2255 replies to this topic

[FredDyN]

WOW.
It looks interesting. I will need to try. Always wanted to make mech.
Thanks man.

[Seijin Dinger]

Im wondering if anyone has thought of making a third party program that works like WoW Model Viewer. It would load and assemble a bare mech chassis with no weapons, and then you could select the location and load weapons on it, change it's colors, and paint schemes, look at various animations, maybe a click box to load up the special version additions like the "hero" nose cap on a catapult

And when done export images (jpg, png with alpha channel) animation like gifs and avi, as well as the model as an object file

For those not familiar with how WoW Model Viewer works

[Nakamura Takeshi]

Seijin Dinger, on 16 September 2015 - 03:33 PM, said:

Im wondering if anyone has thought of making a third party program that works like WoW Model Viewer.

I've used that and it's a great program that even shows you the animation as well. I'd like to add if there was a program that allowed export of the animation (with the ease of the program you described) to various 3D programs that would be nice as well.

[Heffay]

Seijin Dinger, on 16 September 2015 - 03:33 PM, said:

Im wondering if anyone has thought of making a third party program that works like WoW Model Viewer.

That's... a really good idea. And I think I have the basics to be able to do that now. It'd be a pretty ambitious project though. Hmm...

[Seijin Dinger]

Heffay, on 17 September 2015 - 12:25 PM, said:

That's... a really good idea. And I think I have the basics to be able to do that now. It'd be a pretty ambitious project though. Hmm...

I just wish I had a grasp on coding. Best I would be able to do is offer suggestions on interface

[Sparks Murphey]

Heffay, on 17 September 2015 - 12:25 PM, said:

That's... a really good idea. And I think I have the basics to be able to do that now. It'd be a pretty ambitious project though. Hmm...

Using the CryEngine toolkit would seem the best bet. Have users install the CryEngine based application, then copy the MWO assets into the app's data hierarchy where it can reference it. Get the app to catalogue the available models (which are already stored as Cry files, so don't need any further handling), then present them as option buttons. Tie keys to animations.

[Seijin Dinger]

Sparks, that was my thought as well, but for developing a third party program

Edited by Seijin Dinger, 18 September 2015 - 04:06 PM.

[Seijin Dinger]

I had other ideas as well, but didnt want to post them because of how complicated it would make this, and well it would be a lot of work that I would have no idea about how to help

[Mcgral18]

So...what do you do when the materials don't load properly?

I've had it happen quite often to cockpits, and now the Black Knight is looking...rather derpy.



The Right Torso lasers are barely even visible behind the torso itself, and lenses aren't quite right.
Almost looks like it came from MW4 with all the blocks and triangles.

Could it be the .DDS and the Variant Node not being placed properly? Is there a general order you're supposed to place them in?

[Heffay]

Mcgral18, on 24 September 2015 - 02:54 PM, said:

So...what do you do when the materials don't load properly?

I've had it happen quite often to cockpits, and now the Black Knight is looking...rather derpy.

The Right Torso lasers are barely even visible behind the torso itself, and lenses aren't quite right.
Almost looks like it came from MW4 with all the blocks and triangles.

Could it be the .DDS and the Variant Node not being placed properly? Is there a general order you're supposed to place them in?

That doesn't look like a texture issue... someone else earlier posted that the exporter generated some really wonky geometry like what I see in your pic. You might want to delete the old .obj file and try the export again. I'm not sure why that is happening; haven't had it happen on any of my exports yet so it's tough to figure out.

[Iqfish]

Heffay, on 25 September 2015 - 01:39 PM, said:

That doesn't look like a texture issue... someone else earlier posted that the exporter generated some really wonky geometry like what I see in your pic. You might want to delete the old .obj file and try the export again. I'm not sure why that is happening; haven't had it happen on any of my exports yet so it's tough to figure out.

It looks like he has the LODs there.

I had a similar issues, but with higher resolution LODs on a Warhawk I was exporting.

I deleted everything, re-exported the files from the game, converted them again and I had a proper model.

[Mcgral18]

You guys are right, doing it again fixed it.

[HollowBassman]

Just wanted to say thanks to Heffay and everyone else who posted information on how to extract and manipulate the game models. This thread has been super helpful!

Still can't figure out how to use the camo materials but I'm sure it will click for me eventually.

Notes: Scaled down the Trebuchet and fixed it's goofy looking forearms. Scaled down the Centurion width-wise and added a laser to the left arm. Shrunk the Griffins laser nipples.

[Wonderdog]

8x9x3, on 15 September 2015 - 02:28 PM, said:

1) The .stl file seems to be broken, or better said, there are a lot of "holes" in the model, so it is not possible to take it to the laser sintering device. Does anyone know if there is a tool to "close" all holes on the exported file? The issue is that the laser sinter machine can only create models from a closed, or better said, filled object.

2) The .stl file is always the rough "core model",without any curvesor smooth surfaces. Its all very edged because it makes only the simple surfaces. So is it possible to get a .stl file including the soft curves which seem to be rendered over the edged model?

1) There is a lot of work involved in prepping the game models for 3d printing - several hours in blender per mech at least once you know what your doing, and a lot longer the first couple of times I'm afraid. There are no shortcuts

You can try to just run it through netfabb private edition (or the free netfabb cloud service) which will fix a lot of the issues, nut a lot of the models have small gaps etc that even netfabb will fail to automatically repair. The only way to get them sorted is to dive into blender and close most of the faces and gaps yourself then use netfab for the final tidyup.

2) I think this is done by the game engine - so once again if you want it on your solid printable file, you'll need to do it manually.

[Luscious Dan]

So much more stuff to learn ... doing some tutorials and whatnot in Blender lately and once I somewhat know what I'm doing I'll be mucking around with importing files from MWO.

My goals involve prepping models for 3D print, modding the crap out of an Adder to make a Cougar, and eventually making a MWO style Argus that will never look as good as anything Alex designs, but hey a mediocre Argus is better than no Argus at all

My thanks to everyone contributing to this discussion, the amount of knowledge here is pretty staggering for a new modeler like myself but I'm grateful for it.

@8x9x3 Based on discussions I've had, it's definitely a time consuming process to fill the models for printing. I've prepared myself mentally for the task ahead.

[Seijin Dinger]

Could someone render me an image of a lance of awesomes in a Sword of Light paint scheme with suitable headroom for speech bubbles and an alpha channel?
I'm not good working with textures

[Heffay]

Seijin Dinger, on 01 October 2015 - 01:52 AM, said:

Could someone render me an image of a lance of awesomes in a Sword of Light paint scheme with suitable headroom for speech bubbles and an alpha channel?
I'm not good working with textures

What's the Sword of Light paint scheme?

[Tarogato]

Heffay, on 01 October 2015 - 04:41 AM, said:

What's the Sword of Light paint scheme?

I'm willing to bet he means this:





Sword of Light were the elite DCMS regiments and were all painted in a flat red as above with the Kurita crest always on the left shoulder. You could probably just render it out in any flat colour and colourise it to red in PS/Gimp.

[Seijin Dinger]

Yep, the crimson that Torogato posted

[Seijin Dinger]

Posted an untextured mockup image of the idea I had to my facebook