New Character Model File Formats

[Mongrel]

besides, OpenGL has pretty small limits on some stack depths

True, but not that small. My Geforce 4 has a modelview stack depth of 32. I doubt that there's a model that would need more than that.

The main advantage of this is, that you're doing all the transformations in hardware and hardware processing = goooooood. Of course, you could also write a vertex shader for this. Isn't very hard with GLslang and works with Geforce 3+.

[jbb]

Nice work guys
I found I had a book already which described a lot of this for the directx skinned mesh stuff at least and this sounds very similar.

[wyndam]

Heyas -- new to the boards.

I've spent some time working on the EQ .wld format files attempting to decode them, and it sounds like the entire structure of the file format has already been mapped out. Any chance there's a reference to this information somewhere? Source code is also fine.

My goal is to be able to import the zone and character models into Blender so I can render some images for tactical maps and the like. However, there's two problems.

One is that it is my understanding WLD armatures define the X-axis to travel down the length of the bone. Blender defines this as the Y-axis instead. I had lots of fun dealing with the Quaternions, but I got the meshes to deform properly by brute force. However, this won't work at all for the skeleton animations because of this difference in definiton.

Second is that I have NO idea how to even unpack the EQG files into useable files, much less attempt to decode the format just yet. If someone could point me in the direction of how I can unpack the files it would be grand. Beyond that, I'd love to get cracking on the file formats for the new zones and models.

[Windcatcher]

The newest reference to .WLD files can be found here:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/e...c.pdf?download

Good luck...

[wyndam]

Hey, thanks a ton for the reference. Looks exactly like what I've been wanting for the WLD stuff. Still no info on the new EQG format just yet? I'd like to at least be able to unpack the files in the archive.

Another question:

In the WLD Reference, under Fragment 0x12 -- it lists the 8 elements of each Data1 Item to be:

RotateDenominator
RotateXNumerator
RotateYNumerator
RotateZNumerator

ShiftXNumerator
ShiftYNumerator
ShiftZNumerator
ShiftDenominator

I interpreted the first four to be a Quaternion defining the rotation. Using Blender, I deformed the Mesh Vertices using this method (converting the Quats to Matrices), and here's what it looks like:



Or the Wireframe View Here:



I'm assuming you got the same or similar results using the method outlined in the WLD documentation?

[Windcatcher]

Did you download the newest version? I thought I revised that section. The first four values are actually Euler values that describe a rotation about an arbitrary axis (what I guess you mean by a quaternion). The results you show are exactly what I get when I treat them as such...you're on the right track.