gravureboxing wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 3:38 am
You've got a point there. I'll try exporting characters and then try again some time later.
I did edit quotation of your guide, so should be good. Anyhow, thank you
Thanks and hopefully it will work fine with the character parts
so to explain in this game all moving parts must be using a skeletal rig so just like a character using a skeleton rig, doors and such here will have there own skeleton and play animations. doors can be done other ways without skeletal rigs but its just how the devs decided to do this
thats why these were put into the characters folder as this is where they have put everything thats rigged thus we get skeletalmesh folders :p
Hi Takato whats your experience with missing elements for maps like the fountain in sector 8 or the midgar model(replica) thats in the shinra building
Various things dont get imported with the umap extraction these are obviously objects that are handled differently in such away that the ff7 tool cant account for or there stored in a location i haven't extracted yet.
As you have done many extractions have you noticed a pattern to this?
Where are these kind of objects stored, are they just mixed in with all the other models in staticmesh folder or are these in a specific location
Just want to know what your experience is with these missing objects and how i can deal with them and find them easily
I searched for the word fountain but it didnt actually bring up the specific model for the fountain from what i have extracted with the ff7 tool
so its eather got a weird name or iv yet to extract it form the uassets.
As well as figuring it out my self im trying to document and give a full guide that im editing as i figure bits out(on last page)
any help figuring this last bit out would be great from anyone
Hi Takato whats your experience with missing elements for maps like the fountain in sector 8 or the midgar model(replica) thats in the shinra building
Various things dont get imported with the umap extraction these are obviously objects that are handled differently in such away that the ff7 tool cant account for or there stored in a location i haven't extracted yet.
As you have done many extractions have you noticed a pattern to this?
Where are these kind of objects stored, are they just mixed in with all the other models in staticmesh folder or are these in a specific location
Just want to know what your experience is with these missing objects and how i can deal with them and find them easily
I searched for the word fountain but it didnt actually bring up the specific model for the fountain from what i have extracted with the ff7 tool
so its eather got a weird name or iv yet to extract it form the uassets.
As well as figuring it out my self im trying to document and give a full guide that im editing as i figure bits out(on last page)
any help figuring this last bit out would be great from anyone
These specific models are considered to be 'effects'.
There are many blueprints and effects that contain meshes. Sometimes this is because those particular meshes have a lot of effects on them, and so they are considered to come under 'effects' by the development team.
I've found the fountain myself it was inside the effects folder. The best thing to do honestly is run the tool on most of the folders, as things are scattered around. For example the fountain, breaks the instant you get near to it, so its a breakable effect, its just broken in a cutscene as opposed to interactive with a character.
You're right that the tool doesn't read/look for effect data within the levels, if it did, it'd be really messy, considering there is smoke, dust, particles just about everywhere, it'd make levels completely unreadable in a 3D editor.
Ah thats where the fountain is cool dont know why i didnt think to look there
Im a ue4 dev my self so i fully understand all the differences of the files
and i assumed the ff7 tool wouldnt detect all these other effects and stuff for a reason
Ill note down people should look in effects and character environments for missing stuff
It would seem the ff7 tool dose handle blueprints thats what the blueprint.db is for it makes a database of all the models in bps and there location/rotation ect so atleast thats something not to worry about
Would be nice it the tool did make an effects.db and we can choose to remove or leave and deal with the mess
What i would do if it could import effects is generate the .ASCII with the effects.db present import into blender and grab what i want that would be missing like the fountain and export them as fbx then re- generate the ASCII without the effects.db and re-import that into blender then just import the fbx for the missing stuff. That way you can have can still have all the correct locations/rotations for these objects
Would that be possible daemon1?
An effects.db so the tool can generate ascii for umaps with all the models form the effects folder
same for character(as theres environments stuff in there).
People then can choose to use the effects.db and character.db for umap ascii generation and do what i described or remove them before they generate the ascii
gravureboxing wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 10:05 pm
Also, when exporting umap files, there are certain meshes connected with other file such as "animations"
I marked it for an example here
Thats interesting, i swear i tried the ff7 tool on them but thanks for the info will add it to the guide
Just going though checking and you can do it to animation collision(but unneeded unless your sticking into a game engine you can use this for simplified collision mesh) envplan(which seems to be all the breakable creates) and lighting
So the fountain and pretty much all missing stuff benches bikes litter and other small physics based props are in
animation.umap
envplan.umap
lighting.umap(this is where all the lamps and all the missing lit windows for buildings)
these all work with the ff7 tool and will produce ascii files and will import into blender just fine
for example the fountain got placed by 020-TOWN8_Layout_070-FountainAve_Animation.umap and its ascii file it created
So solved all missing things are found that im aware of so far not done every map yet just thought id let you know and my detailed guide is updated on page 7
Last edited by speaker60 on Sat Jun 06, 2020 1:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
So the fountain and pretty much all missing stuff benches bikes litter and other small physics based props are in
animation.umap
envplan.umap
lighting.umap(this is where all the laps and all the missing lit windows for buildings)
these all work with the ff7 tool and will produce ascii files and will import into blender just fine
for example the fountain got placed by 020-TOWN8_Layout_070-FountainAve_Animation.umap and its ascii file it created
So solved all missing things are found that im aware of so far not done every map yet just thought id let you know and my detailed guide is updated on page 7
pakchunk3_s11 contains majority of the rigged props. So be sure to look in there.. If you want the rigs for doors, switches, etc... Anything that the player can interact with or something that moves will most likley be in that folder.
Like for example with the shinra lobby.
It looked like this originally. No lamps, no props like the front desk and statues and fixtures.
After extracting the animation.umap and Lighting.umap(which gave me all the lamps, lights omfg thx...)| It included more props and I was able to work on it more in Unity
The escalators on the left side, it did not include them. I had to dig'em out myself out the mentioned pak folder above. Since it's a skeletalmesh not static.
So to recap this is the full guide with new edits from my previous one for those who want to export umaps
and recreate maps in blender or any game engine
here a step by step how
- First having dled all paks from deviantart open umodel and save packages for blueprints, environments(and the environments folder thats inside the characters folder, you can just extract the whole characters folder which will give you all the character models or just the environment folder this contains all the moving parts for maps like doors and such), levels, effects and lighting(all of these contain models related to scenery, many maps share models between maps to maps so you need to extract all)
- Place the ff7 tool into UmodelSaved\End\Content\GameContents(this file path would have been created by umodel)
- Run ff7 tool(double click the tool) it will extract all blueprints, environments, levels, effects and lighting assets
- You will end up with folders for materials, skeletalmesh, skeletalmesh.raw, staticmesh, staticmesh.raw and textures and blueprint.db and material.db files and some loose .ascii models
- Move materials, skeletalmesh, skeletalmesh.raw, staticmesh, staticmesh.raw, textures a blueprint.db and material.db files and the loose .ascii models to the map folder you want to extract for example UmodelSaved\End\Content\GameContents\Level\Game\Field\020-TOWN8\Layout(must be 'layout' not 'layout merged')
- Drag a .umap onto the ff7 tool for example 020-TOWN8_Layout_010-OuterWall.umap(there will be many umaps with extra bits on there name like 020-TOWN8_Layout_010-OuterWall_Animation.umap and 020-TOWN8_Layout_010-OuterWall_collision.umap extract all the ones listed here;
Animation.umap(many doors and moving elements and many props and physics objects like blenches and other clutter are in here)
collision.umap(only if you want to put this in a game engine where you will want collision as this is a simplified collision mesh for the level)
envplan.umap(contains the breakable crates and good as props, these sometimes extract nothing probably because there was no crates in the level)
lighting.umap (these are the models for the lighting like lamp posts, wall hung lamps and lit windows but not actual light sources just models)
all of these contain models so extract them for there .ascii the rest you can ignore they dont seem extract anything there are also uexp files ignore these too)
- You will get 3 text log files like this 020-TOWN8_Layout_010-OuterWall.names.txt, 020-TOWN8_Layout_010-OuterWall.export.txt, 020-TOWN8_Layout_010-OuterWall.import.txt and .ascii files(you will get one or several of these .ascii they are generated with what seems to be a 100mb cap as there being generated if it hits this cap it splits off into another .ascii file each of these .ascii contain a section of the level)
- I then move all the generated .ascii files into the textures folder that we got from the ff7 tool
- I also converted all dds textures in this texture folder to png as the .ascii expects png not dds(you can convert textures in many ways using verious tools like photoshop or even umodel can do this too or you can use notepad++ to edit the .ascii files themselves and replace all .png references with .dds this will make the ascii look for dds instead)
- Lastly use the blender addon that was linked with the game files on da to import the ascii, they will import sideways as there using y axis as up where as blender is z axis up by default
All maps import super huge blender has max view clipping set low by default so you wont see the meshes at first
In blender press n to bring up the right side panel click on the view tab
at the top you will have
focal length
clip start
end
Change end to something like 1000000 its 1000 by default
and change clip start to 10(this will stop meshes doing a weird zfighting)
blender has a minimum and maximum mesh clipping view distance built in to help with performance but you can change that with these values
you can also use number pad . it will jump the camera to a selected object(when you import a mesh everything imported is selected by default)
Thats it you should now be able to import any map in full with all objects, sometimes there is still the odd material/texture missing
This will be its just using a flat color in the game and not using a texture or some other reason, but iv only found 1 missing mat for a light everything else is there for me having extracted everything first
There may also still be some missing objects due to them being a skeletal mesh, you will have to look and find them manually
Try not to quote this post its too long to have repeated several times and also if i make any edits to this post it wont show with any posts that quoted this post
Last edited by speaker60 on Tue Jun 09, 2020 1:09 am, edited 3 times in total.
Looking good ill be putting them into ue4 at some point but iv set them up in blender evee with all there emissives
It looks soo good with all the props and lights
So you still find the odd thing missing, okay i left that as the last note in the guide i just reposed(thought i should repost it as theres some incorrect quoted ones that came after it)
Looking good ill be putting them into ue4 at some point but iv set them up in blender evee with all there emissives
It looks soo good with all the props and lights
So you still find the odd thing missing, okay i left that as the last note in the guide i just reposed(thought i should repost it as theres some incorrect quoted ones that came after it)
Thanks man. I'm more of a unity guy. These maps are so amazing to see in VR.
Ngl, these maps are easy to extract if you put your mind to it. It's just time consuming is all.... and if you have the space on your hard drive too.
Well i did have space on my pc till this game came along lol
Im a ue4 dev i work on this title https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJlN5sgpLvc
This is a city model iv been making for a long wile still alot to do with it
Having just extracted loveless ave i never noticed now not quite accurate it is
I made some changes to give it a more accurate look
this street is meant to be a t junction ill probably change it to this and reedit the theater building
Might add the marble tiles back to loveless plaza too along with the wall of billboards thats missing
