Python converter for .variant_weighted_mesh model

[danova]

I'm very happy! Thanks knighterrant!!!

I altered the original scotish 42. reg's skin and also its model a bit. I added one sabre, one cartridgebag, belts, etc and i made new grenadier cap.
I spent all my day for it, its a bit slow yet....

Ingame:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

.

[A1_Unit]

That is awesome work!

[KnightErrant]

Agreed, that's beautiful! Nice work danova.

[blonkers1234]

I'm very happy! Thanks knighterrant!!!

I altered the original scotish 42. reg's skin and also its model a bit. I added one sabre, one cartridgebag, belts, etc and i made new grenadier cap.
I spent all my day for it, its a bit slow yet....

Ingame:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

.

OMG
Thats awesome

[S-te-Fan]

I'll experiment today .

[jarnomiedema]

This is fantastic work, KnightErrant.. Congratulations, you've made an entire mod community very happy! Both modders and mod downloaders alike.. +rep

I have some experience making building models for Simcity 4, but I fear 3DsMax and Empire might be the death of me. I'll have a lot to learn before I can even think of working on the models. I'm a texture man.. Give me Photoshop and I'll give you new units. Give me 3DsMax and I cry..

In any case, good luck to all those who do understand it and I can't wait to see what's going to turn up out of this revelation.. Absolutely fantastic!

[ToonTotalWar]

This program looks fantastic!!! well done to KE! +Rep
Unfortunatley it looks to intimidating for my mind to start making stuff in this program!!

[EmperorBatman999]

Anyone got screenshots of their custom made unit and model?

[Lex_51]

Does anyone know where I can find the models for the bayonets in the .pack files? For example, the socket bayonet. I can't seem to find them in the models.pack or anywhere else.

[Swiss Halberdier]

@KnightErrant

Thanks a lot for this awesome tool! + rep

[Birdofilo]

I'm very happy! Thanks knighterrant!!!

I altered the original scotish 42. reg's skin and also its model a bit. I added one sabre, one cartridgebag, belts, etc and i made new grenadier cap.
I spent all my day for it, its a bit slow yet....

Ingame:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

.

You have done an amazing work. Congratulations .
Could you write a small tutorial about how to merge elements of two different models to create a new one?

[Zigster]

There's a way in 3dsmax so you can merge models withouth having to re-rig everything.

I'd like to know what this is? I've made a new jacket for a line infantry person but it is all out of whack in game and doesn't line up properly with the arms and neck, and gets stretched oddly in certain places. The skin modifier within 3ds Max doesn't seem to work properly when you try to put them in the game? I mean, I can weight the vertices to the bones, then move the bones around and have the mesh work properly with them. But when I add them to the game it seems to change?

Has anyone had success actually putting in new models and not just moving around vertices? Is that what danova has done? If so, how did you do it? Tutorial would be awesome!

[A1_Unit]

I tried to back-convert a model with changes and I got a "float division" error. I've only had 2 such errors with 2 modded models. I bet I messed up somewhere, didn't I?

[KnightErrant]

@A1_Unit,

Probably not, it's still so early it would most likely be an error in the converter.
Could you post the models where the error occurred?

@All

Setting aside A1_Unit's error, maybe the variant_weighted_mesh is mostly correct,
(How many times have I thought that was true) Aradiel sent me some naval
models as well. While waiting on problems with rigid_models to come through, I thought
this might be the next sort of converter to try. After that rigid_meshes. This should
cover most of the models. I'll have to poll the community for rigid_meshes but for right
now I've got some naval models to work with. But please, any problems you run into for
.variant_weighted_meshes etc., please post them here.

[Bladerunner]

Great news, that you turn toward rigid-model and espacially towards ships. There is one issue with ships: There are not all data nessesary to bring a new ship into the game in the model files. There are also xml-files for rigging and one huge model_naval table, that includes colisions, guns and some EFlines, i didn't know what they are for.

[A1_Unit]

Ok, I changed the hat of a campaign map general by importing the Bicorne hat with skeleton (.3ds file) into the general model with his Tricorne deleted. During back-conversion I got the "float division" error.

[KnightErrant]

@Bladerunner,

Ok, had a chance to work on rigid_naval_models today, and although big, they don't seem too bad.
I can get them into Milkshape (barely, they have a lot of groups and a lot of verts, the steamship
example I have to work with is very close to Milkshape's limit of 2^16-1 number of verts and
tris. I hope MS 2.0 will change these limits to ints instead of shorts then no problem in the future.)
The shader settings will have to go into the group comments and the bounds for the whole
model will have to go into the model comment. This might look familiar to M2TW modellers but there's a
lot more info being stored here.

The uvs have the same "feature" as with rigid_model, either greater than 1.0 or less than 0.0 in many
cases. I'm just going to write them out as Milkshape doesn't crash with this, it just won't show you
anything meaningful on your textures. For right now, you get a bonus ".txt" of all the data if anyone
wants to look at the uvs. Hopefully, I can get the back-conversion bit done tomorrow.

@A1_Unit,

Ah shoot, we're getting too many extraneous bits thrown in to sort it out properly.
You want to merge a hat from one unit onto a mostly complete other unit, with skeleton etc.,
and you are using the Milkshape merge facility with the hat having a skeleton? This can screw
up in so many ways; the Milkshape merge facility is bugged; even a good merge facility has
problems when both models have a skeleton.

Let's try this as a sequence of experiments:
(1) Make your base model, the one where you like the skeleton and geometry, but not the hat,
and save it.
(2) Get the new hat, that is, edit a model and delete EVERYTHING, all joints, geometry etc. except
for what you want. Save as .3ds format for this experiment.
(3) Try the merge that way with Milkshape's merge facility.

That may very well not work. If not, could you post both of the above .ms3d files that
you have created (or the .ms3d file of the base unit and the .3ds file for the new hat) somewhere?
It might be that the only way this is going to work is to create a custom merge facility for the
ETW variant_weighted_mesh files so you can add geometry stuff this way.

[nowerman]

Does anyone have tried to make new weapons ?
and BTW can you indicate in which tab the weapons models are in the model.pack ?

[Bladerunner]

@KE: Have you had a chance to look into the model_naval_table? All Modeling of ships is only possible, if we can work on this table too. It's not a table like the other in ETW, as it seem to contains imo the animations, but im not an expert with this. It also seem to place the guns on the ship, which is the most important about making new ships. If you like, i can send you this table.

[KnightErrant]

@All,

I've put a bundle of converters here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...o=file&id=2619

The only new thing is

ETWrigid_naval_modelConverter_v1_0_beta.py

The others are previous releases bundled to make them easier to find.
Same problem holds, many uvs lie outside the range (0.0,1.0).

@Bladerunner,

If you upload model_naval_table and send me a link I can take a look at it.
Not sure what luck I'd have with it; it's mostly model formats that I've worked
on.