Chrono Compendium
Kajar Laboratories - Fan Works and Submissions => Chrono Cross Modification => Topic started by: FaustWolf on May 29, 2008, 05:20:03 pm
-
As it so happens, I did a complete rip of all Chrono Cross battle model textures from Disc 1 as I was going through the files dumped by Yazoo's tools-as-modified-by-Ramsus. But lo and behold, as I'm investigating a problem with Flea's texture as applied to the battle model, I find that all my rips except those of the player characters turned out bad.
Now that I've developed a surefire method for ripping the battle textures, I've decided to offer a (hopefully) user-friendly guide to anyone who might be interested in pitching in with capturing these beautiful works of art. In addition to furthering the Just Cause of viewing Chrono Cross models, anyone brave enough to step forward will be taking the first baby steps into the world of PlayStation videogame hacking.
Here's the guide. It contains links to everything else you'll need. Be sure to download the .RAR texture archive linked on the first page of the tutorial. They have been modified to facilitate the acquisition of 100% accurate rips.
http://rapidshare.com/files/118657928/Chrono_Cross_Texture_Guide.doc.html
If firewalls prevent anyone from downloading from Rapidshare, I can make alternate arrangements. Unfortunately it's just over the size limit for a forum attachment, even zipped, but I figure it'll be seen by guests who might also benefit from the knowledge contained within.
I'm taking care of OUTs 3265 and 3598, so please ignore those. They seem to be stored in a truly bizarre variation of the Classic TIM format, and I'm still studying it.
Er, don't ask why Tethys from Fire Emblem 8 ended up partially narrating the guide. When a regular visitor to the Spriter's Resource writes a hacking tutorial, weird phenomena are bound to occur.
The file numbers range from 3214 through 3685. If you'd like to try capturing some textures, please claim a range of files beforehand so that myself and others do not step on your toes. I'll answer any questions that arise here.
EDIT: Shoot, Rapidshare's free download system is utterly horrible these days. The input code is so difficult to distinguish that I'm having problems downloading my own hosted files. I'm now migrating to SendSpace. Here's the guide again:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/a0x3m8
As far as actually submitting the captured textures, you should be able to fit about 10 to 12 in a zip file and attach it to your post. Post attachments can be up to 1024 KB in size.
-
Awsome! ok ok... for now i pick 3580-3624~ @.@ just a little for now just to see how fast i can do this XD. i wish everyone who participates the best of luck
Well i finished what i said @.@
3601 tho was a big texture @.@ i tried to follow the tutorial but my brain couldnt handle it @.@ lol. also 3598 color is a bit off... its not a big texture... idk... maybe its normal
[attachment deleted by admin]
-
Waaaait, Unaisis, are you doing your rips straight from the game dumps produced by the Ramsus/Yazoo tools? I have a link on the first tutorial page under "Things You'll Need" with a set of modified Chrono Cross enemy textures. The problem is, it seems to be impossible to make 100% accurate rips with the files as dumped in their original state; I went through and added "junk data" to the end of each file to help with proper alignment. You must capture the textures from that set, unfortunately. It's the best solution I can come up with for now.
The rips you did were as good as you could possibly do with the texture files in their original state, but unfortunately they aren't completely accurate, for the above-stated reason. But I want to make sure that you were not ripping from the .RAR modified texture set that's linked to within the guide itself; if you WERE using those, then I've got another problem, because Tile Molester may have some setting that ignores black space or something.
Sorry for the major inconvenience; I should have been explicit about this in my original post.
EDIT: I also see that I made an error in the settings summary portion of the guide, and now it's been fixed. New upload link in first post. Unaisis, I can cover the textures you already ripped if you want to try some new ones. There are plenty left.
-
::Flies around aimlessly due to the shock of much easier it is now:: @.@
Lol i must have missed that part in the tutorial XD! that must have explained how i was having a tough time getting the textures right... they also didnt look quite right ::Example Son-of-a-gun O.x:: anywho lol its np. lucky i did a small bit before i actually went head first into it XD
Its np i can redo the ones i did before~ ^.^ its not much :O
-
Huge thanks Unaisis. Let me know if you're still having difficulty with the "double" (large) enemy textures and we can go through that again in more depth in this thread. Go ahead and skip OUTs 3265 and 3598, because they're in some weird format -- they're like the large/double enemy textures in that multiple palettes are applied to them, but I'm still trying to figure out the format.
As a quick check to make sure everything's going smoothly, your Whoot texture should be 128x256 pixels, width x height. Same with Cupoid, I think. Many others will have those dimensions as well.
-
Alrighty, here we go XD ::Quicker than before btw :P lol::
[attachment deleted by admin]
-
YES, those are perfect rips. Excellent job, and thanks for your help! :lee:
-
You have my thanks also. We are venturing into the territory of repetitious, monotonous work. It is a hellish place, and I've been there way too many times thanks to the encyclopedia. Get a nice drink, play fast music (like the Sonic Rush soundtrack), and destroy it, is my advice to any others who would volunteer.
-
Ha, it appears that I accidently overwrote Royal Jelly's texture with junk data or something, so I'll get that one myself, along with Quadffid and Jelly Blubba, because those are odd.
-
i got 3622-3685 :o imma work my way down from 3580 today
[attachment deleted by admin]
-
Yes, everything looks perfect with the exception of Dario's palette -- somehow the lower texture pieces ended up off-color. I'll take care of Dario as well, since I can't remember off-hand if he has extra palettes tucked within the data or something.
-
Eeep i didnt see that lol, here i thought it was a perfect rip of a 2 texture model T.T
-
No biggie. Your help is mucho appreciated; if I have to go back and rip a couple textures, I still have way less to do than I did before, and now you have graphics-ripping skillz to boot. In some cases you can pop a game CD right into your CD drive and see the file archives, rip the archive and run it through Tile Molester, and come up with a bunch of pretty sprites and textures that aren't detectable with other tools.
-
i got 3499-3565 now, all seemed to go well... i noticed on the Sky dragon tho... some green appears of the right half of the texture when i set it to 540... i looked on the texture that i got from psxmulticonverter and i see the same green O.o
[attachment deleted by admin]
-
Yeah, it seems to be normal, and the UV maps just skip those pieces. Some enemy textures have bright red smeared over certain parts as well. It may have been a method by which the artist visualized how certain texture pieces were supposed to fit together, but that's a total guess.
-
EEK~ Sky dragon texture 2 is a bit short @.@ its 128x252 O.x lol fixed one attatched @.@
\\//
\\//
||
||
||
\ /
V
[attachment deleted by admin]
-
Interesting. So occasionally the two textures that compose a double texture may mismatch slightly in size. The extra pixel rows are definitely needed in that case for proper alignment with the UV map. Thanks!
-
Hay thar...
Some things I learned doing this.
You can modify the tmspec.xml file in Tile Molester to recognize the out format, and have it load the settings it needs up until you need to load the out file's own pallet.
You need to include the little nob of data at the end of the files or else the UVs won't line up.
I like TGA better than png, just because it seemed to work with blender better. in photoshop, I use selective color, choose black, and leave fuzziness at 0... Then I go to channels and press the "add mask" button to have it generate the alpha channel. then save the .tga file with alpha and 32bit. The resulting map should load right in.
And, in blender, if the "map to" panel has map to alpha selected...but for some reason this causes overdraw artifacts when you render... so to fix this, just click alpha again to turn it yellow, this button has three settings to allow for negative alpha channels, whatever the reason, just go into the texture dialog and select NegAlpha to to re-flip it to positive. doing this makes in not screw up.
I'll post my .xml file, and maybe someone who can code in the .jar file can add parameters to automate the out file process further. You just need to tell it how to load it's own color table for each file, should be easy right?
Just put the xml file in the tile molester folder and overwrite the one [back it up man] in there already. You should be able to just see .out files and load them, and it will make them 2d, 8-bit liner, and 256 wide for you. There is space in the xml file to add custom indexed pallets like the one used here, but it must be fixed for all out files, and to my knowledge they are different for every file. so yea, look into that .jar file to make it load dynamically.
[attachment deleted by admin]
-
I thought I would mention, the large firedragon texture doesnt line up at all with the exported UV map, it's way way off.
-
Excellent work cornettheory! I'll try out your .xml file then. Can you give us any more specifics on how the large Fire Dragon texture has been screwed up? Does my tutorial produce a totally misaligned texture in the large Fire Dragon's case, or is the model data itself screwed up somehow?
-
i've noticed that the UV maps are off for models with textures of 128x128 @.@ ::Easy fixe in cinema 4d but not sure about blender @.@::
[attachment deleted by admin]
-
Unaisis, care to take a look at the results of Vehek's test with Guile's field model here?
http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,5177.msg97464.html#msg97464
We might just have a general problem with 128x128 textures altogether, as opposed to a problem wtih the field models specifically. Did what Vehek ended up with look similar to the results you're getting with 128x128 battle model textures?
-
Similar :O The picture i have here is Miguel he had a 128x128 texture. he kinda has the same smooshed face
[attachment deleted by admin]
-
Wow, Miguel looks scary there. I'm almost positive that Luminaire's script somehow stretches the 128x128 textures upon input. This is actually my bad, because I thought during the initial stages of model investigation that all the textures would be 128x252 (later 128x256) for the battle models, so some adjustment to the import script's texture importation properties is probably all that's needed.
-
Hmm... correct me if I'm wrong, but the character textures' outs that are fresh-from-dump don't have the so-called junk data necessary to rip them properly, am I right?
The same problem with the enemy outs...
FLAGRANT EDIT: Ne'er ye mind.... I figured out the problem...
EDIT2: OK, I need a difinitive number of the file ranges that are not taken... I'm gonna do my part to help
-
I haven't done any rips aside from the ones Unaisis did, so the completed ranges are:
3499 ~ 3565
3580 ~ 3685
-
whoa, i want htat Cinema 4D, so i can make my edits real =D, well those are really good Texturas =D
i liked the Red Dragon one =D
-
Just to let everyone know, all battle model textures have now been ripped. Thanks goes to Unaisis, Satoh, and cornettheory for their help!