[Weirdo.]

QUOTE (wahgah @ Apr 11 2010, 11:17)

just a thought but would it be possible to find pedestrians from gta iv and convert them to vice and use them, just with a slight retexture? I know it would be a lot of work but the end result would be a higher quality ped and player even.

Oh my, what a horrid idea. It's much, much, easier to convert III peds to VC. If you want IV peds in GTA: LC then you're on your own.

[Craig Kostelecky]

Looks like he's been busted. If anybody can get in contact with him outside the forums that would help.

Although ped conversion could be useless if ModelingMan can figure out his automation.

And there's never a problem bumping any category in this forum. Every topic is open game (except the locked ones of course).

And yes, we're going for a GTA III conversion. Any work from IV would be an unofficial add-on.

[ModelingMan]

QUOTE (Craig Kostelecky @ Apr 11 2010, 22:17)

Although ped conversion could be useless if ModelingMan can figure out his automation.

About that, I think I may have posted this screenshot at the time I did it, but this demonstrates the conversion of Claude to VC purely through copying of the original data with a skeleton added. Obviously, rotations are off on certain parts of the body but this is due to me creating the bone matrix based upon the frames of the III model. The solution I've came to is to make a program which loads in III ped models, automates what I did by hand then allow the manual rotation of body parts (or if all the peds have the exact same rotation problems just automate the rotations).



Now cutscene actor heads... There's 2 solutions I can think of. Since VC doesn't contain the RenderWare functions for loading and using the .anm format then the solution is to either 1) recreate the neccesary RW functions or 2) convert the .anm to .ifp format. Weighing the pros and cons of both solutions, the first solution would be the most "authentic" in terms of using the same model as the ingame ped but with the cutscene head (attached through the more "authentic" way of using opcodes). With the help of a new plugin for IDA the process of recreating functions from assembly can go a bit quicker (the plugin generates C code from assembly; messy code, but is a better reference to work from than assembly).

Since I'm eager to begin working on this I'll try and spare some time to start it.

Craig's edit: they fixed the img tag, so that's all I changed

This post has been edited by Craig Kostelecky on Monday, Apr 12 2010, 18:24

[Craig Kostelecky]

I see nothing wrong with that image

It looks like you've got the right ideas. I look forward to seeing what comes of it.

[ModelingMan]

Here is my first attempt at automated conversion of peds. Download it here.



You will see there are some glitches; well there's two which I can see. The arms are offset slightly, this seems to be to do with the animations, and the feet go through the ground, this is due to the toe bones being at the same position as the feet bones (easy to fix).

With some tweaks, a full conversion should be ready soon.

Edit: It seems someone other than Hammer created the ped.ifp in the current LC files. Using Hammer's tool to convert animations would probably get rid of the arms glitch.

This post has been edited by ModelingMan on Saturday, Jun 5 2010, 20:14

[spaceeinstein]

I don't think it's the animation that's the problem.

[ModelingMan]

Ah you see that's due to me having to add extra bones. The VC animation data for the clavicle bones will cause the arms to move more than they should. Currently I have the clavicle bones set to the same position and orientation as the upper arm bones which evidently isn't a good idea. I guess I'll need to tweak it.

[Craig Kostelecky]

I really look forward to seeing the results of your work here. Good luck.

[ModelingMan]

Today I've spent a considerable amount of time looking into using III ped models directly whilst still retaining compatibility with original VC peds. It seems very possible and not too complicated. There is alot of code that needs to be overidden but that's to be expected with such a hack.

The way it will work is by loading two ped ifp files (original VC one and a modified III one which has the extra animations necessary (bike, chainsaw, etc.)), then whenever an animation is to be played there will be a check on the model to see which type it is (VC or III) and play the appropriate animation. The extra animations which III doesn't have can be converted automatically.

There is more functionality which needs to be altered in order for this to work. There is a class in GTA called CPedIK which deals with things like aiming a gun, looking behind, etc. The way it does this in VC is by looking for specific bones on a model and applying transformations to them (e.g. "look behind" transforms the upper torso, neck and head). III does the same thing but to each body part. This class' methods in VC must be altered to also be compatible with III models. Again, whenever a CPedIK method is called there will be a check to see which type of model is being processed and the appropriate transformations will be made to the model.

There is probably more functionality which needs to be altered, that will be discovered along the way (when the game crashes that is).

Another thing to note is cutscenes. The original III cutscene .ifp files will be compatible and would of course have to be used if I manage to get all this working properly. Also the .anm files shouldn't be hard to get working also.

I reckon by the end of this week I should have some visible progress, but hopefully I'll get it done sooner.

[Craig Kostelecky]

Good luck James.

[Shadow-Link]

Can't wait to see some progress of this MM! Good luck.

[ModelingMan]

After much work I've come to the conclusion that it's far too much work to make VC compatible with III ped models. Instead I've been trying to tweak my current automation process. Here's a package containing all peds converted automatically; I've noticed a few have got glitches, whether that's to do with animations or the models themselves (which is more likely) I'm unsure yet. Quite a handful of the models actually look pretty good, I'm quite surprised to be honest.

There's a few more things which will need to be done to make these models fully usable; translating the position of the foot bones so that the ped's feet doesn't go through the ground, translate the finger bones so that weapons are are placed properly onto the ped's hands and converting all animations from III (getting rid of the clavicle and neck parts of the animations).

So have a test at those peds and let me know what you think.



This post has been edited by ModelingMan on Saturday, Jun 5 2010, 20:15

[Craig Kostelecky]

Great! I was kind of expecting that the fully automated process wouldn't work, so that doesn't disappoint me. I'm glad to see that the remaining peds have gotten at least a rough conversion. I'll include those in the 3.1 Beta when I get time in the next few days.

[Frank.s]

I don't understand why the lc team has put so much work into converting gtaiii's blocky segmented peds.
Why haven't you simply rigged the skeletal gtaiii peds from the xbox? Its a win-win situation, no weird bugs and some better quality.

Edit: Yeah they will have to be re-rigged to work, i can supply any xbox files if you want them and if no team member has them.

This post has been edited by frank.s on Thursday, May 27 2010, 19:25

[Craig Kostelecky]

I wasn't aware the XBox version had a skeletal system. I'm assuming they're not directly compatible with the VC engine on the PC though. So if we could figure it out and it's easy then yes, that would be the way to go. However, if it's not that easy, then we'll probably stick with what we have. I also don't know if any team members has access to those files. I know my time is running out that I can dedicate to this mod again (about 6 more weeks at most) so I don't want to push the final release beyond that.

I'm open to the idea though.

Quick question for ModelingMan before I update the peds in the game. Should I replace all of the peds with the ones you've just provided or only the unconverted ones? I'll be backing up all of the old ones anyway, so it doesn't really matter I suppose.

[ModelingMan]

As I said, there are a few peds which have some glitches, I haven't listed them yet though. Also some of these automated peds actually look better than the current ones; manually rigging the III peds can have undesirable effects like disrupting the normals or deforming the original shape of the ped. So to answer your question, it's really up to yourself. I know you don't have much time on your hands to test them out so for now I'll say these peds are at beta stage until I solve what went wrong with some of them and fix them.

As for the XBOX version, yes it does have skeletal models. And you're right in saying they aren't directly compatible with VC. The geometry data in the DFFs is native to the XBOX, but luckily the XBOX has a subset of the D3D8 API, therefore not making it particularly difficult to convert the geometry to the generic DFF format for use on the PC. Someone already made an importer for 3dsmax I believe (think it might've been AK-73), but that would involve having to rig the models again. Automation is the more favourable approach and it does seem possible.

It's funny that this discussion about the XBOX version was brought up, I had borrowed the GTA trilogy from a friend last weekend and was going to try and convert the models as an unofficial mod for LC, but if they can be used officially that'd be great and as frank.s said they are of higher quality.

[Craig Kostelecky]

These files were included in your archive that did not exist in the LC image. Is there a reason they weren't there before? And should they still be left out?

CODE

butler col3 cop2 darkel goon novy plaster (only txd) stu_man

EDIT: I just played a bit (enough to see each boss at least once) and I'm impressed. They look good. Great work!

I will try to upload Beta 3.1 soon so everybody can test these peds easily.Beta 3.1 is up.

This post has been edited by Craig Kostelecky on Friday, May 28 2010, 04:02

[ModelingMan]

Since they're unused it's probably better to leave them out. I didn't bother to delete any unused peds.

[Craig Kostelecky]

Here's the first one I've noticed, although it may be an issue with animation.

[ModelingMan]

QUOTE (Craig Kostelecky @ May 28 2010, 19:37)

Here's the first one I've noticed, although it may be an issue with animation.

Yeah. The funny thing is, it seems to be female peds suffering from the most problems. I've only seen one male ped (one of the worker guys with the grey jumpsuit) with a problem; his arms are on the inside of his torso.

I'm still unsure as to why this is happening; possibly something to do with how the matrices of each bone is updated, but if that was the case all the models would have problems. I'll convert some III animations (specifically the female ones) and see if it's anything to do with that.