CHRONO CROSS FILE EXPLORATION THREAD

[Luminaire85]

My script currently assumes 256x128. This could certainly be changed; it would be easy if the only options are 128x128 and 256x128, or at least if the textures are always powers of 2.

[FaustWolf]

Something that can work with textures that have dimensions of powers of 2 would be safest. Though the vast majority are either 128x128 or 128x256, Alphabat has a texture that's 64x128 pixels, width x height. You know what? In light of the texture size issue, I'd better take a look at the UV data of a large enemy, just to make sure that they don't use one whole 256x256 texture after all somehow. I'll report on that later.

EDIT: Well, it does not appear that 256x256 textures are an option; somewhere along the line there must be a texture page switch command like the one halkun mentioned. So the largest the script should have to deal with at a time is 128 x 256, width x height.

[tushantin]

Okay, I'll download the script and install it now. One thing though. Where will I get the model files from? Or can I simply extract it from CD/ISO? If so, how/which?

[FaustWolf]

tushantin, I would guide you to the Ramsus/Yazoo dumper attached to the very first post of this thread. I just re-upped it with a readme, so hopefully you can use it to rip the models from your first game CD; if you run into problems, PM me and we can discuss.

[cornettheory]

Ive figured out the issue with the big fire dragon.  The UVs are just layered over one another.  So somehow the model exporter needs to tell half of the model to use a different material.

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[FaustWolf]

Excellent, my guess is some of the unknown data might be a texture page command. I'll have to investigate this further.

[Ozzie]

Starky renders so nicely in Bryce and 3ds max. I can imagine some of the neat wallpapers that will come of these.



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[FaustWolf]

Thanks Ozzie! Once we get everything figured out (including animations, preferably), we'll need a ton of renders for the Compendium encyclopedia.

[Cyberman]

Ok silly question time:
The script is in python, has it changed any since list 'utilized'?

I figure I can make it export to POV's format, that should create a very nice rendered output.

Cyb

[FaustWolf]

Looks like there may need to be at least one more iteration of the model importing script Cyb, because we need to factor in the method by which the game engine is applying double textures to large enemies. So far I haven't found anything in the constructs; I suspect that the info is in fact in the UV Map area of the large models, and the way in which they specify the texture page isn't pretty. In any case, I'll have a report on that if I prove my current hypothesis to be plausible through experimentation.

Here's some info from Captain A, an experienced Blender user, that I wanted to forward to you all:

OK, to use transparency textures in blender you need either a grayscale texture that defines transparency or a texture with a alpha channel. assuming chrono cross uses something like pureblack = transparent or r=0,g=255,b=0 makes transparent, you might need to edit the textures in gimp before you can get the models in blender.
my advice would be using gimp's "select by color tool" set the threshold at 0 to select the color that is meant to be transparent. use this selection to make a new texture that has all the transparent areas black and the other ares white.

to put this texture into blender, goto the materials button and, on the far right there should be a column of buttons. they kind of work like layers in photoshop or gimp, except the top one is first to be applied and the bottom one is last. the default material has a texture called "tex" on the top button. click it. if you already have a texture on that slot you can move it down by first pressing the button that looks like a cursor pointing to a wall. then press the  lower slot and press the button of the cursor pointing away from the wall. this will copy the texture down to the 2nd slot.

now clear the first slot and "add new". goto the "map input" tab and select "UV". this will tell blender to apply the texture to the uv map of the model. now goto the "map input" tab. this tab's buttons tell blender how the texture will effect the model.
unselect the "col" button and select the "alpha" button.

to the right of the material preview, there should be a panel that in the middle says "render pipeline". under it are the buttons "halo" and "ztransp". make sure that the "ztransp" is pressed. this allows the material to have video game style transparency.

now on the top of the buttons window, press the button that looks like a cheetah skin. these are the "texture buttons". select the top texture and select the "texture type" to be "image". in the "image" panel press "load". now browse for the transparency map you made before.


And that should do it! Hope I make sense to you guys. if you have any questions go ahead and post them in this thread.

as for the uv map being off by a few pixels, can you tell me where did you get this uvmap? IE: did you make it yourself or did it come from the model export?

EDIT: there is a new version of blender, I suggest you guys download it .

EDIT2: I see that you are also having problems with transparent objects being in the 3d window. to make transparent objects transparent in the window goto the "object" button. it looks like a 3d axis. then in the draw panel, press the "transp" button.

The gimp stuff I should be able to do in my oldie-but-goodie Paint Shop Pro, so everyone let me know if this process looks like it could solve some problems. Interesting that there's a new version of Blender out -- anyone try it out yet? Maybe it has better capabilities than what we've been using so far?

[Cyberman]

The main advantage of POV is that it is a well documented format and easy to tweak and examine how the output looks etc.

As for the double textures, is that 2 128x256 16 bit textures or 2 128x256 8 bit textures?

For POV I would need to use TARGA fomat images likely (RGBA output) or some other easy to use format like that.
POV can use index files perhaps using PNG with a palette that has transparency added will work.

Stephen

[FaustWolf]

The double textures are two 128x256 8bpp linear image bit-depth, but 15bpp BGR palette depth.

[Satoh]

First let me say, I'm new to the whole hex exploring, but I think I've found something regarding stats or something in the weapon packs...

starting at 2790 (in serge's weapons) there's a set of data that has a repeating pattern... it repeats 7 times, once for each weapon in Serge's list it looks like... now, some places are filled with 0 that others have a number, typically only one or two entries have a 00 byte at either the beginning or end that the others don't. I assume this is for things like special effects that weapons as individuals have, but other weapons of the same type(swallow) don't have. then again, it could be something as simple as a naming convention.... but there's 7 similarly structured entries in an even spacing from eachother, it may be worthwhile to look at it....

but like I said, it may just be the ramblings of someone completely inexperienced... I'm going to check other packs for similar data...

EDIT: this data pattern is present in the 3^rd section of both Serge and Kid's weapons, about 15 lines from the beginning of the section.

[FaustWolf]

Excellent, you've found a stride of some sort. I shall take a look at it after I finish with some texture experimenting. To keep this thread as linear as possible Satoh, you may want to start another thread labeled CC Weapons Investigation or something. Then that thread and this can run in tandem without getting stats and visuals mixed together.

[FaustWolf]

Alrighty, not sure how everyone's going to like this but we have what appears to be a working model for how texture pages are decided in the dual-textured models. Let's take a look at two quads from Dario's UV map. Although Dario is a human-size character, his model has enough detail to require two textures.

Quad Example 1:
000011D0                                    - 5B F3 57 F3 5C F1 57 F1
000011E0  F0 04 00 05 F8 01 18 02       

Quad Example 2:         
000011F0                                      - 36 EB 2F F5 2E E3 28 EC
00001200  81 12 21 13 88 09 D8 09       

The difference between these two quads is that the first, which has vertex index pointers with run-of-the-mill values, is mapped to the LEFT texture, whereas the second, which has 1s instead of 0s at the end of the first two vertex pointers, is mapped to the RIGHT texture.

Thus, an extra rule for quads:

If the first two vertex pointers end in a "1" instead of a "0" nybble, then the texture piece is pulled from the RIGHT texture.
If the first two vertex pointers end in a "0" instead of a "1" nybble, then the texture piece is pulled from the LEFT texture.

Luckily I've not seen any situation in which either of the first two vertex pointers ends in an "8" nybble, or we'd be in trouble.


The rule is the exact same for triangles, but keep in mind that there's a switcharoo in which the last two vertex index pointers go first and the first goes third. Thus, we tell the difference between a LEFT triangle piece and a RIGHT triangle piece as follows:

Triangle Example 1:
000006E0  15 23 11 0D 19 11 E0 03-E1 15 D1 07       

Triangle Example 2:
000006F0                           - 47 1E 39 1B 39 21 50 06
00000700  40 09 40 0C   

So the game engine reads the first two pointers first, then the third, or at least that's how I think of it. Thus, the top triangle is mapped from the RIGHT texture, and the bottom triangle is mapped from the LEFT texture.

Consequently, we should not see any "8" nybbles in the second and third vertex pointer slots of triangle pieces. I have never seen a "9" nybble where an "8" nybble should be, so I'm hoping the modeling program the developers used was careful where it placed its vertex indices.

I'm a bit miffed that a texture page indicator would be stuffed into vertex pointers, but it's an accurate indicator of which texture the game engine is looking at when it pulls UV pieces based on manual UV mapping exercises. Halkun, Cyb, and M, does this seem plausible? Luminaire, is this something that can be factored into the Blender script?
     
Also Luminaire, Satoh and I have been keeping an eye on the dimensions of the weapon, field model, and battle model textures we've been coming across. It appears that powers of two is the way to go. The weapon textures, for example, have dimensions of 32 x 128 if I remember Satoh's reports on those correctly.

Attached is an Excel spreadsheet that segregates Dario's UV map into triangle and quad sections based on the constructs and Dario's model data in the zip. The first texture attached is his LEFT texture, and the second texture attached is his RIGHT texture in case anyone wants to rummage through the data and see how this works firsthand.

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