Chrono Compendium
News and Updates => Site Updates => Topic started by: FaustWolf on February 18, 2008, 02:45:31 am
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Hey hey, we've got a major breakthrough to tell everyone about! The pic should provide a neat summary; CLICK IT!
(http://www.chronocompendium.com/images/wiki/a/ab/Sergemodelpreview.png) (http://www.chronocompendium.com/images/wiki/1/1d/Sergemodel.png)
Way back in October 2007, Ramsus tweaked the tools developed by Terminus Traductions for dumping individual files from the Chrono Cross game image, and recompiled these tools for ease of use by Kajar Labs frequenters. Gemini thereafter showed us how to find battle model textures, which were in a modified TIM format normally undetectable by graphics hacking tools like PSicture and TIMViewer. From that point forward, the following team members embarked on a Manhattan Project-style effort to uncover the principles by which Chrono Cross character battle models are interpreted by the Playstation graphics driver and import these models into Blender, a freeware model viewing/editing/animating program:
Luminaire85: Interpreted the model file headers and subheaders, and assisted in divining the meaning of various sections of the model data; coded the import plugin, essentially transforming the various discoveries regarding Chrono Cross character models into the tangible results you see above.
halkun: A qhimm regular and expert on the principles according to which 3D PSX models operate; led us to the discovery of Chrono Cross' "UV maps," which are the instructions according to which the PSX graphics driver folds a 2D model texture over the 3D model itself. Provided advice throughout the project.
MDenham: Singlehandedly figured out how several of the most complex sections of the model should be interpreted, busting us out of a jam on several occasions and greatly speeding progress.
Cyberman: Also a model expert from qhimm, Cyb identified the vertex pool - the section of model data that specifies the 3D coordinates that make up polygon vertices - and provided guidance and clarification throughout.
yaz0r: A legend in PS2 hacking, yaz0r created standalone programs to view the models of FFX, FFX-2, and Kingdom Hearts. For this project he investigated the weapon model data and provided guidance in numerous areas.
ZeaLitY: Archived the textures and answered any questions that came up regarding them, and reminded us that the Springtime of Youth drives every fan accomplishment. His discovery of the Chrono Cross Debug Room will come in handy for any overworld character model testing that needs to be done, since the Debug mode has a model resizing feature that will allow for easy gathering of experimental evidence. Also conducted preliminary investigation of 3D battle environments.
FaustWolf: Tinkered with lots and lots and lots of hex code and confirmed theories offered by the experienced advisors; wiki scribe for the model viewing project.
The extraction and viewing of Chrono Cross models outside the game itself is a major accomplishment in the history of videogame and Chrono fandom. Aside from the Final Fantasy titles, Resident Evil titles, and early games that use the general .TMD model format, very few PSX games have received considerable attention in this regard. This effort is proof that when you're in the Springtime of Youth, absolutely anything is possible.
The project is still ongoing! Next steps include reconciling any structural differences among character battle models and enemy battle models, then moving on to weapon models and 3D battle environment models before finishing with overworld models. Pertinent utilities for viewing these models on your own will be released once everything is figured out and documented.
Interested in all the nitty-gritty particulars of the Chrono Cross model format? Everything we know is being transcribed here. (http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Chrono_Cross_File_Structure.html)
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*Hugs* Oh Zeality, I love you guys! If I'm able to view all of the models close up (ESPECIALLY overworld models), it'll make spriting detailed NPCs for El Nido so much easier! ^_______^ This is an awesome, awesome thing you guys have done here. ^^
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... so uh... could you by chance rapid shit it, so I can give it to /po/ so they could take the models and make them into papercraft?
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Before the Compendium can host the models as individual files, we'll need to take a look at how that section of the game CD is dumped by the Terminus Traductions utilities. I think the Terminus Traductions tools separate the 3D model data from the textures, so we may have to re-combine them manually so that they can be run through Luminaire's viewer correctly. There's probably some bugs to work out yet as well. In short, there's still some work to do yet before the models will be accessible to everyone, but we're getting close to that point.
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Who is that guy in the avatar, by the way? And the one before that?
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My avatar? Ah, as an aspiring game resource liberator, I'm ripping sprites randomly. Right now I'm using some joker from a Playstation SRPG called Brigandine. I don't even know the poor soul's name. Before that, I used Odin from Valkyrie Profile, though sadly I haven't been able to get a rip and used a screenshot instead. Valkyrie Profile has hands-down some of the most beautiful character portraits one will ever see, yet sadly the main hub of Valkyrie discussion, http://valhallaforums.nulani.net, has become a ghost town. Oddigy, one of the great hacking masters in both the sound and graphics departments, once resided there but hasn't posted in quite some time. If she does, I'll finally be able to nab all those wonderful portraits since she figured out the necessary decompression. Goodness, I'm thankful that the Chrono community has remained so active over the years!
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Ah, okay. Yeah, there's a festive air about it. I shudder to think what we'd be left with right now in the Chrono community without the Compendium...
I never really noticed how high up Serge's belt is on his body. Guile is going to be a visual feast for the fans of Magus.
Edit: Whoa, I never knew we had a quick edit option for posts, but there's the button on the lower right of the last paragraph. Amazing.
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Yeah, can't wait to get a multiview Guile pic up. Especially when we change his hair and possibly eye color to blue and get a scythe in his hands. Possibly darken the clothes too - I seem to recall something about Guile's clothing being black in the original character design, before Kato eschewed the Magus idea. Lynx's scythe will do, though it will be difficult to achieve an animation switch in-game. Certainly, however, an intrepid modeler would be able to do a Guile -> Magus conversion with appropriate animations in Blender or one of the non-free programs. Didn't you say you had a Radical Dreamers project in mind, ZeaLitY? :P Not only can it be done -- it can be done in 3D! Barring a C&D of course. :|
My avatar's name is Dryst, I've just found out. He is an eccentric monarch, and by all appearances is in the Springtime of Youth.
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Yeah, can't wait to get a multiview Guile pic up. Especially when we change his hair and possibly eye color to blue and get a scythe in his hands. Possibly darken the clothes too - I seem to recall something about Guile's clothing being black in the original character design, before Kato eschewed the Magus idea. Lynx's scythe will do, though it will be difficult to achieve an animation switch in-game. Certainly, however, an intrepid modeler would be able to do a Guile -> Magus conversion with appropriate animations in Blender or one of the non-free programs.
(http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/7577/arfmagusdn5.th.jpg) (http://img442.imageshack.us/my.php?image=arfmagusdn5.jpg)
Oddly, I didn't see this pic until the last Compendium News update that went over Lucca having a plan in the Fates of the Chrono Characters section of the Encyclopedia...>_>
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Do these files work in Maya?
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I can use Blender to export them to a format suitable for Maya. I attached what I hope is a file that Maya will open, along with the texture.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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My goodness, you guys.... I... *hugs all of you* This is awesome!! :)
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I can use Blender to export them to a format suitable for Maya. I attached what I hope is a file that Maya will open, along with the texture.
YES! IT WORKS! AH HA HA!
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YES! IT WORKS! AH HA HA!
I believe that about sums up my reaction when I saw him correctly in Blender for the first time. That and copious fist-pumping.
Amazing what you can do with only 670 polygons.
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Scuse me, but would it be possible of someone with the means to extract a model possibly do so for me? I haven't my CC discs at hand - they're back home, and I'm a fellow in college now...whose just getting into digital modeling in Blender.
So that said, I'd love to have a look at a model in Blender - specially a CC model. If you could possibly consign me a Guile model I'd be most appreciative.
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I'm not sure how long it will be until we have a 100% accurate Guile model, so for now I attached the Serge model as a .blend file and his texture.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Just so Thorn has the raw data for Guile in the meantime:
http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,4770.msg89317.html#msg89317
It'll look a bit off for now, but you can certainly recognize Guile. See Luminaire's next post in that thread for a pic.
Also, would an adventurous soul like to see what happens when you try to open up Lynx's scythe with Luminaire's plugin? I expect it's going to be quite buggy, or it may not even go through because the weapon model header might be drastically different from the character model headers.
In the attached file, "Scythe Texture" is self-explanatory, and is the bitmap form of 3210.out (produced by the Terminus Traductions dumper modified by Ramsus). Either 3211.out OR 3212.out is the scythe model itself, but I'm not entirely sure which is which. I believe 3211 is the model and 3212 is another character battle model.
The good news is, we've already got all the battle models excised thanks to the Ramsus/Yazoo dumper; they just need to be categorized and labeled. Enemy battle models are in as well!
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Has anyone looked at the Glenn model yet? (I can't help but ask, he's my fave. :) )
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Not yet, but rest assured it shall happen. As a fun fact, Glenn actually gets two models -- the two-sword version apparently needs an extra bone specified or something because he's got two weapons. I wonder if we can get a two-sword Glenn who can use all the weapons? Couldn't two-sword Glenn only use double Einlanzers in the game, or is this impression false?
Luminaire, would the fact that Kid's model data is shifted four bytes relative to Serge's make a difference in your model viewer? In other words, her Section 1-1 is four bytes longer than Serge's IIRC, and that shifts all the rest of the data within the 16-byte columns.
In any case, I'll get an in-depth report of Guile's model next because I'll be working with it today, then we'll get Kid's, then I'll see what's up with Glenn. Glenn is further on in the list of characters I think, so it will be interesting to see if his model conforms to the styles we've already examined.
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Yeah, it was only w/the two Einlanzers.
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Luminaire, would the fact that Kid's model data is shifted four bytes relative to Serge's make a difference in your model viewer? In other words, her Section 1-1 is four bytes longer than Serge's IIRC, and that shifts all the rest of the data within the 16-byte columns.
My script reads the pointers to the appropriate sections of data right out of each file, so the exact location of the data doesn't matter.
I am hoping to take another look at what's going wrong with each of the models soon. As always, any suggestions would be welcome, as I recall that I was getting rather stuck before real life intervened.
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It'd be cool if you could eventually manipulate it so that Glenn could dual wield two Viper's Venoms. lol.
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Hell, we should be able to get him to wield dual carrots if you like.
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Dual fishing poles!
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No no no, the most badass of all - Dual Scythes. Mmmhmmm.
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I look forward to see a universal model method work for all 44, good luck.
You guys are all wrong duel gloves!
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Uh, the joke is that the gloves don't have models, right?
;)
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Uh, the joke is that the gloves don't have models, right?
;)
Mhmm. As far as one can expect anywho.
OH! On the by and by - I've had no real breakthroughs with the Guile model myself, and even less with the Scythe model. But I have been having some fun with Guile's texture...he's starting to like rather...Zealian. I'll post something when I have the colors just right.
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Thank you FaustWolf. I look forward to seeing the models whenever you guys have the time! :)
I also wanted to apologize for the wording in my first post. It sounded rather snippy, and I know you guys are working very hard on this. I apologize if it came off as rude. That was not my intention at all.
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@Thorn -- take a look at this: http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,3533.msg90477.html#msg90477
Clothing design & recoloration by maggiekarp and BROJ. If you'd like to help out with this endeavor Thorn, that'd be great. I'd certainly be interested in seeing the texture you've come up with.
@Rushingwind -- eh? No offense taken; I can't really see where you have anything to apologize for. Believe me, you should see how grating the Chrono Trigger threads over at GameFAQs have been getting recently. Compared to that, even the Compendium religion thread has been civil.
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Has anyone looked at the Glenn model yet? (I can't help but ask, he's my fave. :) )
Done.
Looks like the same sorts of issues as the other models have, which is good because there are enough of those to deal with already.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Yeah, some of the exact same issues there as with the Guile model. Which means once we get Guile's model to work, Glenn's should work too. Sweet.
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It has better details in the desing than Serge.
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Has anyone looked at the Glenn model yet? (I can't help but ask, he's my fave. :) )
Done.
Looks like the same sorts of issues as the other models have, which is good because there are enough of those to deal with already.
YIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D
Luminaire85, you're my hero! :):) Thank you!!! :)