Never Winter Nights - Model Conversion

[Thothie]

This is, semi-off topic - a quest for custom content more accurately.

A friend of mine and I put together a lot of NWN modules back in the day, and she made quite a few models for them. She doesn't know anything about modeling for Half-life (and doesn't really do much of that sort of thing anymore anyways) - but she was saying that there should be a model importer-exporter for NWN and Milkshape3d somewhere, and that it shouldn't be too hard to convert her old NWN models to workable HL1 models. Her old links all seem to be dead though. I thought I'd ask off hand if anyone knew anything about that here, since we have so many ace modelers, before I started reviving long dead NWN topics over at Bioware.

Some of her old models:

My old char Sutekh, getting his ass kicked by Lolth:

My old char Sutekh, just before being eaten by Tiamat:

Sutekh had a rough life in the TotBS re-remake.

 

[ceriux]

how come NWN never looked that nice on mine ... ne ways i dont know of ne of them programs but i can try n look for u -.-


all iv found so far. something about the exporter/importer not available but u can get something for gmax . '

lookie


Not sure if it will help

not really sure

 

[Thothie]

Nnenenenen NECROPOST...

Alright, this is for any 3DS Max modelers who are interested.


(see textured version in first post)


(I'm actually not 100% sure these models are all Ely's - there seems to be more models in this package than I thought there were)

Some of the models here are using textures internal to Never Winter Nights, I can get those - or something that looks like them to avoid copyright concerns - but I'd need to take the time to reinstall NWN to do so, and thus, I want to be sure that someone can actually do something with these first.

Here I have ASCII models, the original nwn MDL, some textures, and 3DS Max scripts for importing NWN models:
http://www.thothie.com/msc_dev2/ely_models.rar
These models are fully skeletoned and animated. But I'm not sure how hard it would be to take these model sources (such as they are) and make them into HL1 models.

If it's possible, and someone is interested, give me a heads up, and I'll see about getting the rest of the textures.

 

[PBarnum]

Wow thothie a full year necro post. You have been just rockin it lately.

No more interest in modeling anymore.

 

[Thothie]

Do ya happen to know if such a conversion is possible with that data?

Also wondering if it would be possible to open them in 3DS Max and then export them in a format Milkshape 3D would handle, as it seems most of our modlers are Milkshapers.

 

[[FSM]The Owneded]

Hmm.. I did one of them. It didn't seem to keep the animation when I imported it though. I used the script to import the mdl and exported it from 3ds as a smd. Heres the file: http://www.mediafire.com/?9xwt82yzygt

edit: what was the veltools file in there? I didn't try installing it. Also, it didn't save the uvw so you'd have fun skinning it.

 

[Gaz]

Ok, I can open them in max with that script. Its pretty hacky, and it will import a model with the correct textures (providing they exist).

However, The NWN models are not skinned models (vertices assigned to bones), but hierarchied objects, which together make a whole model.

The problem this presents, is that the models will need to be assigned to a skeleton, this can be done with a script, but then the mesh will need to be added to that skeleton (again, not too hard as the meshs were bones to start with).

The next problem is that the hacky importer takes no animation what so ever. So you'll be needing an animator for them.


The Tools that are included are for tileset level creation (thats what NWN uses for its envionments) so its not any use at all.

 

[[FSM]The Owneded]

The next problem is that the hacky importer takes no animation what so ever. So you'll be needing an animator for them.

Get more busy Gaz!

 

[FER]

As if it was that easy to animate

 

[Thothie]

Yeah, there's a readme with the 3DS script mentioning it's hacky. Hmmm... So I'm guessing these are not real viable without better import tools.

The hacky script readme mentions an alternate set of import tools - that sound possibly less hacky, but also less broadly compatible. I thought those veltools were it, but I guess not. These files are so very old, its hard to find a dependable set.

I'll scour a bit more and see if I can find some better import tools, but if the animations can't be imported, the models are more or less useless - as I have noticed, animation seems to be the hardest thing to get done. While poly's are a dime a thousand.

I do have one other decompiler, but it requires NWN to function. I suppose I can take the time to reinstall and see if it works sometime. (Here's to hoping 5 year old CD's still work.)

 

[Thothie]

Double post:

These seem to be the latest NWN import tools for 3DS (latest = 2005):
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=ot ... ail&id=626

DLA presents NWmax .8 by Joco. NWmax is a set of import, export, modeling scripts and memory resident utilities for discreet's free gmax 3d modeling software. Using NWmax, any member of the community has the required tools to create professional models and VFX's for NWN. Version .70 of NWmax includes support for 3ds max. Author: Joco Note: NWmax is hosted off site to permit frequent updates and its own discussion support forum is hosted on the DLA forums at http://www.dladventures.com Please go direct to nwmax.dladventures.com to get the 3ds max version of the installer.

( direct link: http://nwmax.dladventures.com/download/ ... 8setup.exe )

Maybe that'll let you get the model anims in?

 

[Gaz]

I have animation!

Now I need a script file to convert the mesh to bones, and weight the bones to the bones.

Get me the missing texture please compardre

 

[Thothie]

I dunno about the whole bone<->mesh thing, but here's the missing textures (or most of them at least):
http://www.thothie.com/msc_dev2/textures_and_lolth.rar
(also includes the lolth model above - but both the lolth and maralith should probably be reskinned to something slightly less pornographic, should we ever use them)

Here's what the two unskinned models are supposed to look like:


I more or less refuse to use the Tiamat model as is - even if she is a Babylonian god, she's more or less a trade-mark D&D figure these days. But I wouldn't mind copying say, the black dragon skin to all five heads, for some other sort of beastie. We do have a legendary evil black dragon in the mythology - no mention of the number of heads it has.

If you are missing any other textures, give me their names, I'll hunt them down. Sadly I have to export them one at a time.

 

[ceriux]

im sorry guys... its taking for ever for me to get internet on my compy... if i had it i would have no problem animating for you. i kinda enjoy it...

 

[Gaz]

Only missing the weapon textures for the snake woman thing.

Everything else appears fine, and Ive got them all in max file format, just waiting for a mate to make the script for me.

Also, any idea where the animations start and end for each? Ive a massive timeline (almost 2000 frames on each model) and picking through each set, and exporting the timeframes of those animations is going to bore the crap out of me So much so I feel reluctant to do it. If you can get me the frame numbers, I may try and get another script written to do it all automatically

 

[Thothie]

Only missing the weapon textures for the snake woman thing.

Meh, I thought maybe... I'll have to make my own sort of script to pull a list of textures from the bitmap entries in the ASCII model of the Marilith. Sadly, I've no way to script their actual extraction, but there's likely only a few.

edit: Dag nabbit... I can't actually find those missing textures at the moment, but I'll see about getting a new browser for this stuff later, maybe it'll have a search function.

Also, any idea where the animations start and end for each? (almost 2000 frames on each model)

Dyaam.... There's no indication of animation span in the text? Blast... I've no way of viewing the animations myself, so I've no idea. I suspect they likely have many more anims than we actually need. I suppose it's not a simple slide-bar interface where you can pick out chunks of animation. :/

These are the only animations we really need to pull out though:
idle
walk //walk/run can likely match on the Maralith
run
attack_claw
attack_breath //dragons only
death
flinch

PS. Should probably move this back to art, but I can't alter this forum section.