Archangel35757

This is where I stopped... it's pretty rough and still needs a lot of work. I was planning to make a Hoth and Endor version (with long camo coat)...

I started one a long time ago... still in my pile of WIPs to finish.

From what I've been told... only Scotland distinguishes between /hw/ and /w/ phonemes. But according to dictionary I believe it's proper to pronounce the "(h)w" sound... though many regions have merged the two. All those word pairs are pronounced similarly in my region of the US ( Or at least by me-- distinguishing the "wh"). They definitely can vary by region. Play these sounds: http://www.google.com/search?ei=8DqzU7ycHoeXqAb7qoKgBg&q=define+while&oq=define+while&gs_l=mobile-gws-serp.3...35018.37930.0.38915.6.6.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0....0...1c.1.48.mobile-gws-serp..6.0.0.QWR1jUOCog4 http://www.google.com/search?site=&source=hp&ei=TDyzU_SkA8uKqAan24HwAw&q=define+wile&oq=define+wile&gs_l=mobile-gws-hp.3..0l3j0i10l2.5005.13290.0.14394.17.16.0.3.3.0.637.4456.2-1j3j2j4.10.0....0...1c.1.48.mobile-gws-hp..5.12.4063.3.dyfSBEMTZX8

For all of you English speakers... let's have a little fun... Please tell me if you make a distinction when you pronounce these word pairs... do you pronounce the 'h' sound as "(h)w" versus just "w" and what English speaking region are you from? In the Southern USA we do distinguish these two phonemes: /hw/ vs /w/

I meant using Carcass... but please try the FBX2Ghoul2 converter as well.

@@Psyk0Sith -- could you verify if any UV seams exist on your models from either Max7 or Max9?

What about when using 3ds Max 8? Does it generate UV seams? I chatted with Rich on jacoders and he said he was not planning to add dotXSI to Noesis-- I was dismayed... like you I wish he would... because I'm curious about some older XSI 1.1 animations released from Star Trek Elite Forces. But I still have plans to write an updated dotXSI importer for 3ds Max... finish the WIP I have started.

Yes... it's good to have all the animations in a common usable format that can be imported into Maya, Blender, and other 3D tools... however to be truly usable in 3dsMax they need to be turned into animation clips (much like @@minilogoguy18 did) and stored in the 3dsMax "Reservoir" as .XAF files. This is something I am planning to do. root.xsi is the root skeleton pose... and you can safely omit this one because we have this covered by our uploaded skeleton files. Or if you want we can send it to you as a root.fbx

@@minilogoguy18 -- I agree about reimporting the GLM and keeping the skin weights to the skeleton... I think the best way to do that would be to open the skeleton and then merge/import your GLM into the scene... but the thing about re-importing a GLA is that it is half-precision and will have precision loss and possibly jitter. It would be best to convert all of the released dotXSI animations to the proper FBX format with proper coordinate axes. I will take an action to check out what Asgarath did in regards to this...

@@DT85 -- but there's nothing special in exporter for Max2013/2014... it's all the same. Latest change was that in the game data template for the shader file. Can you go back and check max 8?

The feet don't look right-- too much "heel"

Maybe you could write a standalone EXE patch routine that takes as input the Carcass GLM file and a text file containing the smoothing group data (this data could be in the dotXSI file itself-- to avoid having to export another file?) and run the patch on the GLM... just a thought.

Yeah, I agree... @@DT85 verified the XSI format is fine. It seems that it breaks during the Carcass-to-Ghoul2 conversion. I really wish Raven would release the Carcass source code. For now it seems the process will be: 1. Export your model and animation to dotXSI. 2. Convert to Ghoul2 using Carcass. 3. Re-export your model root pose to FBX. 4. Convert FBX to GLM using @@Xycaleth's converter. 5. Replace the GLM with the fixed one. Does that seem about right?

Are the textures in the same folder as the model in question? Sometimes converters expect textures to be in same directory for ease of coding...

Someone already has-- checkout the latest version of Noesis from Rich Whitehouse at www.richwhitehouse.com Should do that and much more!

Wait, this view perspective is the standard root pose isn't it? How about posting this view angle for the stances in question to see what the feet look like?

From that perspective maybe this is due to the direction of specular highlights on the top of the feet... maybe swap the spec direction?

Yes, I know this is how they originally look... I'm just saying the feet look dicked up in those poses-- like the left and right feet are swapped, no? Wouldn't you agree? And should we not fix this?

Is it just me... or doesn't it look like the toes on both feet are opposite what they should be (right is left; left is right-- or maybe the entire foot)? Looks like the tarsal bones have been rotated improperly in those stances... I've noticed this before-- maybe we should investigate & fix them?

Working on the head mesh... hopefully I'll have something to show soon. I've also mapped all of the FacePoser phoneme ID's to their respective International Phonetic Alphabet font symbol... so I can map the identified IPA phonemes from PRAAT to FacePoser values.

So what information is there in the Ghoul2 format that could be used to fix these seams within the renderer? How would it distinguish between what should be hard edges and what should be smoothed?

Could someone modify the lava Shader to do a proper second stage so that the deeper crack areas glow brighter? So it's not a uniformly applied glow across entire Shader (as it is currently)? Also, @@DT85 & @@Xycaleth -- regarding UV seams... are these UV seams smooth/blended as desired in 3dsMax and then broken along seams by Ghoul2 or what? Could the renderer code reapply smoothing based on smoothing groups? Are these UV seams present/apparent in the XSIViewer?

It still rains in the desert sometimes, no?

Ok... so I found my answer-- when viewed from the front, the ears are as long as the distance from the top of the eyes to the bottom of the nose (ref. "Drawing the Head & Figure" by Jack Hamm). So I just need to tweak it a little more...