New toy - EQ model viewer
 

I've just put the first version of my model viewer up on the web. http://www.geocities.com/kaiyodouk/ . Might help people who are looking for graphics for weapons and stuff.

I'll post a section of the readme save me typing what it does and doesn't do again :)

Kaiyodo's EQ Model Viewer :-

What it does:

Lets you view a lot of the EQ models in wireframe or textured. You can export them as Wavefront OBJ files too so you can play with them in 3dsMax!

How to use it:

1) Load it up and set your EQ directory so it can find the files. When it's found the EQ files the list on the left will fill up and it should Auto-select gequip.s3d
2) Press 'Load S3D'. It won't take long, when it's finished it'll say 'Done' at the bottom and auto-select the first file in the model list.
3) Press 'Load Model'. It'll say 'Loading WLD' for a bit then You'll get a screenful of crap, click on one of the names in the box at the bottom to view a single model rather then everything in the file.
4) Rotate about it a bit in the 3d view, left mouse button = rotate, right = pan, middle = zoom.

Thing that will go wrong:

1) Loading in zone S3Ds may take a while (30 secs or so, there are 1 million+ chunks to check in some of those files!), if they're Luclin zones they'll just crash. This is a model viewer, not a zone viewer, what did you expect :)
2) Some stuff won't have textures on.
3) Models that animate using skinning will screw up.

There's more info in the readme, but that should be enough to get people going :)

K.

Wow.

Incredible
 

First off! Incredible!

Second off...Why is it there are tons of weapons and such that we dont have in the item visuals section?

Who wants to be the first to load all those in there?

Notice the weapon/item viewing if you load up the gequip.s3d files? hint: use the Only show selection box and turn off wire frame.

Yeah i guess you did =P very nice tool. great stuff to look at.

My Idea
 

Expect something in the lines of a cheap game by me including these models :p


Maybe...

Another beautiful thing is that it gives the the Item numbers and he has his custom item editor so you look at any weapon you want, find the IT number and Pop it in your DB with his editor and BAM there you have it. Kaiyodo: I indeed tip my hat to you, and thank you for your hard work and effort.

Sweet!

Some comments...

It will actually view the chr files as well. good for finding out what models and heads ect are avaliable in a zone. It will not display them right yet though, and it lists it by nameed codes not number. It does not assemble the parts to the models right, They are located on top of each other :( Is there an xyz (perhaps uvw too) offset that your not using?

I was also able to display zone obj files :)

Obvious things that would rock if they were fixed:
Texture transparancy
animated textures
Textures not displaying (related to 1st 2?)
Sub objects not assembled correctly

The reason all of the characters model parts are on top of each other (I'm guessing) is releated to me not using the animation info. I assume that they're using skinned and boned models so each model part's position is governed by the skeletal information. This info is probably in the MESHOPS or TRACKDEF sections somewhere (you can see these in SPK files), but I haven't been able to figure out what the data means.

The different parts of the models do have an xyz offset, I didn't miss it, it's just zero all the time for non-zone models. Even when the offset is applied to zone models it didn't turn out correctly. Zoneconverter manages to put the zone geometry in the right place, but reading through that code makes my head hurt :)

Regarding transparency and animated textures, I've not even looked at the MDF (Material defenition file) files, which is where that info would be kept. I discovered quite early on that the MDF filename was the almost same as the texturemap it contains (CUB0000_MDF uses CUB0000.bmp) so I cheated and assumed that :) What I really should do is open up CUB0000_MDF and pull the material data from there. Texture transparency should be quite straight forward, I could probably put in a toggle for that so you could do it manually.

I found another reason for textures not displaying too, I can only pull textures out of the current S3D file that you're viewing. Some models, and I think all the zones do this, have their textures in another file. It had been puzzling me that some textures dissappeared when I switched over to using the S3D files rather than disk files, looks like that was why.

K.

/shrug. Not auto-selecting my gequips :(.

Bah. I've no idea how that could fail unless it's not finding the EQ files. Looks like you'll just have to click on it everytime :(

K.

I meant that its not even showing gequip is there. It shows all the zones but when i press load s3d it does nothing. Yes its set at the right directory....

wow it works great!

just load s3d, then load wld file then click on one of list. dont try to open certain zones ( think its load, and kurnak zones )

Is there a way to import your own graphics? would it require recompiling the files? How would that work? Can any of the file formats you export be read in 3dmax or some other 3d modeling software? (dont have 3dmax installed atm)

:)

Once you click load s3d, click the load model button near the top right. That will then load all the specific models of the file then you can click on in the bottom right box.

Btw this is an amazing tool, great work! :)

The only reason I can think that gequip.s3d wouldn't appear is that the file isn't in your EQ directory. If that was the case though, EQ would never run. I just search for all S3D files in the EQ directory to fill in that list, nothing special.
Importing graphics isn't possible, not all of the file format is understood so it's currently impossible to create a valid model file that EQ would read. You can certainly import the object format I save out into 3DSMAX. By default Max can't import wavefront OBJ files but you can download a free importer for those off the 'net (don't have a link around unfortunately).

K.

There are 5 gequips in my EQ Directory. I must be doing sumthing wrong but i dont know my directory is set correctly i know it.

Much luv

*************OFF TOPIC*************************

Thank you Kai for you sweeeeeeet updated item editor with skeel mod/bane dmg.

Since model viewer isnt working for me, any on know the ID for the Black Acrylia Battle Axe?

Thanks for the answer. I can't wait till i can create pink polka dot bikinis for the trolls.

Big Kudos for the contribution. /cheer

Model Fixing?
 

Are you going to work on the model skeleton system? I think that would be great, so we could use them in our own programs :p

Nm, Model viewer works now. Before i was on 800x600 and it was too big and the Load S3D wasn't there. Great job!!!!!!!!

heh it do have some problems with export. im not sure but obj supports textures? also zone models is just messed up. ( yes i got strong enough computer to show entire zone in wire form )

If I get a flash of inspiration and the format of the data magically reveals itself, then yes. I know what I'd expect bone information to look like, and the data in the file doesn't look like it so I'm a bit stuck.
Obj files have support for materials, but I'm not quite sure how the Max importer handles them. I've certainly never gotten a texture to appear in Max when imported as an Obj, but I put that down to my lack of Max knowledge :). I do write out the texture coordinates though so it should just need the material assigning in Max. Oh, and zones don't work, you're right there :D

K.

its possible that zone model also uses some data to put where that section goes to that spot, etc etc. so when read by your program it just shows a big poly mess.

it may be my program tha stripped textures off tho. can you export to some other format?

What did you have in mind? As I say I'm no max export so I don't know which formats will import in while retaining textures. Just don't ask for a .Max file export :)

I choose .Obj files because they are by far the most simple 3d file format on the planet, big list of verts, big list of face indices. It allowed me to get the files into Max with minimum coding effort :)

K.

whatever bryce 4 can import and keep textures :)

well bryce isnt the best program out there but its one i know how to use.

bryce used to be so leet :D

:D SWEET PROGRAM ! :D

This is pretty weird; inside the helm there is like a... tooth.. :D

You probably have more than one model selected (or didnt use the "Only show selected" option.

I still don't know if we have found a way to put back an extracted file. I tried to put back a texture file and I wasn't able to.

Anyway, that is the first step is to extract a texture file and then put in back. I know it can be done, but I don't seem to find the information on how to do that.

The next step is to extract a texture, modify and then put it back.

If I remember correctlly, the above stuff is easier to do the the models, but so far it hasn't work.

Hey i was going to build a graphic extracter somewhat like this! This is very cool and will save me a lot of time. I have a problem though I put it in my eq directory and it aint loading anything :(. Anyone know why it wouldn't load? thx

Hey! I like it. I can not think of anything to do with it but it is fun to look at all the weaps and things. lol

Thanks:D

Dunno if this has been asked yet..

But I was wondering if you were going to work on updating this tool.. I find it amazing..

Somethings that would be neat:

Textures:
- Saving textures.. not neccessarily to import them sense its not possible.. but someone might find it useful.. I bet I could :rolleyes:

Sprites:
- Sprite Viewing
*I'm not sure if it works on sprites.. I know i've seen soulfire flames in seperate images.. so they probably don't but if they do it'd be cool.

Models:
- Saving and Loading them
*Again, not sure if its possible to edit the models.. because you can't edit the zones.. but then again they are two different things..

Just my thoughts..

Wyvern.. when you load it up for the first time it creates a EQModelViewer.ini file. Open it up and change it to your directory.

If it doesn't open notepad and add this:
EX: EverquestDirectory = "c:\program files\everquest"

and save it as EQModelViewer.ini

Hehe.. keep finding more stuff to put.

madborg

With EQInside from HackersQuest you can extract and import images.

You just have to save all the fragments of the weapon. Each weapon has different sections.

The fishing pole has three. The rod, handle, and the bottom.

For the soulfire there are quite a few. There is the two-hand slashing blade plus the 5-6 fire images. I dunno how the sprite is setup but I have yet to try to edit the color of the flames.. I forgot about doing it awhile ago.. i'll give my feedback once I do it.