[WIP] .render_model exporter (First custom model ingame!)

Ok well its been REALLY hard work considering I can't edit or even open these tags, figuring out the tag structure mostly in nothing but hex. But finally i got my exporter to get a model that will load and not crash sapien or fail to read it. I know its a bit early, but I want to keep everyone posted on this. Right now, my approach is to make a .gbxmodel -> .render_model exporter to save myself allot of work as the 2 formats are similar, and I can easily get nodes, markers, etc. But I may create a direct exporter/ model compiler from a source format like .JMS sooner or later.

I still have LOTs of bugs to work out, but I finally got something that works and loads ingame.

http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z...2-36-14-21.jpg
http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z...2-37-18-15.jpg
http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z...2-47-56-42.jpg
Props to anyone who can identify these 2 custom models of mine. Sorry that they currently look so ugly ingame. :P
Right now I just have it attached to a scenery model. I still have to sort out the ordering of indices strips, which is why the polygons and texture coords look garbled. Took me quite a bit of time to figure it out with the lightmap geometry model data.

I plan on adding an option to edit the tag data before exporting such as what shaders to use, what sections belong to which LOD, marker tweaking, etc... Or maybe someone might find it in their hearts to be kind enough to release a patch for guerrilla to unlock some of the tag editing restrictions. Until then, I'm going to continue to find small work arounds for users to getting custom content ingame. After I complete this and get it polished off, I'm going to attack the collision tags next. As of now, these just have box based collision.

I'l be sure to keep you all posted!



UPDATE!!!!
Fixed some stuff! See post #52 for details

Amazing work, i know the first ones your custom spartan but im not sure what the other is.

Edit: are vertex weights also being injected?

First model : your H3CE biped
Second Model : Joanna Dark for this mod

Congrats with this exporter !

yet another thing I love you for :P

Fucking awesome work. This community and its current situation would be fucked without this. So many mods and projects have been given a shred of hope. Thanks for the hard work, Jah :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Choking Victim

Amazing work, i know the first ones your custom spartan but im not sure what the other is.

Edit: are vertex weights also being injected?

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Node weights are also going to be supported. That won't be much of a challenge compared to some other things. But only just a maximum of 2 weights per vertex as .gbxmodel only supports 2 when .render_model supports 4. When I create my own model exporter pluggin, I will have it support 4 node weights

About everything that is supported with .gbxmodel is planned to be supported in the .render_model with my exported when completed.

Woah, great work jahrain :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Love De Lux

First model : your H3CE biped
Second Model : Joanna Dark for this mod

Congrats with this exporter !

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1) correct.
2) Close!!! but WRONG! :P
I did however, model some of the pd source's bipeds.

^ whoa i didnt know that o_O


Dam 3d whores :(

Very nice work! The first is obviously your spartan biped from Prime, and i think the second is the woman you modelled in this thread (http://gbxforums.gearboxsoftware.com...ad.php?t=46841) but i don't think the pictures work anymore so i can't be sure:p.

Just had a quick look at the render_model tag and it seems they used a varient of the JMS format in Halo 2 so maybe an altered version of bluestreak would give you the information to compile, rather than the gbxmodel - render_model route.

Hey, some progress! Nice job jahrain!