Animation Utilities: Version 1.1

[alpaca]

@alpaca
I'd be most appreciative. Had a quick look in the
.world file for ne_village. Looks like a .mesh file with
some odd data blocks at the top. After that it looks like tri groups
with some granny strings in between, then vertices, and then some texture
paths. If Caliban could provide clues like sample .xml files as he did
with the .mesh format it would certainly help sort things out.

Well from what I remember:

The first step is to create so-called blocks. These are parts of buildings and directly modeled (and I guess in mesh format). These blocks are then merged to create buildings (for the tech-tree or ambient buildings) or whole cities (for the walls and fixed buildings) in 3dsmax and exported to the world files.

However, I don't know what the worldpackage exactly consists of, or how the animations are done. The different files in the directories give us some hints:

1. The terrain is probably independent from the actual buildings
2. So is vegetation
3. Animations are somehow store in the animinstances file. The small size of this suggests it's only transition info
4. Pathfinding is also exported to a distinct file
5. Collision information is probably a representation of the actual world file with lower details.

How Caliban described it to me, I believe it could be that the relative positions are stored in these files and not absolute ones. This means you have a lot of blocks (like the towers which are only the highest part of the actual building), give the engine the alignment info and granny puts the pieces together. This would fit with the idea that terrain 3d info is in another file, and buildings are automatically snapped to the ground. It could be that this is determined on "compile-time" though

It's not much, I know

Oh, it also seems these files aren't described in any text file, so for the more generic ones like tech tree buildings or ambient buildings there seems to be some slot-in mechanism (the game seems to scan the whole folders). Some of this info seems to be in the worldpkgdesc, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

[KnightErrant]

Thanks for the info. I've put together a quick and dirty
reader that does about 10% of the smallest .world file
(the village). Here's the first complete structure I've been
able to pull out:



This isn't .ms3d format because I haven't found any uv coordinates yet;
this is just tris and verts exported as .obj.

It does seem that the .world files are like you described, a series of structures
built with modeling software and then glued together into a .world file.

[alpaca]

Thanks for the info. I've put together a quick and dirty
reader that does about 10% of the smallest .world file
(the village). Here's the first complete structure I've been
able to pull out:



This isn't .ms3d format because I haven't found any uv coordinates yet;
this is just tris and verts exported as .obj.

It does seem that the .world files are like you described, a series of structures
built with modeling software and then glued together into a .world file.

That's already some good success
I also remembered Caliban told me that in the dev version, the blocks that are used to piece together the worlds are in the blockset directory, but we only have some .debugdata files there. They may be of some use to you anyways.

I asked Caliban for example files, maybe we're lucky and he can give us one or two

[ksbis2]

I ve just started to examine the ways of unit modding and catched a big error.

Of course, as my first step I wanted to look on vanilla models and animation. So I did all the steps:
1) I've got Caliban's animation files, extracted
2) I've unpacked the models of course
3) searched the forum for exact tutorial and was happy to find animation tools
4) then I've got the tools from this link on version 1.1
5) before using it I've istalled Python 2.5.2 with all options avaivable
6) then I've tried to repeat the steps form the tutorial example in Animerge section that use files "fs_horse_jump.cas" and "barded_horse_lod0.ms3d"

and from this moment I've found some problems (note please that the above files is also only example becouse after the error occured the first time I've tried all other files - just to make it sure)

7) first, I failed to launch meshconverterv1_0_4.py to convert this parcticular horse.mech in .ms3d. I have not any skills in programming at all (only some brief in arts) so my logical conclusion was to download any other separated version of the converter and indeed it was right decision - I was able to produce .ms3d with meshconverterv1_0_3.py and after this I was even managed to do this with version 1.0.4 through copy-pasting it from animation utilites archive to the archive of version 1.0.3 (wich has all this additional files in it).

8) second problem was happend when I launched animationutilities.py and then choose Animerge with the new "barded_horse_lod0.ms3d" and "fs_horse_jump.cas" - it does not work. I always end up with the result on screenshot coming below (I can't post it in this message course it was my first here)

So I just cannot produce the mount_barded_horse_lod0_animby_fs_horse_jump.ms3d" file!

At first I thought it was a version conflict in Python, so I've reistalled it with 2.5.1 with no changes. Then I've running out of ideas to overcome this.

Please do not ignore this problem even though this thread was not active this long - I just want to see animated unit to finaly start my modding experience.

Or maybe someone knows the other way to do the same thing - I want to open the original files with it's animations to learn how it works. The animation is important becouse I have some plans to do but just do not sure I could mod this way - so much to learn yet...

[ksbis2]

Here the screenshot

[img=https://img522.imageshack.us/img522/1952/errorfq7.jpg]
[img=https://img522.imageshack.us/img522/1952/errorfq7.6a793ba498.jpg]

[ksbis2]

crap! it seems the links above does nothing - repost the screenshot again, and please SORRY FOR THE CLUTTER :-(

[KnightErrant]

Hi ksbis2,

I'm going to get back to you. I'm trying to answer another post right now.
Sorry for my lack of diligence. I don't think its a Python problem, 2.5 should
be fine for my stuff. Probably you just found an animation where my stuff
fails. (The current problem I'm trying to answer.)

We try to answer all questions...we're just not as quick about it as we
should be.

Regards,

KE