GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[Fillerthefreak]

I recently found out about the discontinued Softimage Mod Tool. It's basically the Softimage editor (Autodesk's pre-maya editor) made for game modding. It's free, and it supports FBX somewhat well, as I could get PD models imported/exported, the issue is with animations, as they're not 100% accurate, but they're miles better than any other program I've used.

So, I've found out that using this editor, the bones are 100% intact right, unlike other editors. My breakthrough found that Softimage mod tool also exports into .smd, which works losslessly in Blender imports, unlike the their finicky .fbx imports.

In short, you can import a .fbx into the mod tool, then export as .smd for blender, though, it's pretty weird how softimage's .smd export works, as you need to play around with what model parts you want to export.

Then, once you have the .smd files into Blender, you can export back to .fbx with Blender, and load it into the editor. Here is an original animation I made for the GF64 Uzi, it was edited over the GE:X ZMG.



Here it is inside the editor, sorry for the low frame-rate. Used a poor quality avi-to-gif website.



It's 100% possible to make animations for PD/GE:X with Blender. I've tested it, and it seems to work okay. The only issue I can see is that I made a two-hand animation on a single-handed model, which causes issues with the first half of the reload animation, and is my fault. Also, dunno where to put the second magazine model, maybe outside the player view?


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[Wreck]

I think you use a combination of moving the second magazine outside of view, as well as an animation microcode to hide the part number when not needed, or show it when it is required. Like always, I would suggest looking at some PD animations to see how Rare handled things. Obviously Pavarini has the best knowledge on this currently, as he's responsible for the wonderful animations in GE-X.

Great to see you are able to begin creating your own weapon animations. That may be very helpful for future custom guns or ports from other games (like the TWINE models).

[Fillerthefreak]

Thank you.

I was planning on porting over the GF64 models to PD, but I'm not exactly 100% sure how to make custom models yet.

If it's possible, I would make a GF64-X multiplayer patch, but that would take months work to do.
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[Wreck]

I'm sure players would enjoy that, especially with Simulants to battle against. There are people here who could give you some guidance along the way, should you choose to pursue this idea. Characters should not be too difficult, as I think the model edit tools could deal with it easier now. Backgrounds aren't too bad, but clipping needs adjusting and walls built. Weapons, if you want them animated, is a bit trickier. Each individual moving part needs to be separated, placed into an existing PD model file for a good starting place, and then animated. That may be where the real effort lies.

[AL64inthedark]

I would someone importing a weapon doing a video tutorial, recording himself and commenting at the same time. Such a video could be useful for many of us.
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[Fillerthefreak]

I assume if GF64X was a thing, the animations would look sorta like that?
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[SATURN_81]

Softimage may be a very powerful editor and maybe compatible with many things and files, I do not know what ease of use and learning it will have with respect to other 3D editors, because I would like to find 3D software for easy learning use and compatibility in general.

those animations of the weapons are great.

Of course Wreck is right that some of us would like to see animations and weapons of other games running in PD, which turns out to be the most useful rom for this because it has a variety of features. Maybe one day you can get the Turgun Dinosaur Hunter Machinegun weapon and use the Reaper gun's spin animation, modify the sound of the weapon's engine and the sound of the shot. we also have the bow with arrows of games like turok or Zelda OOT, maybe we can replace the crossbow to make it possible.

and also Wreck is right that we would like to see all or part of GF64 in GEX.

I agree that one or several tutorials would be needed. A specific tutorial for PD weapons that taught the basics and simple to replace a weapon with a very simple object would be great. then maybe other tutorials are needed to explain what to do after having managed to carry a weapon, such as modifying animations, sounds, thickness coloration and measurements of the rays fired by each weapon.

[CrashOveride]

I strongly suggest you use Softimage XSI 2015, XSI mod tool is VERY broken for the purposes of GE modding. I also suggest you directly export to FBX instead of exporting to SMD and then importing to blender, likely cause of the animation issues.
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[Fillerthefreak]

@siul

I've actually noticed it myself. As the animations become very jittery when exported, the easiest way to fix this was simply removing the broken bones keyframes, and let frame interpolation fix it. Though, I'd rather not spend however much Maya costs just for editing GE/PD animations.

As for importing animations, I export them from Blender, which I've had issues before due to using non-standard rigs, but it seems to work better now that I've used different rig setups that match pretty much perfectly.
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[CrashOveride]

Fillerthefreak wrote:

@siul I've actually noticed it myself. As the animations become very jittery when exported, the easiest way to fix this was simply removing the broken bones keyframes, and let frame interpolation fix it. Though, I'd rather not spend however much Maya costs just for editing GE/PD animations. As for importing animations, I export them from Blender, which I've had issues before due to using non-standard rigs, but it seems to work better now that I've used different rig setups that match pretty much perfectly.

I didn't say maya, I said softimage.
XSI is no longer sold anymore.
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[pavarini]

I had some success with Blender* in the past, maybe it'll help you with your animation issue. The only problem with my workflow is meshes are not enveloped so it's not entirely useful, but the animation keys are 99% matching to the original without glitches (comparison here, left is original).

To import:

Convert editor FBX export to 2013 FBX using Autodesk's standalone FBX converter (settings)
Import into Blender using default FBX import

To export:

Select the entire animation tree and export from Blender (settings)
Import into editor as FBX animation

If the editor complains about not finding any keys then the joint names were renamed to something that the editor didn't recognized. I hope this helps :)
* I tested with 2.79a and it didn't import the FBX files for some reason, 2.76 imports correctly.

[Trevor]

hmm, I had no idea the PPK looked so off when held in hand... Might need to have a look at that incase of such a project.

Trev
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[Fillerthefreak]

Every time I've converted to FBX 2013, I've been brought up with an error. I've had success with the Bos FBX converter, but model weights are broken there ins a similar fashion to your example.

The oddity is that when you export the .fbx that works with the editor, it oddly works when you re-import it, so something is definitely not right with the importer.

Either way, my workflow at least works with the editor, so I guess that's what matters. Even if it is a bit messy.
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[pavarini]

Have you tried 2.76's default FBX importer? Would copying the keys over to the SMD rig fix the issue?

[Wreck]

Filler, should you continue down this path and want to animate GF64 guns for use in PD / GE-X, we may be able to use some in GE-X as bonus weapons (cheat accessible). Depending on the weapon, you may even be able to use something Pavarini had made as the base, and tweak it to fit the new model, so the style remains pretty consistent throughout the game.