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  1. #1
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    Noesis - 3D model viewer and extraction tool

    Noesis is a program for viewing and extracting 3D assets from video games, and was created by a guy named Rich Whitehouse. Unlike the FFXI Model Viewer and Altana Viewer, Noesis is a universal model viewer designed to work with (almost) any video game. Thankfully, FFXI happens to be one of the games it works with.

    Advantages:
    • Can view any .DAT file, including zones, not just character models.
    • Can export .DAT file models directly into several standard file formats, including .obj and .fbx formats.
    • Unless specifically disabled by the user, character models retain skeletons and animations upon export.

    Disadvantages:
    • Because Noesis was designed as a universal model viewer for all games, and not a model viewer specifically for any one particular game, the process for loading models involves just using a standard Windows Explorer window for loading files, which makes it a pain to find things if you don't already know exactly where to look. It's recommended that you use either the FFXI Model Viewer or Altana Viewer to find the file locations of the character models you want to load before you go browsing through the FFXI game folders via Noesis. Good luck figuring out which files to load for zones, though.
    • Noesis appears to have difficulty reading information for models that do not exist as a single, self-contained file. This means character models for NPCs work just fine, but models for player characters don't work. Or at least, I haven't figured out how to get them to work. Maybe I'm just not using the program correctly. I dunno. I'll have to experiment with this a little more.

      EDIT: There is actually a way to display and export character models, you just have to create a special scene file to do it. The scenes directory has an example file, which can be edited with notepad.


    Download:
    Noesis can be downloaded for free from the "Resources" section on Rich Whitehouse's personal website, richwhitehouse.com.

    richwhitehouse.com » Resources » File List

    The direct link to the latest version is listed below:


    XeNTaX Game Research Forum:
    Additionally, there is a game modding forum called XeNTaX that has an old topic (though it seems to have been recently necro bumped) which is specifically about using Noesis with FFXI, and has some useful information (Rich Whitehouse is the moderator with the screen name MrAdults). You can read the topic here:


    Code Snippets:
    Rich Whitehouse has provided some of his code on his website.

    richwhitehouse.com » Resources » Snippets

    Viewing Player Character Models:
    You must create a special scene file to view models for player characters. The scenes directory has an example file, which can be edited with notepad.

    Quote Originally Posted by MrAdults (Rich Whitehouse)
    (Click here to view original post.)
    To piece the SQLE models together, you can put a .noesis file in your FFXI directory root (above the ROM directories), like the sample_elf01ff11.noesis file included in the latest build. It looks like this:

    Code:
    NOESIS_SCENE_FILE
    version 1
    physicslib      ""
    defaultAxis      "0"
    
    object
    {
       name         "body"
       model         "ROM/63/1.dat"
       loadOptions      "-ff11sqleanim ../64/40.dat"
    }
    object
    {
       name         "head"
       model         "ROM/63/5.dat"
       loadOptions      "-ff11sqleanim ../64/46.dat"
       ;this uses the relative positions of the neck joints on each skeleton to place the head
       offsetWithBones   "bone0001" "body" "bone0004"
       ;combine both objects into a single model
       mergeTo         "body"
    }
    Modifying for other body/head/animation combinations should be pretty obvious. The bones for the head snapping may change, so figure out which ones you should be using by looking at the models in the Noesis data viewer.
    Export Options:
    The following is a list of options which can be used when exporting a model:

    • -ff11blendhack: This uses the Noesis software renderer to render all FF11 map geometry triangles in UV space, and determine how many of each mesh's triangles are only touching zero-alpha pixels in the texture. -ff11blendhack 0.99 is typically a good value to use. This completely demented solution is not foolproof, but catches the vast majority of broken blending cases.
    • -ff11renderunref: Gets model data about sky/moon/water/etc., and spits models out at identity. You have to figure out how to pull them apart and place them yourself if you want to do something with them.
    • -ff11keepnames: Use in conjunction with the above option to avoid having a big terrible inseparable triangle mess.
    • -ff11optimizegeo: Collapse redundancies and remove strip degenerates when exporting geometry.
    • -ff11sqleanim: Option for SQLE animations.

  2. #2
    Sea Torques
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    Lakshmi

    Best christmas present I got.

  3. #3
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    Interesting. I wonder if I can use this to figure out how the sky and lighting information is stored in the dats. It's really the one thing that's keeping me from finishing colored versions of Escha zones.

  4. #4

    PC data isn't one file, so I'm not surprised you're having difficulty there. What were are is a compilation of equipment and head data with rules tied to our race/gender. For example, you could delete the DAT for Haubergeon and put one on, you'd see a floating head, hands, and legs, but we'd otherwise be fine and functional.

    Think the best potential for this might be the ability to update all textures to HD versions, but that'd also be a hell of an undertaking.

  5. #5
    Sea Torques
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    I was able to load the models with animations into unity. I'm going to try to find and load a map into unity. We may be able to auto generate the navmesh for FFXI :D

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by geno3302 View Post
    I was able to load the models with animations into unity. I'm going to try to find and load a map into unity. We may be able to auto generate the navmesh for FFXI :D
    I have a small list of zones I've been working with:

    Regular sky: rom2/12/107
    Escha zitah: rom/332/99
    Escha sky: rom/337/59

    I thought I had regular Zitah and Reisenjima on my list too but I guess I didn't write them down. Works pretty well, from what I've seen so far. Just a matter of looking at what I can actually do.

  7. #7
    Sea Torques
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    Cool, saves me the trouble of finding the old JP zone viewer app. I'll take a look later tonight and see what kind of a nav mesh unity creates and how much work it is to clean up

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by JeanPaul View Post
    I have a small list of zones I've been working with:

    Regular sky: rom2/12/107
    Escha zitah: rom/332/99
    Escha sky: rom/337/59

    I thought I had regular Zitah and Reisenjima on my list too but I guess I didn't write them down. Works pretty well, from what I've seen so far. Just a matter of looking at what I can actually do.
    rom/342/73 for Reisenjima.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by geno3302 View Post
    I was able to load the models with animations into unity. I'm going to try to find and load a map into unity. We may be able to auto generate the navmesh for FFXI :D
    The models all loaded upside down when I tried to import them into Unity. But maybe there's a setting in Noesis to change the axis on export?

  10. #10
    Relic Weapons
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    Quote Originally Posted by geno3302 View Post
    Cool, saves me the trouble of finding the old JP zone viewer app. I'll take a look later tonight and see what kind of a nav mesh unity creates and how much work it is to clean up
    I have two versions of the JP zone viewer exe, I'm not home until the 31st, so if you want a copy of those at all I can provide at that time. iirc, at one point I was able to export bastok markets in its entirety using dxripper and that application or something like that.... though I can't get it to run on a modern AMD video card. Dont think it played too well with many zones... this tool in the OP is a much better choice once it works for you.

  11. #11
    Sea Torques
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rhianu View Post
    The models all loaded upside down when I tried to import them into Unity. But maybe there's a setting in Noesis to change the axis on export?
    Just rotate them in unity, the orientation doesn't really matter.

  12. #12
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    The navmesh unity generates looks good. If I can extract the vertex data and line it up with FFXI coordinates, it should be usable.

    Pic of the auto generated navigation mesh:
    (tinypic because bgbucket isn't working for me atm)
    http://oi66.tinypic.com/5509jc.jpg

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by geno3302 View Post
    The navmesh unity generates looks good. If I can extract the vertex data and line it up with FFXI coordinates, it should be usable.

    Pic of the auto generated navigation mesh:
    http://oi66.tinypic.com/5509jc.jpg
    Awesome, how'd you do that? When I imported a zone into Unity, all I got was the mesh, materials, and textures. No collision info. Also, in Noesis did you export the file as an .obj or as an .fbx?

    By the way, I just realized there was a newer version of Noesis available. Original post has been updated with a link to the newer version.

  14. #14
    Sea Torques
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rhianu View Post
    Awesome, how'd you do that? When I imported a zone into Unity, all I got was the mesh, materials, and textures. No collision info. Also, in Noesis did you export the file as an .obj or as an .fbx?
    There are far too many Unity tutorials on the internet for me to write one atm. If I figure out a way to use the data then I'll post a detailed guide on what I find and how I did it.

    The navmesh is not part of the model, it is generated by Unity. All you need is the mesh to generate the navmesh.

    I went with fbx, but for the sake of creating a navmesh obj should work just as well. I'm no 3D master or anything but if I remember correctly obj doesn't support animations. obj is basically a single frame, I don't think it even had bone data in it when I was looking at it.

    Tonight I'll work on getting the scale/distances to match FFXI and then figure out how to extract the vertex data from the navmesh

  15. #15
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    I tried exporting into .obj, but I noticed that it generated far more materials than exporting to .fbx. With .obj, it seemed like a unique material was generated for every surface, whereas with .fbx, materials were only generated for each texture, and any surfaces which shared a texture also shared a material. So if the goal is to re-texture the zone in Unity, then exporting to .fbx seems like the better option.

    Also, did the 3D meshes import upside down for you, too?

  16. #16
    Sea Torques
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    For Sky the model is centered at 0,0,0
    The Y and Z axis values are swapped between what windower reports and what unity displays.
    I rotated the Z axis 180 degrees so the Y Axis in unity is also flipped (Z Axis in FFXI)
    I scaled the model by 100.

    Positions in game and in unity appear to be identical (I can't be exact but it's less than 1 unit off and I can't position my character easily so I'm going to call it an exact match.)

  17. #17
    Sea Torques
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    Quote Originally Posted by Casey_ View Post
    I have two versions of the JP zone viewer exe, I'm not home until the 31st, so if you want a copy of those at all I can provide at that time. iirc, at one point I was able to export bastok markets in its entirety using dxripper and that application or something like that.... though I can't get it to run on a modern AMD video card. Dont think it played too well with many zones... this tool in the OP is a much better choice once it works for you.
    I can't seem to find a link to it anywhere anymore, so please send it when you get the chance. All the dat modding sites that had area mods seem to have vanished as well

  18. #18
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    https://mega.nz/#!AMFQxQwD!wVKo9Jjp-...SgFQul6pl_09ng : ewhModel7SB.exe

    https://mega.nz/#!ENsEhAbQ!10sNZgFyt...NOgR0F5tpFh8bQ : ewhModelDX9.exe

    Edit: You need a JP PlayOnline registry key for this to work. I copied my PlayOnlineUS to PlayOnline and it loads -- but then immediately crashes. I have not been able to get these two to work for quite some time now (probably over 8~ years.)

  19. #19
    Sea Torques
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    Quote Originally Posted by Casey_ View Post
    https://mega.nz/#!AMFQxQwD!wVKo9Jjp-...SgFQul6pl_09ng : ewhModel7SB.exe

    https://mega.nz/#!ENsEhAbQ!10sNZgFyt...NOgR0F5tpFh8bQ : ewhModelDX9.exe

    Edit: You need a JP PlayOnline registry key for this to work. I copied my PlayOnlineUS to PlayOnline and it loads -- but then immediately crashes. I have not been able to get these two to work for quite some time now (probably over 8~ years.)
    No problem, I have a Japanese account. I'll install the JP version on my old laptop which might actually still have it installed (first computer I played FFXI on)

  20. #20
    Sea Torques
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    I powered up my laptop, and it did indeed have the JP version installed but the application still crashed immediately. Something else must have changed over the years. I may just go through the files manually. The large zone dats seem to be upwards of 15MB, not sure how large the mog house will be

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