Basic Question: Should I try?

[SierraLatkje]

I spent a long time looking through these forums, and it looks like model ripping is much, much harder than sprite ripping. That's understandable, of course, but I'm wondering how much harder it is, and more importantly, if the effort is worth the minimal pay-off for what I'm trying to do.

Most of the discussion I've seen has focused on specific games, none of which are ones I'm interested in, so it's hard for me to judge the difficulty of what I want to do. (Well, okay, I am interested in Dirge of Cerberus, and I did see mention that it's so far impossible to rip from though someone is working on it, but that wasn't something I wanted just at the moment, so...)

In order to make a seasonal image I want to post to deviantArt (but won't need until February) I was hoping to use some ripped models from a few RPGs, as that'll look much less crappy than modified screen shots. Specifically, the games I'm looking to rip are Suikoden III on the PS2 (which apparently is only possible on a game-by-game basis, but no one's mentioned Suikoden III so I don't know where it stands on the possibility spectrum) the combat models of Vincent and Yuffie from Final Fantasy VII, and a large portion of the main cast--and one nameless extra--from Final Fantasy VIII on the PSX.

I'm okay(ish) with bidding farewell to my dream of animating with Suikoden III models, but how hard is it to rip from PSX Final Fantasies? The series is too popular, so I figure it must be one that people have tried before, yes? And yet I haven't seen any discussion on the subject here, so I thought I would ask if anyone knows.

Many thanks for any advice you can offer!

[yoyonerd]

I think you should definetly try it out man

but to rip models from psx or ps2.. i gotta tell ya, it was never done before.. the data stored on those cds or isos is pretty rough.. people can get acess to textures though.. but as for models.. its hard

even 64 is easier

most of the final fantasy models we se arround is rips from KH games, or even psp games like crisis core or dissidia and stuff..

but i think you should start riping models like me, with 3dvia printscreen and 3D Ripper DX just to get the feeling of it ,and then move on to tools that ripdirect from the iso like bress , noesis and stuff =D

[valforwing]

if you can manage to rip models out of dirge of cereberus thats alot of good quallity FF7 models right there.

[SierraLatkje]

Okay, I'm gonna try it!

Downloaded a bunch of the required programs--'cept the post-rip program, 'cause I wasn't sure if I should go with Blender or Maya or what (3D Max looked good until I saw the $1750 price tag after 30 days are up)--and the Noesis intro page showed ripped models from two of the three games I'm looking for, so I think I'll go ahead and try that one first!

Now I just gotta find some ISOs. I hate downloading ISOs at all, even for games I own, but this is just a little netbook and doesn't have a CD drive so I can't access the discs directly. (I do have an external one, but I fear for the safety of discs I put in that drive. Not risking my out-of-print PSX discs in it, and especially not my even more out-of-print Suikoden III, since that's not even available on PSN!)

So I'm off to Google. Wish me luck!

If I have any successes, I'll post them here. And if I don't, I'll probably come back begging for help. Just fair warning.

[SierraLatkje]

Okay, so, true to my warning, I've already come back begging for help, but...it's a pretty minor beg.

How different are the files on the game disc and the files in the ISO? Because Noesis can't read any of the files on the ISO for FFVII and FFVIII, but listed on its drop down menu of types of files it recognizes are several file types that it says are specific to those games. Is it talking about the PC version, or are those files that are on the game disc if I risk putting it in my external CD drive?

Does anyone know, off hand?

Edit: Looking around further now that it's no longer 3 in the morning, I'm thinking the problem is that all the files off the game disc are compressed into the BIN or IMG files in the ISO, right? So, the question is, how do I uncompress them? I tried putting the first disc of FFVII in a computer that had an internal CD drive that so far hasn't seemed screwy, but it didn't even recognize any files on the disc, so that attempted avenue didn't pan out. From searching the forum here for "dumper" it sounds like whenever a game disc is dumped onto a computer, it turns into one of these compressed files, and then a specially constructed executable is needed to uncompress them? Am I interpreting this correctly so far? Or is that only the case on PS2, and PSX is totally different? (I realize people are less likely to want to rip PSX games 'cause of the lower quality of the graphics, but...what can I say? I'm weird.)

I'm going to go ahead and google "psx dumper" in case something turns up, but I thought I'd post where I now stand in case anyone sees this who might be able to tell me if I'm totally on the wrong track.

Sorry for being annoying. I'm really trying to work this out on my own as best I can around NaNo, but I'm also under the weather right now--terrible time to take on complicated new projects, but for some reason being sick always brings out this desire to *do* things in me--so I'm not really working at 100% over here.

Ah, yes, I think I'll search for tutorials before the dumper things. Ugh. Sorry. I am such a flippin' moron sometimes.

Edit2: All right, so I spent quite a while searching the 'net last night, and found pretty much zilch about ripping from PSX, and about the only PS2 games people talked about ripping were the Kingdom Hearts games. The one thing I gathered was that trying to get at the files compressed into the .BIN and .IMG files is way more complex than I'd ever be able to do on my own.

So I thought I'd try using one of the other ripping programs instead of Noesis. But none of the DirectX drivers for ePSXe worked with 3D Ripper DX--they barely worked at all, in fact--and when I tried using the OpenGL driver so I could use 3DVia Printscreen, it wouldn't run on my computer, either. (Well, it might have, if I could have edited the settings, but the setting window is so large that I can't access the whole thing on the tiny little screen on this computer.) So, for the moment, it's looking like Noesis may be my only chance. Since I've seen things ripped from FFVII and FFVIII, someone's obviously managed to extract the needed files, but the question is if they shared the method for getting at them with anyone, and I don't even know what to search for to find out.

Tomorrow is occupied what with it being Thanksgiving and all (what a useless holiday) but I'm obviously not setting foot out of my house into the madness on Friday, so I may try another PSX emulator then to see if I can get either of the other methods to work, but I have the feeling that between my hardware limitations and the limitations of what software exists, I may be stuck in a limbo of wanting to do what can't currently be done. (I might also look into the PC versions, to see if they have files that Noesis can read, but...I've never gotten into this whole torrenting thing, and I'm not sure what it entails, so I'm a little leery of trying it rashly.)

If anyone has any suggestions, I would be most grateful.

(Also, if anyone knows what game is represented in the 7th row of images of captured models on the Noesis page (http://oasis.xentax.com/index.php?content=home) I would really love to know what it is! That's the row that shows first a view of the Gold Saucer from a distance, and then an SD Tifa and then an SD Cloud. I've come across those SD characters as MMD models on YouTube, but I had no idea they were game rips.)

Final Edit: Since this forum doesn't get much in the way of activity, I'm going to re-start this question in a new thread, as this one's generic title is unlikely to attract new readers. Just thought I'd say that so no one comes and answers any of my questions while I'm typing in the new one or anything. (Like that's going to happen...)