PSO Animation Project

[ScoobyDew]

Hello. Before I go into backstory I understand I shouldn't post about PSO in the PSO2 section but I see that this section is a lot more popular than the PSO section. Perhaps there's a better chance of attracting attention here.

I've been a long time fan of PSO since 2000. It's my favorite game of all time. There's just something special about it, the combat, the music, the enemies. I was just a young boy when PSO was huge so I never had the chance to explore forums and follow up with Devs. At some point I got into the 3D animation scene and I've been animating for about a year now. I'm afraid I cannot show you my work as it falls under a NSFW category. I decided I wanted to create PSO animations. So I scour the web to find some references but there is absolutely nothing on PSO animations. It saddens me as I wish this game had really taken off. I understand it is easier to retrieve PSO2 models but while PSO2 is wonderful and all it just doesn't give me the same satisfaction as PSO. So enough backstory, straight to the point.

Thanks to the many programmers who created these tools to rip models and meshes I was able to rig a few characters.

Here: (Sorry it won't allow me to post my link as I have 1 post count)

Unfortunately, these posts I've been searching through are from the mid 2000's so I cannot ask follow up questions. One of few I'd like to contact is ********. I know he is still around...somewhere. As for the others I'm not sure. I'm having trouble getting a hold of the PSO maps. I'm able to view them thanks to ********'s map viewer but I'm not sure how to rip them. I also could use models of many more enemies. I only have Boomas, Giga, Go, and rappys. If anyone could help me get a hold of PSO .fbx models, textures and maps I could get a PSO animation going.

[Poyonche]

I looked in my files of PSOBB but I didnt find those .fbx models. Sorry. However there are many sounds like DFDeath, Estlla, Golla, Pilla etc...

But maybe you could install either PSOBB or PSOEP1&2 and find all the models you need ? Idk.

[untrustful]

Sega, in their infinite wisdom, encoded models and animations for some of their games in the ninja format, a unique format that requires a virtual environment for windows me/98 so as to install the katana development kit or something along those lines. The skeleton/animation info is tied together in a weird and old way.

There were some people over at NOW CLOSED SERVER who posted information relevant to this in the forums of said closed down server. The information may or may not be preserved.

You'll have to fiddle around with the nj/njx files that you can extract somehow from psobb and see if you can make sense of it with a dev kit.

From what I understand, it's possible to extract models from psobb.

[Rupikachu]

Unfortunately, these posts I've been searching through are from the mid 2000's so I cannot ask follow up questions. One of few I'd like to contact is ********. I know he is still around...somewhere. As for the others I'm not sure. I'm having trouble getting a hold of the PSO maps. I'm able to view them thanks to ********'s map viewer but I'm not sure how to rip them. I also could use models of many more enemies. I only have Boomas, Giga, Go, and rappys. If anyone could help me get a hold of PSO .fbx models, textures and maps I could get a PSO animation going.

Kion's been working on a set of tools to work with nj models because the pso remake project thingie. (Fan work section or pso reddit, lazy to link).

You'll need nodejs but basically check in his npm packages. It's pretty well documented.

https://www.npmjs.com/~kion

He's also somewhat active on that other Tales of Symphonia thing forums which his domain is the "well known pso ship".net ;)

[ScoobyDew]

I looked in my files of PSOBB but I didnt find those .fbx models. Sorry. However there are many sounds like DFDeath, Estlla, Golla, Pilla etc...

But maybe you could install either PSOBB or PSOEP1&2 and find all the models you need ? Idk.

Ah, the .fbx files are not in the PSOBB files. I export the .nj files to .fbx as they come with a rigged model for me to work with in C4D.

[ScoobyDew]

Kion's been working on a set of tools to work with nj models because the pso remake project thingie. (Fan work section or pso reddit, lazy to link).

You'll need nodejs but basically check in his npm packages. It's pretty well documented.

He's also somewhat active on that other Tales of Symphonia thing forums which his domain is the "well known pso ship".net ;)

As for Kion yes I've been trying to get a hold of him. I have little knowledge of JavaScript but I've been trying to keep up with what he has been documenting. I just wish these models were publicly released, it'd make my job ten times easier.

[Shadowth117]

Hello. Before I go into backstory I understand I shouldn't post about PSO in the PSO2 section but I see that this section is a lot more popular than the PSO section. Perhaps there's a better chance of attracting attention here.

I've been a long time fan of PSO since 2000. It's my favorite game of all time. There's just something special about it, the combat, the music, the enemies. I was just a young boy when PSO was huge so I never had the chance to explore forums and follow up with Devs. At some point I got into the 3D animation scene and I've been animating for about a year now. I'm afraid I cannot show you my work as it falls under a NSFW category. I decided I wanted to create PSO animations. So I scour the web to find some references but there is absolutely nothing on PSO animations. It saddens me as I wish this game had really taken off. I understand it is easier to retrieve PSO2 models but while PSO2 is wonderful and all it just doesn't give me the same satisfaction as PSO. So enough backstory, straight to the point.

Thanks to the many programmers who created these tools to rip models and meshes I was able to rig a few characters.

Here: (Sorry it won't allow me to post my link as I have 1 post count)

Unfortunately, these posts I've been searching through are from the mid 2000's so I cannot ask follow up questions. One of few I'd like to contact is ********. I know he is still around...somewhere. As for the others I'm not sure. I'm having trouble getting a hold of the PSO maps. I'm able to view them thanks to ********'s map viewer but I'm not sure how to rip them. I also could use models of many more enemies. I only have Boomas, Giga, Go, and rappys. If anyone could help me get a hold of PSO .fbx models, textures and maps I could get a PSO animation going.

Ah, so you're interested in the maps? Yeah I've ripped those before with 3D Ripper DX in the past for projects like the video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc8zegRQWsY

You can use that with the model viewer since its an old Direct X. It'll output to a proprietary format that you can import with some older 3ds max versions and .obj if you check the box for it. Textures come out as .dds. Sadly, this doesn't preserve vertex coloring, but there's not much to be done there.

If you don't mind rerigging, you can use that for the non terrain models too. Although for actual .nj models, which you claim to be able to get, Noesis supports that natively or has a plugin for it as I recall and you can export it to almost anything worthwhile. I wanna say it *does* support rigging for .nj, but don't quote me on that. You can get that here:
http://www.richwhitehouse.com/index.php?content=inc_projects.php#prjmp91

There's also a PSO2 import plugin for that I can give you although its been buggy for me and seems funny with whether or not it wants to dump rigging or even the model itself at times.

If you've got any other questions, let me know. I did this a lot in the past.

[Glader]

As for Kion yes I've been trying to get a hold of him. I have little knowledge of JavaScript but I've been trying to keep up with what he has been documenting. I just wish these models were publicly released, it'd make my job ten times easier.

Kion's goal is to have all that available in a public repo as soon as he fixes some issues that he has with maps I think.

Also, what sorta animations were you looking to work on/do?

[untrustful]

He's got humping covered it sounds like.

[ScoobyDew]

Also, what sorta animations were you looking to work on/do?

You remember the OST for PSO? They had a song in there called Burning Rangers. Since PSO is a Japanese game I'd figure I would pay homage to those classic Anime openings. Something similar to the opening of Yu Yu Hakusho if you've seen it. You know where they're fighting enemies and what not.

Obviously PSO is a slower paced game than PSO2 so I would exaggerate the fighting. I feel that such a video would have people remember how intense some battles could be even if the game isn't allowing the player to jump around and dodge enemies.

I'll do my best and to be honest I can't set an exact date for its release as next semester is right around the corner. However, if I make any progress I promise I'll post some video.

[ScoobyDew]

Ah, so you're interested in the maps? Yeah I've ripped those before with 3D Ripper DX in the past.

Hmm, I have used 3D Ripper DX before but I wasn't successful in loading up PSO with it. I forget the error I was receiving but since you apparently got it work I'll look back into it. Care to make a quick video tutorial on how you did it? That'd be brilliant. Right now I'm rigging up models and their animations I've got thanks to Kions work.

[Shadowth117]

Hmm, I have used 3D Ripper DX before but I wasn't successful in loading up PSO with it. I forget the error I was receiving but since you apparently got it work I'll look back into it. Care to make a quick video tutorial on how you did it? That'd be brilliant. Right now I'm rigging up models and their animations I've got thanks to Kions work.

I actually used the old PSO model and map viewer and ripped them more directly from that actually. Never tried ripping directly from PSO itself tbh.