Dead or Alive series formats and tools

[amandabyyy]

Yes actually that would be enough.
Painting weights is also annoying job to do even if we can get weight values from a new mesh.

It could be difficult to get vertex tangent for normal maps, but I know it's not that essential requirement for mesh creating.

Anyway, I can guess there's going to be various problems when the sub-mesh importing is automated.

for example, missing bones, matching textures and materials for multiple sub-meshes, dust UV difference due to difference of dust texture map. etc..

But it's going to be fully wonderful only with vertex &
index buffer extending functions, at least for me now.

Yeah I'll work to make texture references easier. It's pretty easy. Right now I calculate the bitangents. not sure if there right though since I haven't actually tested that part. Missing bones is def a problem. I think it's possible to just merge skeletons but I might be wrung about that. I might give that a go if I really want some bones.

[Rosalin]

@amandabyyy
Well, then the only problem left should be about difference between OBJ and TMC format.
You know, TMC cannot have multiple UV coordinates or normal vector for one vertex, not like OBJ files.
So it's going to be a bit annoying when people cut UV maps when they create OBJ files.
I can guess they should cut the actual meshes to cut UV and re-unify vertex normal to refined the surfaces, unless there's a good automated OBJ exporting tools.
I'm afraid it can also cause some tangent vector miscalculation around the disconnected UV. But I don't have exact concept of tangents so I can't actually sure about that.

I already had some concepts about importing OBJ files, but I never imagined someone could bring these things all at once.
I'll be waiting for your amazing tool.

[SleepySea]

I have a basic OBJ (from noesis export) to TMC import working (like I can shrink Lisa's bikini and export it back to TMC from blender), but I didn't spend much time on it due to the rather limiting data format for what I have been trying to do in terms of modding.

OBJ is an easy format to work with due to its simplicity (easy to parse etc), but the same benefit (at least in my usage) also limits its potential in terms of the type of mods I have seen people create, but Amanda's tool appears to be a much more comprehensive version of what I had attempted.

[artworkplay]

You've got to forgive my ignorance but isn't .obj an incredibly limited format since it doesn't support weights and bones (both of which would be useful for modding)?

[Rosalin]

You are right but you can handle weights by simply assigning object to a bone or copying values from nearest vertex.

Anyway I wish to try amanda's tool with extending buffer size.
I know how to export sub-meshes but extending buffersize is most annoying job for me to do manually, so I tried it only once long ago.

[amandabyyy]

Obj doesn't limit anything. It's there to see pieces of my code work. I use it because exporters already exist for it and it's super easy to parse. It's pointless to use anything else until I or someone else writes an import script so you know what bones exist. Only then is it worth while using another format in which case I'd just write my own easy to read format rather than using anything else.

Let me expand on the obj issue a bit:
1. Exporting is free.
2. Importing takes about 5-10 minutes to write code for.
3. It allows you to test vertices, normals, uvs, and triangle indices.
4. It allows you to test your triangle stripper and how you write data to the TMC files.

The total "lost cost" of using an obj is found in step #2. You read the file, store the data in memory. If you want to support a different format, you parse that file and store the data in memory exactly the same way you did for obj. The work for #3 and #4 is not lost at all.

@rosalin you can just dupe a vertex in your code with different UV or normal.

[Rosalin]

@amanda
Great idea. I never tried to think in that way.

[Habeeb]

isn't .obj an incredibly limited format

It is. I'm not even sure it can support multiple UV maps.

[Rosalin]

Multiple UV is not that important thing.

In most cases, three UV maps in a TMC are just same and 4th thing is an unique UV map for dust texture.
Every sub mesh in a TMC shares one dust texture so there are no available UV spaces for custom meshes usually.

So it's a fine idea to just set first three UV as identical ones and blank the 4th UV to all (0,0).

And you can also control every UV maps separately by using exported OBJ files.

[Habeeb]

Multiple UV is not that important thing.

It kind of is. Just like the tangents. The model will be degraded needlessly, especially if you just want to do a couple of minor edits.
Also, dirt textures don't always come last and noesis only exports one uv layer.

[Rosalin]

Sounds like you want everything is automated.

[Habeeb]

Sounds like you want everything is automated.

Ideally, sure.
But here I'm just pointing out issues that amandabyyy might have missed, so he doesn't waste too much time on things that are pretty much broken by design.

[Rosalin]

I've been using OBJ files to edit TMC files lots of times, not in my imagination.
So I can tell what's enough and not enough. and what's broken and what's not broken.

I can hardly understand just sitting and complaining like you.
If someone calls an overachieved thing as a broken one, then it's going to look ridiculous to me.

[Habeeb]

I can hardly understand just sitting and complaining like you.

What are you even talking about

[amandabyyy]

Sounds like you want everything is automated.

Ideally, sure.
But here I'm just pointing out issues that amandabyyy might have missed, so he doesn't waste too much time on things that are pretty much broken by design.

Once again I'm not wasting time on anything. I've said obj is there for testing. It takes five minutes to parse. Replace the parser and that's all you need to do. Of course obj doesn't give all the info but it's easy to switch to a different format.

Trust me i know exactly what I'm doing with regards to formats.

I'll just modify the obj exporter and add bones/weights/tangents to it and modify my parser to read it in. So zero work is lost.