[PC] Devil May Cry 4

[omni]

Tex2dds: why not, sounds simple enough, I'll try that later.
Dmc4patch: this too sounds easy, I'll try to include this.

Dude! Thanks! I'll send you some *Happy thoughts*.

Dmc4pla: no, much is still unknown about the PLA files, mostly the parent/children relationship, more testing will tell.

My main interest in that are the emset***.pla files. They contain the enemy spawn data for each level. Do you have any info that might help interpret them? I tried to compare one with the decompiled version, but no luck.

Interresting, where are you boys posting, I'd like to see what you're coocking!!

Double taunt: -LINK-
Anyone registering gets free cookies.

And, depending on who you ask, Hells Atelier too:-LINK-

[Nexus Elite ns]

Hmm just curious, has anyone checked if lp2 demo one from 360 the same as well?

[chrrox]

lost planet 2 is using a newer engine so its not compatible.

[omni]

*Shameless plug*
Dreadnaught

Figured some people here might be interested.

[gics]

What do you mean by texture? texture coords or textures in the viewport?

I mean textures in the viewport / material

[gics]

Does anyone know how to make effect like in DMC 4 / Street Fighter 4? And what about animation/movement in that game, does anyone know how to convert them so we can use in 3D Application?
Sorry for the stupid question

[diablojin]

Hey Surveyor,

Sorry not replied in a while, currently do not have an internet connection.

With regards to editing your mesh/sorting out the normals etc..

What you can do is add an edit poly above the edit mesh (below the skinning modifier) then collapse the stack down, from the edit poly NOT THE SKIN modifer.

From here you are free to add and remove polys, weld certain areas of the mesh that are needed as well as removing the triangulation. This is a painstaking process tho and can take agggges. Once you have done with editing the mesh you can then add a turbo smooth above the Edit poly, i recommend ticking isoline display to save on mem depending on your gpu.

All of the above WILL keep within the skinning of the model and you should be fine to pose and do as you please with it.

Any other question with max then just fire them over to me, be glad to help!

Got a question for you as well

I havent tried your latest mod2max file yet but does it retain the texture coordinates of the models yet? This is the only thing really holding me back as its such a pain in the arse to remap everything.

To the guy who used the smd exported and importer... is it this one you ued to obtain the biped info?

http://www.wunderboy.org/3dapps.php#max_smd

Cheers guys and merryXmas and happy new year!

[Tosyk]

To the guy who used the smd exported and importer... is it this one you ued to obtain the biped info?

http://www.wunderboy.org/3dapps.php#max_smd

If you mean me, then yes, I use these plug-ins to convert.

[firsak]

All of the above WILL keep within the skinning of the model and you should be fine to pose and do as you please with it.

It will not help attaching meshes to each other - the skinning data will be lost. It will only help editing the existing meshes. And this technique is not a big deal, any average 3ds max user knows how to work with modifiers/stacks.

I havent tried your latest mod2max file yet but does it retain the texture coordinates of the models yet? This is the only thing really holding me back as its such a pain in the arse to remap everything.

Texture coordinates are there.

[diablojin]

All of the above WILL keep within the skinning of the model and you should be fine to pose and do as you please with it.

It will not help attaching meshes to each other - the skinning data will be lost. It will only help editing the existing meshes. And this technique is not a big deal, any average 3ds max user knows how to work with modifiers/stacks.

It depends which of the models you are using, for example Dante and Nero's heads are fine to use and all one mesh (apart from the different morph targets), if your wanting to use lady/sanctus/credo/kyria (not sure about Trish) then it will pose a problem as yes their heads are separated. I havent found a way around them as of yet, but in general the skinning of the head isn't really what I need. I will keep on playing about until I find a work around, thats if any of guys find another way to export the data.

Saying that though, you could always just weld the vertices together on the faces instead of attaching the mesh, I will try this for you when i get home and post results when I can as still dont have a nternet connection.

What part of the skinning are you wishing to use by the way?

[diablojin]

Hey guys!
Just had a quick go with your new max2mod converter surveyor! Seems to be ALLOT cleaner than before!

Although.....

I'm still not getting any texture coordinates? Am I doing anything wrong?

I import the model eg dantes body into max

add an unwrap uvw to check the postioning of the coordinates in relation to the corresponding map and they are no where near?

Any 1 can help would be great

[diablojin]

All of the above WILL keep within the skinning of the model and you should be fine to pose and do as you please with it.

It will not help attaching meshes to each other - the skinning data will be lost. It will only help editing the existing meshes. And this technique is not a big deal, any average 3ds max user knows how to work with modifiers/stacks.

Just had a thought on how we may be able sort the face problem!

I haven't tried it yet but hoping someone can until I get back to my pc!
What if you import the head into max and then export with the smd tools, surely this will export the mesh out in one go with all bone info and then when reimported that bone info ahud be intact going by what was said earlier

[Surveyor]

Dude! Thanks! I'll send you some *Happy thoughts*.

Send me money instead and btw, you have some nice stuff over there, I especialy liked the "Dante has too many swords!, An updated re-release" thing!

I mean textures in the viewport / material

This will require some additional maxscript knowledge, besides when you have a complex scene this option might screw your computer so I'll leave this to another day.

And what about animation/movement in that game, does anyone know how to convert them so we can use in 3D Application?

It's been a while now since I started working on animation files without much success, now I'm waiting for some support from Revelation and hopefully this'll lead to something.

I havent tried your latest mod2max file yet

Well boy you should, the texture coords work fine on this release and it's about time you guys show us something interresting with all those extracted models and textures!

About the skin data,
I tried my approach, the 2 parts scripts that generate the mesh data and the skin data, after doing some modifications on the mesh I got a very clean mesh that reacts beautifully to the meshSmouth modifier (look at the pic below) the difference is very clear between the modified and unmodified hand.
The problem is the 2nd part, the script takes ages to execute, I mean for nero model (with 8000 verts approx) it took my celeron 2Ghz more than 2 hours with 100% cpu usage to complete (needless to say that the script is still under dev and test and I will have to test it more than once !!!!) After inspection and optimization, I figured out that the "ReplaceVertexWeights" (and alternatively "SetVertexWeights") command in maxscript is the one responsible for all this: without it, the whole script runs in 10seconds!!!
Unfortunately this is the only command capable of setting the weights, and I doubt recent processors will perform significantly faster but I'll try that anyway.
And just a reminder, the idea behind all this is that all the meshes in a model share the same vertex buffer, we can do whatever we want with the body parts (weld/attach/clean/...but not change vertex positions) and then correctly apply bone influences on the verts by going through the vertex buffer and checking for the right vertex.

[Surveyor]

Okay now here's as promised the dds2tex converter, this tool was made "à la va vite" so there's a limited set of functions inside:
- mipmaps: only 1, not more
- textures: normal textures only, by normal I mean not volume or cubemap just regular.
- formats: DXT1, DXT3, DXT5, ARGB32, I think this would be sufficient for you.
The testing was also very quick, I just applied the original tex2dds on a set of textures then applied the newly created dds2tex on the generated dds textures from the last operation then again I applied the tex2dds on those TEX files and the generated DDS files looked OK! It just took me about 3 minutes!! of course this doesn't mean the program is bug free and that's up to you to report.
To make the converter even easier, I made it process all the DDS files present in it's working directory and generate the corresponding TEX files with the exact same filename.

ArcPatchOnDemand
Another tool that'll let you (as requested) invalidate only some of the files in the ARC archives. It works this way: type in the filename AND extension that you want to invalidate (ex: pl000.mod) and the program will go through the present arc files in the current directory and subdirectories and patch them as the original ARC patcher does.
The supported file formats on this patcher are .bfx (shaders), .tex, .lmt, .mod, .msg (case sensitive, this is very important). You'll notice that these fileformats are all present in the 3 Capcom games (re5/dmc4/lp) so the patcher will work on all those games.
This is another -in-1-hour-pose-not-thinked-just-coded- program that I discovered later that the combination of filename+extension may lead to unpredictable results, look at these examples:
stage.tex will invalidate all the textures present in the stage directory AND its subdirectories because the patcher uses the strstr() function that detects the presence of the base name in the filename and "stage/s200/data/bin/whatever.tex" passes the test.
In the same way, model.mod will invalidate all the models!!!! the risk is lessened when the name is unique, for example: hdd-inst03_NOMIP_BM_HQ.tex will only invalidate this file!!
One quick solution is to use more detailed filenames, ex: model\demo\pl000\pl000_01.mod, this'll get the job done as expected and as a conclusion: this tool gives more or less control depending on how you use it, think of using "model\demo\pl000.mod" as the filter: there's no pl000.mod in the model\demo directory but the combination model\demo\pl000+mod will invalidate all the models inside the "model\demo\pl000" directory and we have: pl000.mod, pl000_01.mod, pl000_02.mod, pl000_03.mod, pl000_04.mod and pl000_05.mod.
This tool is more complicated than I thought, and since it's ready then I'll let you have it and test it at you own risk!

[omni]

Send me money instead and btw, you have some nice stuff over there, I especialy liked the "Dante has too many swords!, An updated re-release" thing!

What's that, you want more *happy thoughts*? Sure! Good thing you didn't ask for money.
And glad you liked that pack, there's more on the way.

-Okay now here's as promised the dds2tex converter, this tool was made "à la va vite" so there's a limited set of functions inside:
-ArcPatchOnDemand
Another tool that'll let you (as requested) invalidate only some of the files in the ARC archives.

Someone wrote "AWESOME!" all over my face. Must've been the cat.

-of course this doesn't mean the program is bug free and that's up to you to report.
-This tool is more complicated than I thought, and since it's ready then I'll let you have it and test it at you own risk!

Oh, they're gonna be tested alright. And then again. And again, and again...


One other thing. I'm trying to make some RE5 models (The simpler ones, meele weapons, pistols...) work in DMC4. Except I don't actually have RE5, so I don't know a lot about them. Do you think it can work, or have any information that can help getting them to work? Maybe by changing the headers or something? Right now, they get pretty much ignored by the game.

Anyway. Thanks for all that, man. I'm off to do some crazy stuff.