Hi,

cleaning up the basement I found my old Dreamcast and started to play Shenmue (I never finished it in 2000).
It made me think about the engine and suddenly I was in the middle of writing a reader for the geometry files to export them to a documented format. Using the knowledge already collected I made good progress and I'm ready to give a first preview.

http://spole.cebix.net/TravelAgency.jpg

The prototype exports the MT5 models to a Blender compatible Collada import file (.dae).
All the object hierachy is preserved, it´s possible to move individual coke can, tables, ...
The texture maps are UV mapped and automatically converted to png files.
Right now only triangle strip primitives are supported.
All the objects are exported as opaque using a single material. Further reversing is necessary to handle the materials in the right way. Handling of flat shaded, Gouraud shaded and Gouraud textured objects is also lacking. Transparent and punchthrough texture nearly work.
For the sake of a good screenshot I manually added transparency to the scene.

Some objects are turned on and off depending on the gamestate (Coke can closed/open).

Here are the binaries for Win7 (64bit).
To get things running first download http://spole.cebix.net/Unpacker.exe and http://spole.cebix.net/MT5Converter.exe .
Unpack the PKF and PKS files using 7zip.
Run Unpacker on both files.
Unpacker.exe MPK00.PKF
Unpacker.exe MPK00.PKS
Call MT5Converter on the model file
MT5Converter.exe MAP.MAPM map.dae
Import the map.dae file into Blender and add a camera and lights.

Source will follow as soon as the program is more feature complete and stable.

Enjoy!
Marc

Hi,

thanks for the nice welcome !

In principle the converter is able to translate all MT5 files into Collada files (characters and maps). I just selected a random file of medium complexity to work on. Just tell me which files you are interested in and I'll concentrate on gettings these files to work. My first contact to Shenmue files on the file system level was less than two weeks ago so I'm still clueless how they are organized and I'm a noob in playing (I love it so far).

I'll upload a new version soon that also handles a larger number of files without crashing. Most of the files I checked look good. Transparency is now supported but the Blender import filter is not feature complete and the alpha settings inside blender are not set in the right way. I have to check whether the 3D Studio Max Importer works better.

Linux is my native operating system so offering a Linux version is a pleasure for me (dependencies on libpng and zlib).

The MT7 format is very similar to MT5. They just improved the format a bit. As soon as I'm happy with the results for the MT5 files, I'll add support for MT7 files.

I guess I can upload the source code in about a month. My goal is to parse at least the material properties and to figure out how the maps fit together (basic city topology of Dobuita is stored in 5 different files, the details of the individual stores and the moveable doors are saved in other mt5 containers). Reading the animation files and rigging the character models automatically would be my dream ;-)

But today I'll concentrate on supporting self contained MT5s (texture and geometry in one file).

Cheers
Marc