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N64 layer diabling / texture saving

jelbo

jelbo

Nintendo emulation fanatic!
Hi,

I have a question concerning N64 graphics. With GB, NES, SNES, GBA, GBC etc. graphics were constructed of different layers. In emulators there was always (well, often) a function to disable/enable these layers. (I've attached an image to show this in Snes9x) With this option you could very easily extract animations from games (Which I've done too, see my site http://nintendocursors.cjb.net and some animations I'll attach). These images are often used as avatars nowadays, but I also create cursors of them. (In fact I even e-mailed Nintendo and they're interested in them to use on their website).

My question/request is if anyone who develops N64 graphics plugins (Jabo? Rice?) could build in such a feature. I don't know if this is very difficult to do, but it would be an awesome feature! The only thing I want is to see N64 sprites (e.g. Mario or Link) on a blank background.

Another thing that would be cool (and who knows possible?) is to extract textures from N64 roms. I think that when you're emulating a rom, these textures must be somewhere in the video or system memory. So, it wouldn't be that difficult to save these textures as files on a harddisk right? I wish I'd know more of programming and stuff, but I presume it's possible.

So that's all I would ask. Maybe others are also interested in texture/sprite ripping from games, and/or would like to see the features I mentioned in the future.

I'll attach some animations I made from N64 sprites too. They took me hours of work, because I had to edit out the background manually because I couldn't disable a layer.. But, hey, the look extremely cool eh? The filesize is quite big though, because of the many frames (but that's why the animation is smooth). Tell me what you think.

For animated cursors of Nintendo characters I ripped from GBx, SNES and N64 games please visit my website at http://nintendocursors.cjb.net
 
OP
jelbo

jelbo

Nintendo emulation fanatic!
Here's one of Mario I ripped from Super Mario 64 (luv this one) :inlove:
 
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jelbo

jelbo

Nintendo emulation fanatic!
Allright, here's another one I ripped from Smash Bros. Took me, say 3 hours. :blush:
 
iq_132

iq_132

Banned
Heh... that's crazy..
I ripped nearly the same mario a while ago.

*Great Website too jelbo*
 
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Reznor007

Reznor007

New member
In a technical sense, N64 doesn't use sprites really. They are true 3d polygonal models. To take everything else away, you'd have to figure out which part of the display list is the model, and ignore the rest of it...but that may cause problems.

Also, since they are 3d, they can be viewed from any angle, and as such don't really have a certain way to face.
 
iq_132

iq_132

Banned
icepir8 said:
iq_132 said:
I feel sort of evil :devil: :devil: :devil: :devil: :devil: :devil:
Click to expand...
j00 is the anitchrist!
Click to expand...

I felt like I was for a minute or two...
I felt like I could TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!
But then I posted again and felt better :)
 
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jelbo

jelbo

Nintendo emulation fanatic!
Well, since jvolel asked how I made those animations (In the GameOS thread, see http://www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8305&perpage=15&display=&pagenumber=2 )I showed a few of here, I'll try to explain it briefly here.

I'll just explain the N64 sprites though. I use PJ64 in Windowed mode (to make animations, I actually play games in fullscreen). I go to a situation in a game where the sprite (game model I want an animation from) is clearly visible on a background that is easy to remove (e.g. green grass in SM64). Also, the character must perform a movement that's looping, like when Mario is idle, he moves the same all over again (until he starts sleeping, that is).

Then I open up a program called Camtasia (I recently discovered on http://www.techsmith.com) which can record almost any screen activity as an .avi movie with a special codec (Techsmith Codec) with no loss of quality. Then, I record a selection in the PJ64 windows with the sprite moving in. I wait until I think I've roughly captured one complete loop of movement.\

After I've saved the .avi movie, I open it with Jasc Animation Shop 3 (comes with PSP7 from http://www.jasc.com) and I look for a point where the animation loops. Then I cut the loop out of the animation and check if it's OK and smoothly animated. After that comes the time-consuming bit. I have to edit out the background from the animation. This usually takes a few hours, depending on how many frames the animation has. After the background's gone I do a little happy dance and start saving it as a transparent gif animation. I also save it as uncompressed .mng format, in case I may use the animation in a later stadium. Instead of making gif's I also make animated cursors, which can be found on my site I mentioned earlier. I'll attach some more animations here for you to enjoy. If anyone wants some more info or wants to use my animations, please ask it here, or PM me for my e-mail address. Maybe we can work together with something (your game you were talking about) jvolel?
 
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jelbo

jelbo

Nintendo emulation fanatic!
Here's King DeDeDe from Kirby64. Was actually pretty easy because in PJ64 1.5 beta Kirby wasn't supported well and there was no background in the titlescreen. Hehe, so it was fixed in 10 mins.
 
T

Trotterwatch

New member
Give your credit Jelbo, those sprite animation rips are incredible - they look terrific.

This may sound daft, but do you enable antialiasing when you are doing the capturing? Unsure wether the output would be antialiased, but if it was then perhaps it would further enhance the image quality..... this is probably so unfeasible though for reasons I do not have the mental capacity to appreciate :)
 
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jelbo

jelbo

Nintendo emulation fanatic!
Kirby from Kirby64. Pretty nice as an avatar too. If you want specific avatars I made that are too big now; I can make a special one for you that's cut down in size a bit.

Iq_132: That's pretty cool you made almost the same one as me! Only mine looks better and has more frames, hehe. :happy:
 
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jelbo

jelbo

Nintendo emulation fanatic!
This one was sooooooo hard to do. It took me hours! But the result is an ultra smooth moving monkey from Super Mario 64. Wasn't he called Ukiki or something? I still remember him stealing Mario's cap. Ah, the memories from 1997... :inlove:
 
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jelbo

jelbo

Nintendo emulation fanatic!
Ooh, and I can't resist attaching this Fuzzy from Paper Mario. It was easy though (3/4 frames, lol ). I also have Fuzzipede, which I'll attach later on.
 
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jelbo

jelbo

Nintendo emulation fanatic!
Here's the Fuzzipede. Remember him from Paper Mario? He's soo cool. He also talks extremely funny, like "Hey, I'm not just a catepilla ya fuzzball!" I don't remember his exact phrases though, should read a FAQ from gameFAQs sometimes. But I'm talking too much here, heh. But whaddaya think? Wouldn't it be extremely cool when an N64 emulator would support layer disabling? I could make hundreds of animations like these. Please, isn't there any developer out there who's reading this?

Oh, and for the Admins, sorry for all the attachments, hope it's not bothering you. :blush:
 
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jelbo

jelbo

Nintendo emulation fanatic!
I don't use antialasing because it's slowing down emulation, and with AA enabled, you can't properly cut out sprites too. I mean, to cut out sprites, I need the staircase effect. But I agree, that within an animation it would look better.

Sorry Trotterwatch, I forgot about your question. :blush:
 
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