FreeGameDev

Ryzom, an online MMORP have kindly released their engine with an open licence and all their content, including the source Max files with a Creative Commons License Attribution-Share. You can download the art assets from http://media.ryzom.com. Its a 1.5gb download, but the torrent is pretty fast. You can also search and download the models in drips and drabs. The 2D graphics are of a very high quality and there are many animated Max models, made with Physique. I have only had a quick look but there are many humanoids, animal/monster models, including sea monsters. I want a lipleurodon, and there is one model close.

I quickly tried to export an animated model as md5, but the exporter crapped out, exporting as smd the meshes were lost, but animations retained, and as Milkshape models the skeleton and mesh were OK but the animation suffered from mucked up influences. I found I colud rerig the models and the animation were OK.

This is a tremendous opputunity. Some sort of project that collectively involved the cube community in converting and configuring the models into 'Cube ready forms' would be wonderful.

Any thoughts or ideas? Anyone able to help?

Converting them to a usable format has actually been the show stopper for all the time since they were released a few years back.

There have been some attempts like:
https://github.com/NeoSpark314/blenderNel3dImport
https://sites.google.com/site/freeryzom/

But both have seen little progress.

Thanks for the links. As you say they don't seem to have made much progress, but I think there approach is flawed. Indeed anything that involves Blender is generally flawed.

I think if I can rerig them then they should work. Rerigging a model is small potates compared to making a mesh, texturing it, rigging a skeleton then animating it. My first approach will be:

Max ---> Exp Milkshape model (bunged up influences on mesh) -----> Misfit cubed (fix influences) ----> MD5 for cube games.

If that doesn't work I may try SMD export, the animation come out OK but the mesh doesnt come out, it's the first time smd export from Max has stuffed up, usually its been a life saver. Something to do with the Physique I think. It may be one of the other skeletally based fromat (eg fbx) may be better. .

I will have a go next week and report back.

You could possibly have better luck with IQM, as exporters for that format are generally maintained due to its open source nature.

The problem is out of Max with the animations stuffing up.

The Blender guys are trying to make an importer for the distributable model files. They don't appear to have made much progress.

This is the best I have managed out of Max as a Milkshape file, this is a 2MB mp4 of the 'clapclap' seamonster http://teamxbow.org/cube/models/clapclap.mp4 being viewed in Misfit Cubed.

I haven't tried any smd again, nor any other formats. I think if I rerig it, it will be OK. I will have a try over the week. I will look at the humanoid models, too. Someone who knows Max and physique may be able to work out a better way. Still, a couple of hours of rigging to get a nicely animated, well textured model is'nt bad.

What about collada? Chances it works are probably low, but could be worth a try.

I tried fbx export, with this it gave a warning pointing to problems exporting the Physique Deformation, then churned out a stuffed up model. I then deleted Physique from the model, but there was now no connection between the bones and the mesh. So it seems if you want to use the models you are going to have to replace the Physique modifier in Max or rerig an exported model in another package.

There is not a lot of great interest for a mek game, so I'm not going to pursue it for the moment.

cdxbow {l Wrote}:There is not a lot of great interest for a mek game, so I'm not going to pursue it for the moment.

Mek?

charlie {l Wrote}:

cdxbow {l Wrote}:There is not a lot of great interest for a mek game, so I'm not going to pursue it for the moment.

Mek?

If by Mek you mean Mech then yes, there is great interest in Mech games.

Mechanized walking tanks? Hell yeah!

Or whatever you were thinking...

We try to use Mek, rather than Mech or battlemech because of copyright reasons, there has been some very nasty, game stopping litigation from toy companies protecting what they regard as there IP. Hence Mek, MekArcade, Meka.....

I will try to work out a better way of converting the Ryzom assets, I think the best solution will involve doing something with the Physique modifier in Max, that allows an export that maintains the model integrity, the second best would be rerigging the an exported model, even that would be a big saving of modelling time. If I get a chance and feel particularily maschocistic I might try rerigging an exported model to see if it works OK.

I completely disagree about the Blender comment as due to the pure volume of assets it would be unrealistic to convert the assets by hand (e.g. re-rigging them etc.) and Blender compatibility is the only way to ensure long term accessability (just think about the problems you had with different Max versions).

However if I was to convert a limited number of meshes by hand, I would probably try to export the animations from Max as "motion-capture" data .bvh and re-apply the animations to a new rig in Blender.

bvh data applied to a rerigged model in Blender should work, it's unfortunate every solution involves rerigging, but its a lot less doing it all from scratch. A max wiz may know how to do it 'better' by doing something to the Physique modifier and having the the things export intact. There could be some little checkbox hidden away on those Max roll ups that if you tick it, everything exports OK. I had that experience trying to retexture a mek model from our first artist, I spent months trying, and it was only when I stumbled upon the pelt checkbox and ticked it that I could finally do UVW editing.

cdxbow {l Wrote}:bvh data applied to a rerigged model in Blender should work, it's unfortunate every solution involves rerigging, but its a lot less doing it all from scratch. A max wiz may know how to do it 'better' by doing something to the Physique modifier and having the the things export intact. There could be some little checkbox hidden away on those Max roll ups that if you tick it, everything exports OK. I had that experience trying to retexture a mek model from our first artist, I spent months trying, and it was only when I stumbled upon the pelt checkbox and ticked it that I could finally do UVW editing.

A lot of learning on computers is simply clicking around and finding out what does what.