NEW Meshes For MUA?YES Definitely!

[svösh]

Great job on getting your mesh in game any news on a tut of how you rigged it, with a link or 2 for the tools needed ?

I heard the Alchemy ArtistPack  mentioned  here, in all my extensive searching I can't find a working link for it. Intrinsic Graphics site appears to be under construction and Vicarious Visions have partnered up with them? The majority of info I did find was from 2002 a bit out dated this link  http://www.vvisions.com/community/index.cfm
leads to the same under construction link as all those other articles.

Could someone share one that works, or possibly upload it for us to get ?

[Noelemahc]

The link is actually already on this board, in one of the older threads. One of my firstest posts here, too.
http://marvelmods.com/forum/index.php?topic=8.msg85#msg85

[svösh]

Thanks Noelemahc you just made my Christmas even better

[Noelemahc]

For the bump maps: am sifting through PS2 and PSP dev scene materiel, have found a quirky idea: why can't you just make a DXT1 texture using the GREEN channel as a bump map storage? In other words, your RED and BLUE channels are empty and the (grayscale) bump map is saved into the GREEN channel. That's where MUA looks for the bumps in any case, remember?

[thetommyboy2002]

For the bump maps: am sifting through PS2 and PSP dev scene materiel, have found a quirky idea: why can't you just make a DXT1 texture using the GREEN channel as a bump map storage? In other words, your RED and BLUE channels are empty and the (grayscale) bump map is saved into the GREEN channel. That's where MUA looks for the bumps in any case, remember?

Good thinking, but:
even if you save as a "greyscale" texture,all DXT formats save with three channels, and therefore more than the 8bits the alchemy exporters insist on in 3dsMax.
The onlytypes of file I've managed to export as bumpmaps are 8bit greyscale .bmp, .tga, .jpg files, which the exporter is happy with, the alchemy viewer has no problem with, and which crash the actual game to desktop.
I think that it's going to be a trial and error process, like figuring out the export settings in the first place, and figuring out the weapon segment settings were. Informed guessing definitely helps, it's just that with the bumpmaps problem, there are all the variables of how you save the textures, and all the variables of how you set up Max to export it all, so there's more chances to get one thing wrong, and not even know you are going in the right direction.
Every now and then I go back and play with it again, but it's obviously a lot more fun to make stuff that does work rather than to keep making the same mesh over and over without it ever working, so I don't spend a lot of time on it..like the weapons, when I'm ready to crack it, I will.

[Noelemahc]

I'm just saying, is all.

Theory time: would the nVidia pluck-in even save a file if you chop out the RED and BLUE channels? Photoshop allows forced removal of channels, so...

Oh, and an option 17: PNG? MUA doesn't mind PNGs. That would, of course, be PNG-8, not PNG-24; it would be indexed and will wholly depend on how your exporter processes them. You can even toy around with it being grayscale or green-channeled.

[thetommyboy2002]

More good thinking, but as yet, .png crashes to desktop too.(and even the alchemy viewer dislikes it).
Chopping out the red and blue channels? Great minds think alike, I just tried it as you must have been typing.
No go. DDS format requires RGB (at least the version of the plugin I'm using does), or converts to 24bit 16.7million colours with the other, earlier, plugin, (which is a different way to say the same thing).
So to summarize:
To date.
DDS format cannot save as 8bit, and so will not export from Max.
Formats that can save in 8bit export OK, but cause the game to CTD.
 

[Noelemahc]

Alright then. Does the exporter mind indexed textures? Y'know, DDS exported into 8 bit -- the nVidia pluck-ins can do that too. Ain't DXT and ain't cost-effective for sizes less than 256x256, but potentially applicable.

[thetommyboy2002]

Alright then. Does the exporter mind indexed textures? Y'know, DDS exported into 8 bit -- the nVidia pluck-ins can do that too. Ain't DXT and ain't cost-effective for sizes less than 256x256, but potentially applicable.

The only 8bit option the dds plugin gives me is "8bit alpha" (A8), which photoshop saves as OK, but 3dsMax gives an error: "image I/O error:Invalid Image File Header" when I try to assign it as the bump texture.
And the older plugin(5.19) I use in PSP will save in the format "8 bit index", and 3dsMax will let me load this as a bump map........aaannnd then 3dsMax crashes when you try to export.
But I have a feeling you are thinking in the right direction, so I'll keep playing for a few more hours.

[Noelemahc]

Yeah, I suspect the newer pluck-in is just screwy in the head because files saved with it even Photoshop itself cannot process at times, which means all sorts of nasty things.

[thetommyboy2002]

Still no joy on the bumpmap front.
Meanwhile:
Heres a Swordsman (Thunderbolts version) mesh and skin:


Can be downloaded here:
http://www.momoshare.com/file.php?file=98e4bb5fc68de36add5d0cd983ef0e01

[Noelemahc]

Okay, how about alternatives to PS and the nVidia stuff?
http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/%7ecocidius/
Here are two pluck-ins for The GIMP, one of which is geared towards normalmaps (which MUA also deals with).
http://registry.gimp.org/plugin?id=7855
And a different, PSP-format-compatible one. (Sadly, only capable of EXPORTING files, and although the author has promised to make a DDS unswizzler, I doubt he will release one soon-ish)

It's just that MUA directly needs DXT textures as normals, and that means we gotta import DDSes. Right?

[thetommyboy2002]

Thanks, I may give them a try.
Trying to think logically about it:
We know that the game (and therefore Alchemy 3 or whatever it is) supports bumpmaps, and they appear to be seperate files from the colour maps.

We know that I can export Alchemy 2.5 meshes that work in game, but not yet any with bump maps.

We know that XMlegend2 meshes work in MUA, and that these also do not have bumpmaps (or am I wrong? I can't recall seeing any).

We know that the MUA artists probably use fairly standard tools and progs to create the art, ie Photoshop, 3dsmax etc etc, so using similar tools and progs we should be able to get the same results.

We don't know anything about the 3dsMax exporter for alchemy 3 that they use, and it, (or some other in-house only plugin) may determine how, or if, bumpmaps work. For example, the Freedom Force art people had a plugin called NiClod that was never released to the fan community. It was used to create their meshes, which as a result differed from all fan made geometries in a number of ways (alpha layers worked better on the Irrational made meshes, and these meshes converted to FFV3R much better than fan made ones). Nothing the fans could do to their meshes (short of getting their own NiClod plugin writen) would ever make their meshes 100% like the games originals. I mention this as a possibility that using plugins for a retrograde version of the Alchemy engine, there may be some aspects, like bumpmapping that just may not be do-able.
Or it may bejust a case of experimenting a little more with settings. Certainly the documentation that comes with the Alchemy Artists pack I use states that bumpmaps are supported, and it allows them to be part of an exported mesh, so for now I'm being an optimist and thinking "it's just a matter of knowing the appropriate settings". It's just that there are a lot of variables to play with, so it's probably going to take a while.

All of which is a long winded way to say "I doubt they used the Gimp to make this game. And I doubt that we would haveto use it if we have other dds capable paint progs".(Not that I have anything against Gimp. I'm sure it's a great programme).

[Noelemahc]

I'm just saying that the DDS exporters for it follow a different pattern and may (or may not) have better results. Didn't say it'll be better or worse, now did I?

And, for further overclarification: according to the DLL signatures, MUA uses Alchemy 4, XML2 uses Alchemy 3 and all we've got going for us is 2.5. It's a miracle your meshes work in it, a MIRACLE!

[svösh]

Unfortunately I can't install the Alchemy plugin since the site is still down, and it requires a generated serial from the Intrinsic site to install. 

Anyways, while looking over the models with texture viewer
I noticed the green map as well. I believe it's normal mapping, very few games now are made with old style bump mapping. The DDS plugin in Photoshop is made  to generate normal maps.
But the various settings always pose problems to us modders. If the devs don't actually make normal mapped models, the real long way   it's the next best thing.

I also saw what I'm pretty sure was an additional specular map in the texture viewer, shiny in all the right places. It could be the Alchemy Plugin supports them too?

If the plugin supports importing .igb? You could try to select the models material with the material picker in Max. It should help to decipher the mapping slots used as well as the base shader.

I'm hoping the site gets back on line soon so I can finally install the Alchemy plug it's just sitting on my desktop.