3d models wanted for testing MM6 outdoor map editor

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mkienenb
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3d models wanted for testing MM6 outdoor map editor

Unread postby mkienenb » 02 Mar 2010, 01:42

I'll soon be at the point where I would like some original 3d models in order to test importing models into a level.

If anyone has some 3d models available I can use for testing the new MM outdoor map editor, could you send them to me?

mkienenb+mm6models on gmail.com

When you send them to me, let me know the terms of use:

1) For my personal testing only,
2) Can be distributed with the editor and can also be used by any level designers.
3) Can be distributed with the editor but cannot be distributed separately from the editor.

Please do not send me anything you don't have the rights to redistribute, but if you know of some sites where I can download models for testing, I'd be interested in those as well.

I already have the ability to export existing MM6 3d models in .obj/.mtl format and load them into Blender. However, my ability to create interesting (or any bitmap textured models) in Blender is pretty poor, I've discovered.

Preferably, the models would be saved into .obj/.mtl format, although I suppose I can use blender to convert them to that format. Each texture/material really needs to be an 8-bit bitmap image rather than a solid or whatever else is possible. You don't have to use the textures already in MM6, but that's acceptable. Only a total of 50 palettes can be used on a map, so keep that in mind for your textures. That's not for your object, but the maximum for every object, sprite, monster, terrain tile combined.

These are some of the original design guidelines, so it'd probably be a good idea to follow them as well.

- 128 units equals five feet
- doors should be 128 units wide by 256 units high
- Make all lengths to be a power of 2 so that textures match
- No overhangs on buildings
- Polygons may only touch at edges
- Polygons cannot have concave angles
- only 64 facets on an outdoor object

Regards,
-Mike

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Unread postby NecroViolator » 02 Mar 2010, 16:37

Greetings and Salutations :)...

This sounds good, Im interested in if you have the interior of the "places" that you can enter as well ???

I was building MM Maps in SS as I have all the Textures converted already... But couldnt find any Mesh/Model converter for the MM Maps/Meshes/Models or what ever they are called :)... So it all looked weird and didnt have the same feeling as the MM games...

How much of the "Map/City" did you convert ??? The entire Ground/Buildings and such ???

Thanks...

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Unread postby vladimir-maestro » 02 Mar 2010, 17:24

i can try to do you a models. it is not so hard ;)
but i a little bit do not undersnand a requipments 8|
and should it be textured or not?
You can contact me here:
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if you wish to upload some materials for this site - let me know.

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Unread postby mkienenb » 02 Mar 2010, 17:52

vladimir-maestro wrote:i can try to do you a models. it is not so hard ;)
but i a little bit do not undersnand a requipments 8|
and should it be textured or not?
That would be great!

Yes, please provide textures as bmp files.

Graceface reminded me that there is an additional requirement: only 19 vertexes per facet.

Let me know if there's a specific requirement you don't understand, but the hard limits are
- no more than 64 facets per model.
- no more than 19 vertexes per facet

We will likely discover other limits. I already listed some of the rules which were given to the original game level designers.

For some of the more complicated MM6 buildings, the model is actually several models overlaid in the same location. For instance, the tall round diamond-patterned tower with a spiked top near the center of Outa1 (Sweetwater?) is a combination of four or more models.

Below is how I've been generating and packing up models I've exported from MM6, but there is no requirement to do it this way. The .obj file contains a relative pathname to the .mtl file and the .mtl file contains relative pathnames to the .bmp textures.

unzip -l obj/FountainW.obj.zip
Archive: obj/FountainW.obj.zip
Length Date Time Name
-------- ---- ---- ----
5424 02-19-10 14:10 FountainW.obj
387 02-19-10 14:10 FountainW.obj.mtl
17462 02-19-10 14:07 RblBW.bmp
33846 02-19-10 14:07 TewS.bmp
17462 02-19-10 14:07 WtrTyl.bmp
-------- -------
74581 5 files

mkienenb
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Unread postby mkienenb » 02 Mar 2010, 18:10

NecroViolator wrote:Greetings and Salutations :)...

This sounds good, Im interested in if you have the interior of the "places" that you can enter as well ???

I was building MM Maps in SS as I have all the Textures converted already... But couldnt find any Mesh/Model converter for the MM Maps/Meshes/Models or what ever they are called :)... So it all looked weird and didnt have the same feeling as the MM games...

How much of the "Map/City" did you convert ??? The entire Ground/Buildings and such ???

Thanks...
I am only exporting the 3d models (buildings), not the terrain nor the 2d sprites on the map. I am also only currently exporting one model at a time, although that could be done differently. Exporting the terrain wouldn't make much sense as it's not stored as a model, only as a height map, and you wouldn't be able to re-import it after making changes.

Because AngelDeath, author of the MmMapViewer wrote the 3d display code for the editor, it looks more-or-less identical to the game, so long as your viewing window is sized to the right proportion.

The models also look identical to me when I export them into Blender.

There is an uploaded image of the tower I exported to blender, which I mentioned in the other posting, in my progress screenshots folder.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mkienenb/MMLevelEditor#

I have not begun work on the indoor map (I think that's what you are talking about when you say 'interior of the "places"' above) viewer/editor. I plan to finish the outdoor map editing first.

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Unread postby vladimir-maestro » 02 Mar 2010, 19:59

actually i do not understand anything =)
facet is a triangle with 3 vertexes - how it could have 19 vertexes??
i think that due test i can see what you mean...
here is a most primitive model that i made...tried not to overpower it with geometry...
http://slil.ru/28733666
but it got 150 faces!!! figure with 64 faces will look very awful...
or i cannot understand difference between face and facet O.o
You can contact me here:
maestro_mod@yahoo.com
vladud @ yandex.ru - preferred one
---
Site about MODs: http://www.mmgames.ru
---
if you wish to upload some materials for this site - let me know.

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Unread postby mkienenb » 02 Mar 2010, 20:25

vladimir-maestro wrote:actually i do not understand anything =)
facet is a triangle with 3 vertexes - how it could have 19 vertexes??
i think that due test i can see what you mean...
here is a most primitive model that i made...tried not to overpower it with geometry...
http://slil.ru/28733666
but it got 150 faces!!! figure with 64 faces will look very awful...
or i cannot understand difference between face and facet O.o
Keeping in mind that I'm no 3d expert, my understand is that a facet
...is a face
...is a polygon
.. is the outline of a set of coplanar adjoining triangles.

So while a triangle can be a face, a face can also be a a square (most buildings use squares) or an octagon (such as the water facet of the fountains in New Sorpigal).

Blender makes a differentiation between faces and triangles.
So does the .obj file format.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obj talks about faces. Maybe that is more clear than what I described?

The MM6 engine doesn't work in raw triangles. It works in faces. It might convert the data structures to triangles internally before sending them to be rendered, but at the editor and data level, a face can be any polygon (up to 19 vertexes).

If it helps, I can provide you a copy of the FountainW object or some other object from the MM6 game as a zip file.

mkienenb
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Unread postby mkienenb » 02 Mar 2010, 20:43

vladimir-maestro wrote:actually i do not understand anything =)
facet is a triangle with 3 vertexes - how it could have 19 vertexes??
i think that due test i can see what you mean...
here is a most primitive model that i made...tried not to overpower it with geometry...
http://slil.ru/28733666
but it got 150 faces!!! figure with 64 faces will look very awful...
or i cannot understand difference between face and facet O.o
The file format looks good as I read through it, but you're right that it generated the faces as triangles, and that there's 166 of them.

Here's an example of what I mean from your test.obj file:

f 6/6/6 9/9/9 8/8/8
f 8/8/8 4/4/4 6/6/6

This could instead be one four-sided polygon instead of two triangles

f 6/6/6 9/9/9 8/8/8 4/4/4

I will see if Blender has the ability to automatically clean this up and merge faces. I know that it supports non-triangle faces.

I know the 19/20 vertex limit is inflexible.

I don't know for sure about the 64 facets per object rule -- it may be a performance issue instead of a hard limit.

But other than having too many faces, this format is perfect.
Worse case, I should be able split this particular object into three objects easily enough. That's probably a good thing to do with imported models in general.

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Unread postby NecroViolator » 03 Mar 2010, 13:12

There is a Russian (group) remaking MM6...

Looks great, since they have done alot of models/meshes already...

http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... n%26sa%3DX

So these COOR your using is like plotting the Vertexes and the game fills in the "Face/Poly" to create one square/wall or such ???

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Unread postby mkienenb » 03 Mar 2010, 13:17

NecroViolator wrote: So these COOR your using is like plotting the Vertexes and the game fills in the "Face/Poly" to create one square/wall or such ???
Actually, the game data files provide vertexes and faces/polygons, and translates it internally into triangles and such.
NecroViolator wrote:There is a Russian (group) remaking MM6...

Looks great, since they have done alot of models/meshes already...

http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... n%26sa%3DX
Interesting. I will take a look. Maybe I can import their models back into the MM6 game and see how they come out :)

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Unread postby GrayFace » 03 Mar 2010, 15:01

NecroViolator wrote:This sounds good, Im interested in if you have the interior of the "places" that you can enter as well ???
I remember someone exporting them as well.
mkienenb wrote:I don't know for sure about the 64 facets per object rule -- it may be a performance issue instead of a hard limit.
No, it's a hard limit. The game stores facet number in 6 bits and facet with higher value will be interpreted as a facet of the next model. There may also be a limit of 128 models, but only *may* be.
My patches: MM6 MM7 MM8. MMExtension. Tools. Also, I love Knytt Stories and Knytt Underground. I'm also known as sergroj.

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Unread postby vladimir-maestro » 03 Mar 2010, 17:47

maybe we should test some easy models? cubes, pyramids, hexagons and see what happened?
You can contact me here:
maestro_mod@yahoo.com
vladud @ yandex.ru - preferred one
---
Site about MODs: http://www.mmgames.ru
---
if you wish to upload some materials for this site - let me know.

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Unread postby mkienenb » 03 Mar 2010, 17:55

vladimir-maestro wrote:maybe we should test some easy models? cubes, pyramids, hexagons and see what happened?
I'll take whatever you want to send me, but something with more than one bitmap would be desired.

And if you can generate a non-triangle face, that'd be good too.

It's going to be fairly easy to load them into the editor.

The harder part is going to be calculating all of the other stuff. Some of it I can figure out easily enough. Other things are still vague.

the Gradient Vertex List (a different list than the vertex list) for each face is probably the one I have the least idea about right now.

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Unread postby mkienenb » 03 Mar 2010, 18:49

vladimir-maestro wrote: here is a most primitive model that i made...tried not to overpower it with geometry...
http://slil.ru/28733666
I just noticed something.

test.mtl does not contain a filename for Material__25. You included x_9fd1d56b.bmp in the zip, so I'd expect to have seen the following missing line in the test.mtl file:

map_Kd x_9fd1d56b.bmp

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Unread postby NecroViolator » 04 Mar 2010, 16:05

I would love to get a hold of some Obj files so I can test building some City maps... :)

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Re: 3d models wanted for testing MM6 outdoor map editor

Unread postby Big Daddy Jim » 04 Mar 2010, 19:42

mkienenb wrote:I'll soon be at the point where I would like some original 3d models in order to test importing models into a level.

If anyone has some 3d models available I can use for testing the new MM outdoor map editor, could you send them to me?



Regards,
-Mike
Mike,

Have ya tried to use some of the objects from MM7/MM8 as the imports or are they formatted differently?

BDJ
"BDJ the Coding Wizard has moved out of the Coding Fortress, has retired from Might & Magic game modification, and now lives a peaceful life in Alto Lino, Republic de Panama.

http://www.mediafire.com/BDJs

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Unread postby mkienenb » 05 Mar 2010, 02:02

NecroViolator wrote:I would love to get a hold of some Obj files so I can test building some City maps... :)
Well, there's no public release yet of the new MMLevelEditor, but you can check it out from cvs and build it yourself.

From there, you can manually export each-and-every building model that you're interested in for MM6.

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Re: 3d models wanted for testing MM6 outdoor map editor

Unread postby mkienenb » 05 Mar 2010, 02:10

Big Daddy Jim wrote: Mike,

Have ya tried to use some of the objects from MM7/MM8 as the imports or are they formatted differently?
BDJ

Well, MM7&MM8 formats for models are very similar, but a little different. I could probably add MM7 & MM8 support, but I don't want to dilute my efforts yet at this point since that would also require supporting MM7 and MM8 for every aspect of the odm file.

But if I did support MM7 & MM8, it'd be easier to use cut & paste to transfer the models than to export/import them.

Also, I am more interesting in getting "real-world" models created with current modelling tools for testing than importing something I exported. I can be pretty much 100% certain that anything I export I can also import again :)

For instance, it didn't occur to me that modern models might only have triangle faces, or that we should automatically break up a model with too many facets into multiple models.

But for level designers who don't have 3d modeling skills (like me), it will certainly increase the number of available models if we can reuse the MM7 and MM8 models.


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Unread postby vladimir-maestro » 05 Mar 2010, 06:05

try this one...
http://slil.ru/28746130
You can contact me here:
maestro_mod@yahoo.com
vladud @ yandex.ru - preferred one
---
Site about MODs: http://www.mmgames.ru
---
if you wish to upload some materials for this site - let me know.

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Unread postby mkienenb » 05 Mar 2010, 14:19

vladimir-maestro wrote:try this one...
http://slil.ru/28746130
Thanks. Hedra.zip looks like a good test for a single-model import when I read through the text files.

But it has two materials, and only one bmp in the zip, and again, there's no mapping map_Kd xxxx.bmp to get to the bitmap from the material definitions.

Is this a limitation of your 3d modeling tools? Even if I had everything else working perfectly, these material files would have to be edited by hand to add in the bmp mappings for the materials -- it couldn't be an automatic process.

If it is a limitation, perhaps I will have to provide a panel for manually assigning a material to a bitmap for the import process. But Blender appears to correctly generate the map_Kd materials lines.

Also, I'm guessing that the only difference between the two material definitions is lighting -- lighting information doesn't transfer to MM6, only the bitmaps.

Even with all that, it's still a good example model for me to use once I manually add some map_Kd definitions, so it's not wasted effort. Thanks!

I'm now about 90% of the way done with copying bmodels from one map to another (there's some bug in copying a bmodel in memory).

I'm maybe 40% done now with supporting importing a model:
- I still need to finish the material file parsing and copy the bitmaps over into the bitmap.lod. This should be easy.
- I also need to calculate the mm6-specific model values which will take a lot longer.


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