested in a zone like this if I could design one relatively well in Blender. It would be a little different and not 100% accurate, but generally rather familiar for example I'd knock out a few walls to create pathways to the different mirrored world layouts.

I'd also use the left and right water inlets as a shipping routes pathway to connect the left half to right half among other things. Could also easily knock out 2-4 walls in the middle undecided. In terms of porting druid rings and wizard spires outside the dungeons would probably make a lot of sense.

[IMG]http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps876f2163.jpg[/IMG]

Good luck. :)

Preferred format? I have a few bipedal models that have some rigs and basic animations. It seems like (from my observation of OpenZone & Anim8or conversion) that there are specific sequence names per animation in the set. For instance, the idle animation/sequence would be:

standing_c_100_p01

death animation would be: death_n_100_d05

Without the standing_c_100_p01 sequence, the model comes in as a regular human. I'm not sure if this helps as I don't understand the logic behind the OZ conversion. But I do understand being burned out. My projects typically wear in on me as well which is why I am taking my time with this one. One piece at a time, a little a day... otherwise, I'd become distracted by the nearest shiny object.

Thanks think I've got a good planned method on how to go about it in mind starting with a 2D layout basically using square tile faces and subdividing. I'll try to add dimension by extruding and such later and other details, but gotta start someplace. Doesn't look like much yet, but chipping away at the layout slowly. Fairly time consuming carefully counting the tiles to try to ensure they are accurate as they can be at least initially may deviate a bit later so it's not just a carbon copy in 3D. Anyway I'm starting off by removing the water terrain initially. Then I'll try to get the base terrain layout down a bit roughly. I gotta chip away at it in stages otherwise it would just end up being a sloppy mess.

Sneak peak at what I've got started doesn't look like much, but counting those tiles is a real pita, but it's starting to take shape a bit so I'm pretty happy with results thus far.
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps750fa414.png

Cool beans

Whenever you're ready to texture that, let me know. I can show you some UV mapping techniques that will make things a lot easier for you.

Erm, anything that blender can import I guess ;p

For S3D models, it's actually just the last bit that identifies the animation: one letter for the "category," and then two digits for the number. The rest I assume is specific to how OpenZone does things.

EQG models use a slightly clearer system with 4 letters and 1 number. Some are pretty obvious like idle, walk, turn, swim; some understandable but odd like nrun (n?), jmpu (jump up), jmpa (jump forward), crmp ("crumple" to death); others seem like the just picked out some random letters like slpr, gcst (both attack animations ?). Easy enough to figure most of them out by watching the animations of pre-existing models at least, and there's probably a big list in the client or graphics dll that has them all lined up to their in-game id numbers.

Yeah defiantly will do once I get to that point. Not trying to rush it I want to get it looking as a right as I possibly can.

Another update btw just finished up with the last bit of water. I also cleaned up the boarder is it starting to look a bit more familiar? :)
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps10eed3ea.png

Don't mind the extra stuffs in the background that's mostly just there in case I accidentally screw something up. Here's a peak at how the mountain terrain is beginning to take shape very #Minecraft reminiscent for time being. I just want to get the general layout structure across initially. After that I can work toward beveling, smoothing, fracturing, and contorting it to give it character.

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p...psc40f17f8.png

Another screenshot on how it's starting to look. It's defiantly getting closer in feel. I'm pretty glad I decided to give this a try time consuming, but feels worth the time investment. A new yet old yet different type of nostalgia than we've been accustomed to in EQemu. Populating it with spawns will be interesting to say the least. It'll be kind of fun just experimenting with that I think.
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps6cd0d6ea.png

New screenshot I'd estimate about 2/5's of this stage of development for the mountain terrain is done with. The sections are defiantly beginning to look more and more familiar.
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p...psd4124673.png

Finished up the zone layout aside from the tree's basically which not sure what I'm doing with those currently. The mountains obviously need to be shaped more the placement orientation is where it should be at least. For now I'm cleaning up all the excess faces and deleting them, but after that not sure where to begin next.

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p...psebf3dfa2.png

Random info about animations.


- Human, Half Elf, Dark Elf, High Elf, Erudite, and Barbarian use the ElfMale and ElfFemale animations depending on gender, with the exception of certain animations that they already have (e.g. the Barbarian Male and Female have different walk animations)
- HumanMale has Walk, Run, and Idle animations that should be used instead of the ElfMale ones
- ElfFemale has to Turn_01, so has to use the Turn_01 from ElfMale
- Beetle uses Spider animations
- LionFemale uses LionMale animations
- Puma uses LionMale animations
- Gnomes and Halflings use DwarfMale and DwarfFemale animations, with the exception of their own RunJump
- OgreMale uses all the OgreFemale animations
- TrollMale and TrollFemale use all the OgreFemale animations except for their own unique Walk and Run
- BarbarianMale has unique Walk, Run, Idle animations, but uses ElfMale's animations for everything else
- BarbarianFemale only has a unique Walk animation, but should use the BarbarianMale Run and Idle plus ElfFemale animations for everything else

Deleted all the excess faces that I could find. Anyway some statistical information 32,920 verts with 27,510 faces. For comparisons temple of veeshan has 92,913 verts with 30,971 faces. Meanwhile guk bottom has 94,173 verts with 31,391 faces. It'll probably have a bit more faces and verts when it's done, but should be right in line with other zones so that's good to know.

I don't know if I can start to texture it now or if I should start shaping the terrain details height of jaggedness of mountains and the ground terrain.

On a side note this wasn't too hard to develop what I've done so far the most challenging part was trying to keep the tiles accurate, but just take a map that size and doing it free hand how I want would be pretty simple and easy. I learned a fair amount of tricks with blender along the way as well which was nice feels a lot less foreign how to go about level design stuff.

Starting work on all the terrain that juts in or out in spots to further improve both looks and accuracy a bit further. I'm not sure which method I should go with or perhaps even if I should do a cross between the two of them perhaps.

So with that said here's two different screen shots from the bottom corner section of the map. I wouldn't mind a little community input on which of the two people prefer the looks of more. In the mean while I'm gonna work on a hybrid prototype between the two to see how that looks as well.

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps5b57e051.png
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p...psed911a00.png

Here's what a hybrid between the two styles looks. Learning more and more 3D modeling techniques as I work on this and experiment with it a bit. I'm confident I could do my own free hand designs with far less difficulty than this replica challenge has been less room for personal stylization with this depending on how closely accurate you go for.

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p...psdccdb022.png

Hey Knowom. Would you mind posting new pictures in the OpenZone forum? Reason why I ask is because between the both of us, we've derailed the thread quite a bit with our massive screenshots. I'm probably the worst about this. :p

And I'm not trying to exercise any authority or anything (as I have none). Just a friendly request. :) We should save some room for those needing help.

Yeah whenever the next update ends up being I'll make a new thread in OpenZone forum someplace. I actually wasn't sure on where to post about initially in regard to this stuff. It's not really OpenZone either, but along the same premise player developed zones which at it's heart is what OpenZone intentions were about.

Haven't been making any progress lately, but figured I'd put out what I have so far for the animated model tool I've been working on since it makes a decent EQG model and animation viewer. Link, src.

Can't save any kind of changes yet, only good for the viewer. Can press 's' in the viewer to display skeletons ('cept on the base pose), right and left arrow to cycle through animations, mouse buttons to move view around. Does not display a small number of models correctly (ones with alternate heads/pieces). There are one or two eqg files that will crash it, not sure why yet. Can view most EQG weapons correctly as well.

Nice work Zaela!

Here is a link to a great 3d library i using in my projects:

http://assimp.sourceforge.net/

It supports alot of 3d formats. For none programmers there is also a nice viewer for 3d models on the website.

There also some api bindings for other language.

"There is a C API as well as bindings to various other languages, including C#/.net, Python and D."


Hope to see more of your nice work.

That's really awesome Zaela. I was looking at a few model animations and it worked perfectly using left-right arrow keys. Sorry I haven't passed you anything yet for testing. School just started up again for me and on-top of work, my time has been extremely limited.

The model viewer now supports alternate "heads"/model parts (H key to cycle through them, if any) and texture sets (more or less -- T key to cycle through those).

I took a little time out to change how I was doing things a bit (LuaJIT's FFI is pretty nice) and re-wrote most of common code for my tools to be nicer. Should hopefully make it easier for me to expand and fix things in the future.

Related to that, made a new version of my S3DSpy replacement which now has an "Export as PNG" option to convert DDS images coming out. Also fixed a bug where having an s3d or eqg file open in multiple tools at the same time (i.e. EQGExport + one of my importer tools) would make changes made in one tool overwrite those made in the other; EQGExport (and other tools, as I get to them) will now check if the s3d/eqg file has been modified and reload if necessary before doing any Export or Import operations.

I might look into that, but I'm pretty happy using Irrlicht for now. Loading standard formats doesn't matter too much for these tool since they're mostly concerned with going to/from EQ's weird formats.

Speaking of your newest version of EQGExport, Zaela, I am unable to get it to run. Previous versions open just fine for me, but attempting to open the one you've linked in the above quote gives me the following error:

I'm eager to see your latest additions, but this is preventing me from opening the program. Interestingly, I also get an identical error with your EQG Model Importer, though not with your EQG Weapon Model Importer. Am I doing something wrong?

EDIT: I might also inquire about the "Export as PNG" option. What becomes of the DDS image's alpha channel when this is done? I've found one of the biggest problems with converting DDS files manually to a more manageable format (always BMP in my case) is that an alpha layer can mess up the entire process unless I remember to remove it prior to conversion. Also, given that BMP is the standard format of pre-Luclin textures, is there an advantage to being able to instantly export PNG instead?

Hmm, I'm not sure what's up there. They work out of the box on both Windows machines I have access to (running 7 and 8). zlib1.dll should be a built-in system file since XP, I think; not sure why it might not be able to find it for you.

Not sure! PNG has an alpha channel so I imagine it just gets converted over as-is.

I didn't have any particular use in mind when I added the PNG export option, I just know I get annoyed when I run into DDS files since I don't have anything to edit them with. There's no reason not to use PNG, at least, since EQ will load any of the common image formats for any purpose. I prefer to use PNG since BMP is a bit of a space-hog.

I don't believe zlib comes preinstalled with any version of Windows.

You can easily download zlib1.dll from the official website and drop it into the same folder as the program that needs it, and everything should work fine.

The current version is 1.2.8:

http://zlib.net/zlib128-dll.zip

Or you can always check the home page for the latest version:

http://zlib.net/

I fully agree about BMP being a space-hog. However, don't you end up having to convert your final work to BMP eventually anyway if you're dealing with a pre-Luclin zone (when all textures were solely in BMP format)? If one did use a PNG in lieu of a BMP, could one delete the parallel BMP files and the PNG ones would be loaded in their place even with an old zone/model? (For instance, if I wanted to make a brown Old Froglok to overwrite the base Old Froglok texture.)

As for the difficulty of opening DDS, I see what you mean. I managed to find a plugin for GIMP that allows me to open them with relative ease, so I don't mind as much these days. There may be a similar plugin for your image editor of choice. :)

Thanks! I believe this was the initial problem, as both programs now open just fine.

However, while I can get full use out of the Model Viewer, EQGExport still doesn't want to play nice. It simply opens, prompts for the S3D directory, populates the list of .s3d files, then does nothing further. I'm able to select a given .s3d file, but nothing comes up on the next column. Right-clicking does nothing.

I may simply have to make do with v1.1 for the time being. Didn't mean to hijack Zaela's thread and turn it into a troubleshooting session!