v1.3 - NTW Model Converter Now Released!

[ToonTotalWar]

That's just general modeling, nothing too specific. It's a little broad for me to write anything on it (can't speak for anyone else here), however I wrote a bit on getting custom weapons into ETW here. It's probably similar for NTW.

Artillery is already possible, and we've had various artillery pieces ingame for agesss.

But this means we can now do the units themselves, yes.

Thansk lads for heads up will look into this further when I get some time

[T.C.]

For primergy:

- about the rigid_equip_ prefix - I though about that, but I'm not sure if
there are other prefixes - even in the files I access, there's at least a
node called "Reference" which hast 18 verts

- about loading a skeleton: well, then you have multi-piles , a ton of
things at the hips, other things at the hands, etc. Besides, I'm not sure
either, if those equipment files contain equipment for human characters,
only - if there's equipment for horses, etc. in there, as well, that will
just confuse more.

- and well, I'm happy to make you guys happy, and I don't ask for
anything, but this means as well, that convenience features will be done
when I actually have the time to do it... right now I'm just focusing on
getting the latest crucial stuff taken care of, to be able to work on some
other personal projects, again

[Primergy]

- about loading a skeleton: well, then you have multi-piles , a ton of
things at the hips, other things at the hands, etc.

Atleast you would know where your stuff is, i would prefer this (as it is actually with etw equipment) before i have to try dozens of time till a bag is finally at it's intented place

- and well, I'm happy to make you guys happy, and I don't ask for
anything, but this means as well, that convenience features will be done
when I actually have the time to do it... right now I'm just focusing on
getting the latest crucial stuff taken care of, to be able to work on some
other personal projects, again

And we are very thankful that you spend your time for us!

[T.C.]

about the assignments to bones, I
mean, sure, I can load up a skeleton, and assign the equipment, but then I
still have to know about this linkage when saving the file.
This boils down to writing an int to the file format, which simply has to
be correct.

No matter what approach I use, I have to still remember/know the bone, or
know its name, or whatever... When loading the stuff into milkshape, there
is no hierarchy other than for bones, so I'd have to skin the equipment,
as if those vertices were an arm, or a leg, etc.. Then, on export, I'd
have to break all this apart, and see which vertices belong to which bone.
This means that there will be potential wrongly skinned or unskinned
items, that I have to take care of, in code. Let's say some ms3d -> uu3d
-> max -> uu3d -> ms3d workflow changes the vertices, skins it wrongly,
etc. I might just end up guessing a wrong assignment, b/c I can't rely on
every single vertex of a mesh is assigned to only 1 bone with a weight of
100%.

Besides, all this is code I have to write for the importer and exporter...

Maybe post this? Dunno...

[T.C.]

In addition to the last mail... I see where you guys are coming from.
Working in some sort of blind mode is not fun. However, there's no precise
way to attach stuff in ms3d, b/c of the aforementioned reasons.

I'll keep it in mind - it makes more sense to me, though, to have another
plugin that on execution snaps stuff to where it belongs to, in ms3d, and
vice versa. Kinda a "this will be stored"-mode and "attached"-mode.
Dunno...

Since the "comments" string has to be preserved for other stuff, like the
shader parameters, I thought I use it for things like this. There's
probably more that I can't store somewhere else.

Well, don't know. Try working with it, and make wishlists over time... I
can try to add features every once in a while, however, I won't have a lot
of time over the next few weeks, just too much going on, don't even know
where I'll live in a few months.

To which I replied:

Well if you want to put the equipment to the back of your mind for a little, that's good with us. If you're short on time I personally think it would be better spent fixing any issues left with the body part importing/exporting and having it as good as it can be (within these constraints) before moving onto the equipment.

[T.C.]

Thanks - some more, though:

I mean, just fiddle around with the importer and exporter, make a little
tutorial about all the stuff that I mentioned in the previous mails, the
naming conventions, etc. and well, start writing a "nice to have"-list
from the gathered experience.

It's not only my time, it's just the wrong approach with that equipment
attaching via skinning, in milkshape. It's ambiguous, as explained in the
previous mails, _and_ another problem is that I can't deduce the filetype
on export anymore with such a features. At the moment type 1 is what's
skinned, type 2 is what is unskinned (as they are unskinned, even in the
game), but uses attachment points and has/stores real names (instead of
LODx), and type 0 is unskinned, nameless but with 4 LOD levels.

As you can see, the user doesn't have to specify anything on export, and
it will write the correct filetype.

Changing this to the way you handle this in ETW would:
- still not solve the problem that I need to write a bone index to the
file and specify it somehow
- be error prone when this "rigid-skinning"/attaching is done incorrectly
- lead to more heuristics in the code about what is attached, where
- make the export type deduction ambiguous, requiring manual user input in
some cases (although this might be solvable)
- make both importer and exporter more complex
- potentially confuse users about the space stuff is modeled in
- maybe not be applicable to every equipment item (still wondering if
horse equipment and stuff is in the same file)

On the positive side, it would make it more transparent on where stuff
will be attached, but this logic can be somewhere else, e.g. a "tool"
plugin where you can switch modes as mentioned in a previous mail.

Comparing this to ETW is not 100% faire (please correct me if I'm wrong),
because they don't use this "part mesh"-system, correct?

Anyways, I'm open for for suggestions - in the end it's you that want to
use this.

My next step is to create some way to assure that the bones come out in
the correct order, which is obviously necessary, if you want to match the
existing skeletons. I don't want to introduce some manual "point to and
load skeleton to rematch"-step, if possible, so I might look at the
comment-string stuff in ms3d, again. As said, it's needed anyways, for
other things/conventions.

Again, better ideas are welcome.

[panzerschreck]

I think a lot of people follow with attention this work but I think also we are a lot to be a little lost because we haven't all the knowlegde which is necessary. Also, I suppose that people who downloaded the first betas made some tries, so if it is not secret, could you guys post here pics of your tries in order that we see what is possible to do and what the progresses are.

thanks

[Primergy]

Well if you want to put the equipment to the back of your mind for a little, that's good with us. If you're short on time I personally think it would be better spent fixing any issues left with the body part importing/exporting and having it as good as it can be (within these constraints) before moving onto the equipment.

Have to agree, since it seams that the equipment file changed a lot since etw :/

My next step is to create some way to assure that the bones come out in
the correct order, which is obviously necessary, if you want to match the
existing skeletons

Just curious, does he know a file format, where i can see the order of the bones, so that i can can fix them, so long by hand?

[T.C.]

Apologies for some delays:

I was thinking about how to store the data in milkshape, best, and I don't have any idea where I could store the shader parameters other than the milkshape-"comment" box of the model. Otherwise I might have considered dropping the usage of those "comment" boxes, altogether, as I think that importers and exporters for ms3d to other formats might ignore this stuff.

Anyways, since we rely on those boxes, I think all the meta-stuff should go in there, which would be a visible way of storing data, and could be reused by tool plugins, etc.. Even better, I won't have the name-length constraint anymore, either.

Question is, however, what workflow do you use, and do those plugins (.3ds, uu3d, blabla) preserve those comments?

About the order of the bones, for Primergy:

Don't worry about that, right now, I implemented something yesterday, that
uses the ms3d-comment stuff of the bones to keep the "original indices of
the reference skeleton" as metadata, kinda... This works. However, the
bigger question to me is whether those comments are preserved when
importing and exportings to and from other formats (previous mail).

Anyways, it's still a more convenient way to reorder things.
I thought about using strings for the equipment attachment, e.g. this gun
is attached to "left hand", and then on export, ask the user to point to
the skeleton path so that I can look up the index. However, then again,
I'd have to store this "left hand" string somewhere, and I don't really
see where, other than those "comments".

Oh, forgot... if you open the .anim file that you use as reference
skeleton, with a text editor, you can kinda see the bone names right at
the beginning of the file (UCS-2 encoded, think of "char, 0-byte, char,
0-byte...).

Anyways, you could just open another type 1 model with the same .anim as
ref skeleton in ms3d, and look at the joint list - this is the order you
want.

Hi,

find attached the latest plugins... what's new:
- I made a few tiny changes to the strings in the ms3d comments to have a "param value"-system
- bugfixed to shader 4 param handling
- bone order on export is preserved, if bone comments are
- names for meshes longer than 32 characters are preserved, if ms3d comments on those meshes are

Well, except for convenience stuff that might come up in the future, the only thing that is missing, now, is a tangent recomputation on export. So don't worry if the lighting in game will be corrupt, at the moment. I'll add that soon... everything else is feature complete, now.

As you can see, a lot of the data depends on the comments strings in ms3d, namely:
- joints always, when loaded
- meshes for type 2, to preserve the full name and bone index to attach to (of the reference skeleton)
- entire model for the shader params
- locators/attachment-bones

Well, let me know how it goes, it's definitely crucial to somehow preserve this data. If there's other/better ways, tell me...

Cheers and happy modding

Latest Beta in OP.

[Primergy]

- bone order on export is preserved, if bone comments are

Thank you very much for your try, but comments are sadly not preserved :/ i also tried other formats (dae, x) if those keep the bone order, but also no luck.
Then i looked for a ms3d plugn for max, but such one doesn't exit either (or a to specific for a certain format).
Will have to stick with manually rewriting the comments for now.

[T.C.]

the next one is gonna be the first non-beta release.

[B-DizL]

SWEEEEET

[Liberalis Bellatricus]

Good luck guys. We are all watching up to.

[Primergy]

Thank you very much for your try, but comments are sadly not preserved :/ i also tried other formats (dae, x) if those keep the bone order, but also no luck.
Then i looked for a ms3d plugn for max, but such one doesn't exit either (or a to specific for a certain format).
Will have to stick with manually rewriting the comments for now.

Ok, i've think i've found a roundwork... saving it first as Variant_weighted_mesh and from there as variant_part_mesh keeps the bones in order.

Not a nice workflow, but it does the trick.

Anyways, you could just open another type 1 model with the same .anim as
ref skeleton in ms3d, and look at the joint list - this is the order you
want.

Would it be possible to copy and paste the bone order of this anim to another anim file? Since i've few animations which i can't use thanks for the breaking of the bone order.


------

Edit:

Well, my roundwork works, atleast i got a working jacket ingame, but now i have the problem that my trousers crash the game shortly it's finished loading a map... i made several tests now with vanilla parts, so i can say it's not the code but something in the model.
What could i have forget, which the games needs definitly?

[Dee Jay]

Hey TC, I was wondering that when this tool is fully developed, if it will be able to export a model from NTW and then import it into ETW?

[Primergy]

Hey TC, I was wondering that when this tool is fully developed, if it will be able to export a model from NTW and then import it into ETW?

Is already possible when you own UU3D.

What could i have forget, which the games needs definitly?

Well atleast i got the game to run, though the trousers are invisible... Problem with the mesh, a problem with the textures? A Problem while exporting?
I'm trying since 20 h to get it working, so if anyone has an idea whats causing this pls answer. The strange thing is i did nothing different then while exporting a torso model, which works pretty well.

[T.C.]

Is already possible when you own UU3D.



Well atleast i got the game to run, though the trousers are invisible... Problem with the mesh, a problem with the textures? A Problem while exporting?
I'm trying since 20 h to get it working, so if anyone has an idea whats causing this pls answer. The strange thing is i did nothing different then while exporting a torso model, which works pretty well.

Check the paths in the atlas?

[Primergy]

I did it a dozens of times (besides redoing the files another dozen of times) now and as long as there a no naming conventions, which i have to use, i don't see any error.
Something have to be wrong of course, but i can't see or find it anywhere...it's driving me crazy :/

[T.C.]

I did it a dozens of times (besides redoing the files another dozen of times) now and as long as there a no naming conventions, which i have to use, i don't see any error.
Something have to be wrong of course, but i can't see or find it anywhere...it's driving me crazy :/

Try and make deliberate mistakes to see what causes crashes and what doesn't. That way you can rule out lots of things.

[Primergy]

Try and make deliberate mistakes to see what causes crashes and what doesn't. That way you can rule out lots of things.

Also done, replacing the mesh with a vanilla one, while retaining the paths let's appear the vanilla trousers ingame (with wrong texture of course). Having two models in the legs-section makes the game run, but my custom mesh invisible ingame. When there's only one entry with my mesh, the game crashes.

Do i have to place the mesh in a certain place /euro/whatever? Do i have to use one of the already existing texture spaces on the diffuse, gloss, colour and normal atlases?