Holy Grail Of Shenmue Tools Found!

[dotsona]

Great News!

Well today is even more exciting than yesterday, because now we know exactly how the .mt5 file is constructed thanks to Master Kyodai's tip on a French developer who was working on creating a Shenmue 1 model extractor. After finding the forum (where the developer posts at) we discovered links to the plugin with detailed documentation on how it works. So essentially we now have a plugin that can extract Shenmue 1 models from the game! (It even rips textures to) As well as detailed documentation so the tool can be improved later on so other developers can add more advance capabilities.

Currently the developer I am in contact with is taking a look at the tool and is going to do some testing tomorrow. He is very impressed by it and I think we both know how big of a leap forward this will be for the modding community. I'll let you know once he gets it all up and running. Here are the links to the documentation and plugin where you can read more about it.

*Note: Currently I have not tested the plugin since it requires you to setup ruby, which as of now I am having trouble with it. I am waiting for the developer to give out proper instructions on how to set it up correctly*

The structure of the mt5 format and how it works:
http://abdessel.iiens.net/dreamcast/mt5/


Pictures of models extracted using the plugin:
http://abdessel.iiens.net/dreamcast/mt5/img/index.html


More details will be provided later on, for now I am going to celebrate with a beer ;)

[wude]

thanks, great news

[Hazuki Legend]

Wow that's great stuff, keep it up guys.

[Bluecast]

So glad we have you guys around.
Finally we have some members who can make mods and such and not go crazy on us.
Also glad it's a dedicated group.(not taking anything away from LanDC's great work)

[Martin]

Yeah, I love seeing all this 3D modelling stuff on the forums. I really enjoyed the other thread with the weird picture of Nozomi.

[dotsona]

Thanks for the support guys Keeps us motivated.

[KiBa]

Excellent work. Thank you.

[Andy Hughes]

Great work guys! Will be nice to see some more mod's in the future

[OL]

Holy Grail Of Shenmue Tools Found!

You found Goro?
Where was he?

[Themantheypushedtoofar]

Well, I hope this means we are all one step closer to be playing Shenmue 3

[LawXiu]

Well, I hope this means we are all one step closer to be playing Shenmue 3

No, not really.

[Anthony817]

Hi guys, I am very impressed with your model ripping progress. I registerd just to let you know that you have one more guy backing you on this!

I see that you guys are ripping full buildings and such, and I was directed here from a post I found on a youtube video comments on Shenmue 2010 fan made game.

So, are you guys affiliated with them, and/or, would you guys use these models in that game or what? Frankly Ryo's face on said game should be used from the real game files, it looks a little off to me.

I see much potential for the use of these models in other games such as Garry's mod for setting up comic scenes.

So can you guys say for sure what you will use your tallent for? Because I want to play with these models in Garry's mod so bad! ;)

Anyway, keep up the super work fellas and I will be keeping a close eye on your progress!

Peace.

[dotsona]

News about Shenmue model extractor:
I have some semi bad and good news. We found that the model extractor is actually for linux, which is why we were having trouble running it on windows. Here is what the developer that I am in contact with had to say about it.

The actual conversion is done using a C++ program written for Linux. The author has provided the source code, but not a binary executable file. This is compounded by the fact none of my machines currently have a Linux distro set up for development.

He also mentions:
The ruby code is just a script for correctly controlling the process.This means that out the box to run it you need a Linux environment set up for C++ development with Ruby installed. Not so good for less technical people!

He then talks about creating a windows version of the application.

My plan is to build a Windows version from the source code he provides, then test it manually (no Ruby), then if it works, perhaps right a quick batch file (or maybe python script) to do the equivalent work of the Ruby code.

Shouldn't be too much work from the skim I took of the code, the author seems to be a good enough programmer to have written most of it platform generic


@Hey Anthony817, welcome to the forums. Yes we plan on releasing the models to the community so they can be used to create fan content (such as comics, mods, movies etc) so yes things like garrys mod would be a good example. We are not affiliated however with the Shenmue mod you are talking about though. (I think that mod is dead anyway)[/b]

[Master Kyodai]

I'd rate these as good news. Well obviously we both didn't get that it was written for linux, so thats already a heads-up.

And that the programmer guy might be able to compile a win32 binary is also great news. I just hope he won't rely on python too much as it's also extremely uncommon for less technical people. If he can build a monolithic win32.exe i can make a gui for it, i have some experience with that. I tried to contact the Shenmue 2010 people (If there are several people at it anyways, i only found contact address for one of them) and just didn't get a response. As promising it is, the project disappeared without leaving anything usable for us.


Well we haven't really released anything but a figure or two yet as the results are still not "perfect". In Shenmue 1 we still have that backface culling effect and for Shenmue 2 i personally also had excessive problems with low res figures, missing polygons and much more.


But as Dotsuna mentioned - we now have a second independant solution for ripping and have much faith in this branch. The direct mt5/mt7 model ripping would definitely eliminate the current problems with missing polygons and distorted geometry.

I will probably make a repository for my vue files, but they do suffer from missing polygons, so they really only look good from one angle.

[dotsona]

Yeah I suppose it is good news, we are for sure making progress and I think this extractor is the best asset that we have. I am hoping that he will be able to extract the rigs from the model as well, for all I know it might already do that, but since it has not yet been tested we don't know for certain.