Spotlight: Señor Casaroja's Noesis

[MrAdults]

It all looks fine with the PSX assets. Maybe your data is corrupt from bugs in whatever LZS decompression tool you used. (PSX data is not LZS-compressed)

[ultimaespio]

Ah, I got it from the PC version. I used Mirex's old Unmass tool. I'll have a look at the psx data.

EDIT: Erm, how do I get the data from the PSX version? :/

Is there any other tool to get them from the pc version? I only know of Unmass but i'm sure there's others.

[MrAdults]

I'm not actually sure, I just figured there was probably something well-known that did it. Although the actual file table is stored in the binary, and the offsets and contents are different for different regions, so being able to get at it reliably is a little bit of a bitch too.

If there's nothing that does it the right way, you can use Noesis to do it. Although it's a bit haphazard, and just bruteforces through the image looking for models.

Are there any other programs that handle FF8 battle models? All I could find is Biturn, which has them totally broken and doesn't seem to even recognize non-monster battle models, and some tool a Russian guy made that has busted bone orientations. And I couldn't find any specs on the animation data at all, so I got to have fun disassembling FF8's binary to figure that one out. During that process, I cursed the Russian man repeatedly for not releasing source.

[ultimaespio]

There's only Biturn and that Russian viewer. If you remember Koral was working on one, but stopped working on it for personal reasons. Koral didn't release any source either.

Dunno if this is related to it, but I've been looking at the animations, and it seems that only Squall and Zell use their victory animations.

[MrAdults]

As far as I know, koral was only looking at the field models. But that's only going off of the thread google found when I was looking to see if anyone had done my work for me.

That's normal. Not all animations are provided in the same files (breakpointing the "load battle file" assembly function I found seems to reveal new battle data being loaded in once the battle ends and before fanfare begins, presumably victory animations), and some files contain an extra sequence or two in other non-standard sections which tend to house weird one-off anims every now and then.

[Tosyk]

MrAdults, can you implement support of V3O model format in Noesis? This format is totally understandable and looks like obj. I want convert models from Desperados 2/Helldorado.

I noticed that same engine (Vision Game Engine) use by other game titles, but unfortunately from game to game model format heavily different.

I attached samples from Desperados 2 and Lula 3D.
In addition i attached source code for Zmodeler 2 filter, maybe it help somehow.

Thank you.

[MrAdults]

Version 2.0 is now up. This is kind of a huge release, fitting for a 2.0 I suppose.

Code: Select all

 -New plugin system. Plugins can import/export any model, texture, and/or animation format, and allow seamless third-party integration of new file formats into Noesis.
 -Plugin SDK is now included in pluginsource.zip. Each plugin project compiles in MS Visual Studio 2005, and they probably compile fine with the free Express Edition.
 -Quake II MD2 import support added via plugin. Source code is included.
 -PCX image import and export support added via plugin. Source code is included.
 -Inter-Quake Model import and export support added via plugin. Source code is included.
 -Added new control over scene lights. Highlight them in the data viewer to rotate them with the left mouse in the model view. Their pivot point and distance to pivot can also be adjusted directly in the data viewer.
 -Added support for extracting LithTech REZ files. (thanks to aluigi's bms script for the spec)

The new format plugin API is pretty vast, and I've tried to expose just about everything I could think of to make life easier for adding new formats, for all types of media. (models, textures, animations, and archives) The source code for the IQM plug-in demonstrates pretty much everything you'd need to import or export any skeletal model+animation format.

I've also tried to pad out all of the shared structures and interfaces a lot, and either use clever tricks to make sure I don't break old plugins with internal changes, or just leave plenty of room in the given structure so that I don't need to bust anything with future changes. There is also a plugin API extension interface in place (like OpenGL extensions), although it doesn't do anything yet since there are not yet any post-plugin-Noesis releases for which to add extensions.

If anyone decides to actually try writing plugins, feel free to let me know about any problems you run into. It would make me pretty happy to see third-party Noesis plugins actually start to flourish.

Edit: And now 2.1 is up!

Code: Select all

 -Quake MDL export support. This automatically combines texture pages and dithers them all to the Quake palette. It also bakes all available skeletal and vertex animation into the MDL frames.
 -Fixed a general archive bug, which was causing quite a few archive file types to not be correctly recognized.
 -Added another RAPI interface function (for plugins) which performs all commandline-specified transforms on a set of animation matrices. (plugins previously had no way to obey -rotate, -posoffset, etc. command line options for anim data)
 -Fixed a variety of transform (rotate/scale/offset) bugs, as some transform behavior was still format-dependent and it no longer is.

The bundled SDK has been updated slightly. (doesn't break old plugins, though, on the off chance that anyone's working on any)

[Cloud452]

Wow, 2.0 (and 2.1!) will support plugins? Quite a nice feature for a 2.0 release. I can't wait to see what people come up with. I've been using Noesis to view various models in an attempt to get a better understanding of them, and it's been quite helpful.

[MrAdults]

2.2:

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 -Export support for Quake II MD2, with new -md2strips and -md2painskin command line options. MD2 exporter plugin source has been updated. This rounds out import+export support for MDL, MD2, MD3, and MD5.
 -Fixed a bug causing extra vertex weights to sometimes not be initialized with NMSHAREDFL_FLATWEIGHTS_FORCE4.
 -Unified the way that model-with-builtin-animation export is handled. (the IQM plugin code has been updated accordingly)
 -Over 15 new RAPI functions for plugin development, exposing lots of new functionality, from tokenized text parsing to image resampling and combining. (see pluginshare.h, >= 2.2 API functions are commented)
 -Added -mdlavoidfb command line option to avoid fullbright colors when exporting Quake MDL skins.
 -Added -mdlskinsize command line option to explicitly set output dimensions of Quake MDL skins.

I mainly wanted to get this out as a bug fix, as all the new stuff lately had accumulated in breaking a few things, and the plugin interface had a couple oddities and things that weren't exposed that I'd meant to expose. I also wanted to round out support for import+export of MDL, MD2, MD3, and MD5. The MD2 plugin code has been updated with the new exporter, and will serve as another good example for prospective plugin writers.

I think the plugin interface is pretty damn solid and robust now as well. At least, when working in plugin land, I haven't found myself hitting any more snags or wishing I'd exposed something that I didn't. Although it would be much easier to refine if I had third parties working in it and giving me suggestions.

This will hopefully be the last standard-feature-update/fix release for a bit, as I'm planning to get back to finally working on new formats now that the base is back to feeling pretty sturdy.

[CMihai]

Do I am doing something wrong or ? Noesis doesn't see .mod files ( RE5/DMC4 ), doesn't recognize containers etc... from all those types/containers work only for around 30% of them, No idea what could be the problem...

[Cloud452]

I wanted to view the maps for Crisis Core, via the RAW's but found that while nice, RINOA_v0.51 displayed them far too small.

Noesis can't seem to handle them, I get a "This file type cannot be previewed, but is exportable. Would you like to export?" message, so I try it and then this happens:

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Output extension has set output file type to:
.obj - WaveFront OBJ
Detected file type: FF7 Crisis Core Model
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Warning: Only 8bpp is currently supported for texture output.
Unexpected primitive attribute size in display list (pos 1, uv 2).
Cleaned 8.00MB (in 2 pools).

, and no file exported.

So I exported it via RINOA, got an OBJ and a bunch of texture files.... but something wasn't right, I found they were "swizzled".

In trying to find a way to correct this, I found: http://www.richwhitehouse.com/index.php?postid=48 But I'm not entirely sure what to do with it. Although I should note, I have PNG's, not GIM's.... since that is what RINOA exported the textures as, along with the OBJ and a MTL file. And through a bit of searching, I've found that the textures are in TIM2 format?

As you can see I think the textures are indeed "swizzled":

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/4586 ... awtex0.png

I could use this, and the other maps for references. At the moment, there's a bit of a debate about the Emerald Weapon showing up in the background, or it being a new Weapon (I recall somewhere it mentioned they created a new one), but given what I saw (despite the screwed up textures), it appears they just used the original Emerald Weapon model (albeit chopped up). However if I was going to use this information, showing a properly textured screencap of that area would be much better, right?

MrAdults, if there is a way to unswizzle these textures and have Noesis export them along with the model, I would be very grateful!

[MrAdults]

Do I am doing something wrong or ? Noesis doesn't see .mod files ( RE5/DMC4 ), doesn't recognize containers etc... from all those types/containers work only for around 30% of them, No idea what could be the problem...

Containers not being recognized properly was a bug in some old versions, should be fine in 2.2. Not being able to see .mod files has never been a bug, though. Maybe you accidentally selected a specific type on the filetype filter.

As for FF7CC maps, they aren't supported. I never actually looked at them, and I don't think I have the data anywhere easily accessible anymore. It's worth noting that the PNG's RINOA spat out may be pre-untiled, but wrongly, which would make a normal untiling algorithm fail on them. I don't know though, I've never actually used RINOA. So you're on your own there.

[Darko]

Hey mr Adults, is there a way you can add support for sfiv and ssfiv files??

[MrAdults]

Hey mr Adults, is there a way you can add support for sfiv and ssfiv files??

There are tools for those formats already, right? Are the specs public?

Anyone who knows the specs (I don't, I would have to re-invent the wheel if they are not public) could pretty easily write a Noesis plugin for them, which I would be quite happy to see happen.

[lex3a]

http://sf4viewer.sourceforge.net/
Maybe this will help you.

Also:
Do you plan to add SMD Animation Export?