Possible solution for ripping shenmue game models found!

[accel99]

While i find softimage a bit better than 3D Max in regards of ease of use i would really not want to get into it. I think it's a fine renderer but not really my idea of character animation, i really prefer Poser for characters and Vue for rendering/landscaping. Like Maya, max, lightwave and co i find it's not an app you learn by "looking at it for a few minutes". Maybe Poser is terrible if you compare it to a classic renderer, it's definitely neither an "allround" renderer nor a modeling tool. But for what it's focused on - character animation - it is imho the best one. My handicap is that i have absolutely no experience in charater creation/conversion, but i don't think it will help if i also have to learn a completely new app... I terribly lack the time, but if noone else will do it imma try my own luck in Poser. I think i can get the bones placed with some practice, for hands i will prolly just slide the shenmue textures over some pre-defined hands - the real tough part will be creating the modifiers/magnets for realistic facial animation, at least if you do it right that is.

Wow didnt realize you were aiming for facial animation.Now Iam curious what are you planning for the shenmue models then if your going through this trouble.I thought you just wanted a few passable renders here and there.

[wude]

face robot is a good tool for that , but you can always play with polygons.

[Master Kyodai]

While i find softimage a bit better than 3D Max in regards of ease of use i would really not want to get into it. I think it's a fine renderer but not really my idea of character animation, i really prefer Poser for characters and Vue for rendering/landscaping. Like Maya, max, lightwave and co i find it's not an app you learn by "looking at it for a few minutes". Maybe Poser is terrible if you compare it to a classic renderer, it's definitely neither an "allround" renderer nor a modeling tool. But for what it's focused on - character animation - it is imho the best one. My handicap is that i have absolutely no experience in charater creation/conversion, but i don't think it will help if i also have to learn a completely new app... I terribly lack the time, but if noone else will do it imma try my own luck in Poser. I think i can get the bones placed with some practice, for hands i will prolly just slide the shenmue textures over some pre-defined hands - the real tough part will be creating the modifiers/magnets for realistic facial animation, at least if you do it right that is.

Wow didnt realize you were aiming for facial animation.Now Iam curious what are you planning for the shenmue models then if your going through this trouble.I thought you just wanted a few passable renders here and there.

Well it's probably just my mentality to not be satisfied with 50% solutions. I want the whole cake. Not just a slice. I am aware that it will be impossible to have the time to convert all hundreds of figures to Poser characters, but at least a few key-characters like Ryo, Nozomi, Joy, Lan Di and Ren would be cool. I think if you already take the time to animate a scene and render animations it will be wasted effort if you don't do it perfectly. A good facial animation is the key element to any impressive result. And i am simply a bit curious to see ryo and Nozomi smile or express anger. This is how good stories are told, just animating mouths and adding eye blink simply ain't well enough. However as i said i dont have the experience and so it will cost me massive amounts of time to get anywhere. I had hopes someone here would be familiar with poser, but i will probably ask the people at renderosity.com - many professionals with much experience over there.


For a small camerapath animation or stills the solid models are well enough, but in this fashion they can not be used for any serious animation.

However - i am looking forward to all creations from you guys - even if our paths are probably splitting up here i am already curious what you will come up with next. I am sure you can also do interesting animations or stills with Softimage, roboface or whatever. Post some images/Videos if you can, for the sake of Shenmue! ;)

[shengoro86]

Awesome! Im happy to see people are back hacking away at this games. brings back good memories. Has anyone got the shenmue plugin for softimage?

[dotsona]

What I want to see is a way that we can perfect the techniques we are already using to rip models from the game. Once we have a process perfected we should write a tutorial on how it is done.

I would love to see a day where we could rip tons of characters and models from the game, rig them with bones, and then release them to the community so other users can have fun and create there own shenmue fan art and animations. I think we can pull it off once we perfect the ripping process. I think we are close, and it will all come together in time.

[shengoro86]

i think we will get it right. We are years into development on it and it seems close. I remember when it was impossible to even extract the files necessary to even get to the models, we have came so far by now, thanks to the community. Mad props to LanDC

[wude]

finally , i exported 3ds model with textures :o

[Master Kyodai]

finally , i exported 3ds model with textures :o

Ahhh, that already looks like ryo ^___^ A bit more tweaking and you got it i think...

Welcome to the next level.

[dotsona]

I managed to perfect ripping models from shenmue 2, and it was alot easier than I thought. Here is how I did it.

Step 1: Rip the models using 3d ripper dx. (Does NOT work on Vista Only XP)

Step 2: Import the model into max, and delete all the extra stuff, all you want is the character.

Step 3: Scale the character so the proportions are correct, make the character thicker and rotate the character so its standing vertically.

Step 4: Right click any part of the character and click "convert to editable mesh"

Step 5: In the right window pane click attach list, and click ok, this will attach all the parts together.

Step 6: Now since the model is one piece select all the verts and go down to the welding section in the right pane, first click target and then clicked selected. Congrats now your model is one solid piece.

Step 6: Now lets make it smooth, go to your modifers and click turbo smooth, change the iterations to 1 and make sure you check "explicit normals"

Step 7: Render and have fun.

[Master Kyodai]

Excellent work here, thanks for the tutorial! =)


<3

[dotsona]

I gave her a Halloween costume Happy Halloween (almost)

[LawXiu]

Good work. Can you animate anything yet?

[dotsona]

^^ We should be able to animate soon I hope, just need to do the rigs

I have put the female character up for download if anyone wants to take a look at it. Its a max file with the dds textures included.

Download it here: www.onlytransfers.com/Sales_Girl.zip

I also grabbed another girl, and I learned a lesson from this one, I was having abunch of texture issues out of no where, and I realized it was because I selected the checkbox's in 3d ripper, whatever you do make sure they are NOT checked. Additionally I learned each model takes several captures if you want to get it right, so don't be afraid to do it a few times to get the model to come out. Here is a cafe worker that I grabbed, took me 3 attempts, I had to weld the legs a bit, and for some reason her pants color looks odd

[Spoonfan]

Oh dear, it looks like she had a little accident.

[dotsona]

Ok last uploads for the night (its now 5am) finally a real character and one of my favorites Fangmei


(She looked to sad to be Fangmei so I photoshoped her face to look happier (liquefy tool to be specific to push pixels)