Why Don't External Rippers Work?

[MASTERJUNOJET]

I know this has been brought up before a long time ago, but I could never find any answers. I can't quite figure out why external model rippers like 3D Ripper DX, glIntercept w/ OGLE, 3D PrintScreen, or GameAssassin always fail to dump geometry. My best guess would be the fact that they have to hook the DLLs to the emulators rather than an actual game. However, I was about to pass it off as impossible until I read that people are easily using 3D Ripper DX to dump GC stuff from Dolphin. That and glIntercept does appear to actually intercept, but never dumps geometry.

So to all of you who know about the inner workings of n64 emulation and their GPU plugins, why don't external rippers work?

I have messed around with LemD3D8 and TR64_ogl and their built in VRML dumping, but they don't give good results for the game I need to dump (Jet Force Gemini). External rippers are quite powerful and yield impressive results, so its worthwhile to solve this... if it can be solved.

Thanks.

 

[MASTERJUNOJET]

Alright I have found one way to get 3D Ripper DX to work. Apparently, from what I gather, most video plugins do not use D3D transform which makes 3D Ripper incapable of intercepting the actual polygons in a frame. Unfortunately, there is but one Direct X plugin that supports D3D transform, and it is not enabled by default. Jabo's D3D8 1.7+ plugin has this option buried away under Rom Settings and it can only be enabled while the game is running. Do this and press the capture hotkey--only then will you have a proper frame dump. Alas, this still doesn't solve my problem, as JaboD3D8 cannot render Jet Force Gemini properly with D3D Transform enabled.

There are other things to be aware of with this method. First, always force a 4:3 aspect when capturing to make it easier to import. Secondly, there is a problem with the FOV. Usually, 3D Ripper DX will automatically detect FOV to ultra precise floating point values at the moment of capture. This does not occur when capturing from PJ64 and JaboD3D8, which distorts the depth of the geometry. If anyone knows the FOV value the N64 or JaboD3D8 uses then please let me know. Default FOV for DirectX is 45, but that isn't the correct value.