Viewing Models

[puggsoy]

Hey, I'm wondering if anyone knows of any free software that will allow me to view an .obj model, and its animations? In particular, I would like to view this file:



Alternatively, it would be sufficient if I could somehow convert the model to an .mdx/.mdl model, so that I can view it (and, again, its animations) in the War3 Model Editor.

Thanks!

[John2k4]

OBJ files will likely need re-rigging (and re-exporting to a format OTHER than OBJ) to get the skeleton back, since they do not support it.

I'd recommend Noesis as a good "view-all-the-models" model viewer.

[Peardian]

Model files do not (normally) come with animations. They can have bones for posing the model, but not all formats support that. As the person who ripped that model in the first place, I can say that it has neither.


Noesis is good for a model viewer, but it's definitely not what you want if you plan to make changes to or rendered images of models. You want a 3D Modeling/Animation program for that. As far as free ones go, Blender seems to be fairly popular.

[Friedslick6]

cooliscool's Utility of Time is capable of reading .zobj models.animations extracted from OoT and MM.
In order to view the models/animations from MM, those models have to be ripped from the game separately using the Zelda Resource Extractor (ZRE.)
This program is packaged with the latest version of UoT, available here under "UoT .90b4.1.7z".
After using ZRE on a clean copy of MM such as "Legend of Zelda, The - Majora's Mask (U) [!].z64", you will have a directory of .z* files. The model you want to load into UoT from this directory is
"014A2000 - 014A8CA0.zobj".

[John2k4]

This actually fits in with viewing models...

Does anyone know of a decent way to either view or export/convert BMD[0] models that are used in DS games?

Trying to view them in Tinkie gets me this (on the right):

Spoiler

[Roxas358]

This actually fits in with viewing models...

Does anyone know of a decent way to either view or export/convert BMD[0] models that are used in DS games?

Trying to view them in Tinkie gets me this (on the right):

Spoiler

I only know of a program called BMD Viewer. However I don't know if it will work with your BMD. Also it's not that great of a program, and it only can export as obj. Here's the link.

[puggsoy]

cooliscool's Utility of Time is capable of reading .zobj models.animations extracted from OoT and MM.
In order to view the models/animations from MM, those models have to be ripped from the game separately using the Zelda Resource Extractor (ZRE.)
This program is packaged with the latest version of UoT, available here under "UoT .90b4.1.7z".
After using ZRE on a clean copy of MM such as "Legend of Zelda, The - Majora's Mask (U) [!].z64", you will have a directory of .z* files. The model you want to load into UoT from this directory is
"014A2000 - 014A8CA0.zobj".

I'll check that out. I had a go with UoT once, but with the special version of OoT that it was supposed to work with. I also didn't know which model to look for.

EDIT: Well, I got far enough to extract the .zobj files, and I opened the file you specified in UoT. However, it just looks like Guru-Guru imploded in on himself. I can see by the textures that it's him, but other than that it bears no resemblance to what I expected.
Obviously I expect that some stuff must be done to get the proper result. But what? I can't find an option to export the file to any other format.

[John2k4]

Thanks Roxas - I had that from when I was working with Gamecube models. It didn't seem to be able to load the DS models.

[Peardian]

I'd like to note that viewing models, editing models, animating models, viewing animations, exporting models, and rendering (making images of) models are all different things, and not every program can do all of those things, or even most of them, especially when it comes to game-specific model formats. Make sure you know the difference between them, so that you know what kind of program to look for.

[puggsoy]

Thanks. I've always been pretty hopeless with models, but I'll try and see if I can learn more about it. But since you said that this model has no animations, I probably won't get far with my goal.

But the thing is, the most work I've done with models is with Warcraft 3 models, which come with animations and whatnot all in an .mdx or .mdl file. The third-party model viewer is also pretty easy to use, and you can view each of its animations. I was hoping that .objs ripped from N64 would be similar, but apparently not.

Oh well