cplhenshaw Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 Near the beginning of the year I decided to try and extract a 3d model of manny from the game. I knew that there were some programs that could sort of view the model files but I really wanted to be able to build and texture him exactly. So using the demo files I manually created all the vertices for his head, created the faces and textured them. I was so pleased with the result I began on the rest of him. A hard drive failure meant he was lost midway for 7 months or so but finally he is complete! I estimate it took perhaps 30 hours of work total but I really wanted a pixel perfect copy of Manny. I've rendered him in 1080 HD which you can see here I used Blender 3d which is open source (free) modelling software and I'll be glad to put the file up somewhere so you can all check him out up close. What would be amazing is if someone with programming knowledge were able to extract all the model files from the full game. Those files are encoded differently but it would be relatively easy to extract the data such that they resemble the files from the demo i.e can be read by humans. The hardest part would be taking all that and automatically creating the model file. The end result however is that people would be able to go nuts making their own pictures and animations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frenkieee Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 You did a pretty good job there! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VampireNaomi Posted November 27, 2009 Share Posted November 27, 2009 Ooh, that's really well done. He looks like he's straight from the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cplhenshaw Posted December 3, 2009 Author Share Posted December 3, 2009 The MODL format used in Grim Fandango has been written up by Cyril Zorin here http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=MODL for some time and so on Sunday I decided I would learn programming to try and read the Grim Fandango 3do files like the demo files could be read. It turns out python is a very neat programming language and before I went to bed I had a program which would output the required information in a useable form. Over the next few nights I modified this to output the information in the form of a wavefront .obj file which I could then import into Blender 3d. I then have all the pieces for the model along with the texture mappings and just need to piece them together according to the model file and tell it which textures to use. The result is any model from the game is now accessible and only takes me 2-3 hours instead of 30 upwards like Manny did. Here's Hector I'm still working on the code side and hope to be able to automate the piecing together of models but this is a little more complicated than what I have done so far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sallim Posted December 3, 2009 Share Posted December 3, 2009 First let me say you did a great job so far! I made similar findings back in the days. I only never tried to code something- kudos to you for your hard work! I am not sure how I did it ages ago, but I had several tools that could show me the Grim Fandango Demo models- and some could export it to a format I could re-import into my 3dsmax. I had to put on the maps too, you know about it. Luckily it wasn't a big puzzle with all objects on one point, but in position like it should be Here is a small result from a long long time ago http://i47.tinypic.com/33axg7d.jpg After reading your post some days ago, I was wondering if you could grab the ingame models with a 3d capture ripper like 3dvia printscreen - http://www.3dvia.com/blog/software/3dvia-labs/3dvia-printscreen/ I know its not the direct way but it usually gets the models with textures already on the objects. It can become helpy, especially if you want to rig the models and animate them later. I am gonna try to "printscreen" the Grim Models in the full version, just as a test. Still, your work is very appreciated Keep up the good work man Edit: Doesn't work with 3dvia printscreen.. ah well Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
N3mo Posted December 4, 2009 Share Posted December 4, 2009 Nice! MOAR! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cplhenshaw Posted December 4, 2009 Author Share Posted December 4, 2009 So I fiddled around for a bit this afternoon and managed to automate the process of piecing the models together. Now all I need to manually do for each model is to assign the different textures to each piece, and while the texture coordinates are all done for me this still takes a bit of time (~1.5 hours). I think this is about as far as I can get with the coding. Here's Glottis the sailor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U8afn5rf6k I'll keep adding videos to youtube as I do different models, but probably won't post updates here each time. I'll also be glad to share the scripts I'm using and any models. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sallim Posted December 4, 2009 Share Posted December 4, 2009 nice Olivia model- Thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHAOSMAN Posted December 8, 2009 Share Posted December 8, 2009 this is badass!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
urluckyday Posted January 3, 2010 Share Posted January 3, 2010 Very nice, just caught this thread...very very cool...brings back memories! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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