Metroid Prime CMDL Viewer (still working on it however)

[SarahHarp]

..Its called a rom. And many people have them. So many people will be able to use the viewer.
Now, -do not- ask how to get roms, as that's against the rules, which I'm sure you've read ; )

[erix920]

So when will this be completed?

[SarahHarp]

I've been working on scenegraph information, among other things (animations, bones, skin weights). But I've decided that once I get the textures placed on the model in the proper order, then I'll release it : )

[erix920]

Cool, do you know A time frame? I'm waiting for the release! Too bad I can't do this stuff

[BlueFalcon7]

you should kind of update us on this, so we know how your doing, and so we know whats going on. Speaking of which, how is Jaharian doing on his model viewer?

[erix920]

Can't wait! I just converted like 40 materials, now to apply them to the arm cannon, will a program like 3ds max be able to open the models? Also what .pak are these cmdl's in? I need the samus gun referance myself.

[SarahHarp]

Jaharian hasn't been on my msn since the last time I helped him (which was when he began his thread).. I'm going to presume he died <.<
About the updates, I did have a few minor ones, but nothing overly noteworthy.
I guess I could post a few screenshots (mainly screenshots I've taken to show Thakis a while back)

BetaPhazon (No shaders used):
http://img56.imageshack.us/img56/1340/betaphzn1da.png
--(With Shaders)
http://img56.imageshack.us/img56/5868/wthshaders9ly.png

Enemy that was not included in game
http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/6549/enemy0ny.png (Side)
http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/327/enemy20qn.png (Top)
http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/5195/enemy31dr.png (Front/Upsidedown)

Beta Space Pirate
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/4840/betapir14vg.png

There is only a slight amout of files that actually do not work yet, though I pretty sure it's a straight forward fix. Mostly the small CMDLs do not open. (Usally ones that are < 1K) Again its probably a straight forward fix, So I should get onto that.
The viewer now opens models and loads the associated textures, however as I mentioned before, I just need to get the actualy placement of these textures on the proper groups. Recently though, it came to light that this might be stored in another file (CINF, holds joint information, and propably stores the scenegraph aswell). I guess I didn't tell you's that, but my viewer can view all the CINF files (just displays points wherever a bonen is.)

Samus's joints
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/7...mjoints6al.png

But yeah, Here's a picture of what completed models should look like:
http://img434.imageshack.us/img434/1064/samus5lw.png

However note that most of that stuff was hard-coded, which is how I got the texture placements and what not. The -only- thing lacking from that image is gloss map support. I'm not going to impliment this, unless someone wants to buy my a new video card that can handle extensive shader support : )
Btw, gloss maps basicly limit the shaders, so when you Look at that samus picture, you'll notice that the shaders are applied to all the back connection material around her joints, and it also goes ontop of the black lines around her suit. This actually shouldn't happen (if you can rmember what she looks like in-game).

And.. *thinks* yeah, that should be it for now. I hope this is a good enough update for you : )
(I'm sorry though that it's been awhile, I didn't really have much new to show off, and no one had posted since febuary, so I thought the intrest had died down, as well as my jumping from project to project)

CMDL's are found in mainly every pak. Paks are a vast collection of files that partain to certain worlds/systems. And no, nothing can open a CMDL file unless someone has written a viewer for them (which to my knowledge, only my viewer can do at the moment). You'll find samus's arm cannon in SamusGun.pak, as well as TestAnim.pak (You'll probly want the ones in TestAnim, as it has the "cut-scene" version, which varies from pwer beam, to phazon beam. Whereas the SamusGun.pak is the one used during actauly play time (that gun is more detailed, but also is missing alot of it's right side and front areas, due to never actually seeing that side in game).

[BlueFalcon7]

just a question with this CMDL viewer, how is it going to apply the textures if they are in a different file? is it going to open the .pak and be like a spark edit program, or is it going to look in the directory of the CMDL? And will the program have something to view just the textures, so I dont have to extract each texture?

[SarahHarp]

Uhh, I was really planning to incorperate a built in txtr viewer thing, because right now, the way I have my thing set up (completely organized everything, All cmdl's are inside a cmdl folder, all txtrs are in a txtr folder, etc). I have everything decompressed and organized and everything. But basicly, the program looks for the folder "txtr" in the directory of the current pak. I'm planning too add options for people that don't feel like spending the time organizing (such as having it just look for the texture in the current dumped pak)

What is really going to be painful though, is loading everythign up in the end. Because the ANIC's file is where it all happens. It has references to a model file, its bones/scenegraph, and another file which I'm assuming to be skinweights, and having a bunch of animation files listed afterwards. So basicly, it'd come to the point where you'd have to click on the ANICs files in order to view everything properly.
That is, unless I precode this all, so as long as you don't rename any of the files, I simply just let the program know what files it's already associated to (but that's -alot- more work for me, but I was considering something like that).

[erix920]

Well, this is why your here . Will it auto matically apply the .txtr's to then referance model? Or do you have to customly do it?