FF8 3D battle models update

[Alhexx]

Heh, I' looking forward to see the first renders of Shiva and Siren  

 - Alhexx

 

[Qhimm]

Heh, I' looking forward to see the first renders of Shiva and Siren  

Heh you're in for a bit of bad luck then, since I've only been able to decode battle enemy models... i.e. only people and monsters you encounter in battle. So no Shiva or Siren, at least not yet.

 

[Alhexx]

Duh... well, I think I remember that when testing around with that old FF8 monster viewer...
GFs have other model formats then... looks like I have to do some hacking on my own then - or wait until some of you do

I'm going to start working on FF-X and FF-X-2 next year, maybe I'll get some useful info there...

 - Alhexx

 - edit -
Erm, just an off-topic question:
Qhimm: You're currently in Tokyo?!?

 

[mirex]

Alhexx wrote:
Heh, I' looking forward to see the first renders of Shiva and Siren  

Heh you're in for a bit of bad luck then, since I've only been able to decode battle enemy models... i.e. only people and monsters you encounter in battle. So no Shiva or Siren, at least not yet.

So what kind of creatures are these, where do you encounter them ? Are they summon models ? How many types of models are there ? I know only about 2 kinds, battle ones and field ones (which can be exported too |).

Er sorry that I don't know Shiva and Siren, but I have played FF8 only for 5 minutes :erm:

 

[Radiosity]

They're both GF summons. Shiva is initial equip after visiting the computer console (or outside the gates of Garden if you don't do that), along with Quezacotl. Siren is acquired shortly after that on your SeeD exam.

 

[Qhimm]

Technically, all models I've shown so far are battle enemy models, i.e. people your party at one point or another can fight. Apart from these, there are magic CGs, which stores the models, effects and animations used in magic and summons (Ifrit, Shiva, Siren, Quezacotl, etc.). And finally there are two kinds of field models, common ones (the player characters and some commonly seen people) and local ones (models stored only at the scene they appear). The reason I've been able to extract Ifrit and Odin is because you encounter them as enemies during the game. They are also stored as magic sequences, although I don't know the format (or even the location) of those.

 

[Almighty_gir]

if i knew how to code i would offer to help, but unfortunately all i can offer is my expansive (although sometimes idiotic and anal retentive) knowledge of 3dsmax and softimage XSI...

but like i said, call on me if you feel the need.

 

[Cyberman]

So what kind of creatures are these, where do you encounter them ? Are they summon models ? How many types of models are there ? I know only about 2 kinds, battle ones and field ones (which can be exported too |).

Er sorry that I don't know Shiva and Siren, but I have played FF8 only for 5 minutes :erm:

Shiva is one of your first Guardian force summons.
Shiva is the frost queen and chills the oponent.
Obviously female (LOL).
Siren is another female Guardian force summon you gain at the communication tower in Dollet.
Siren is exactly how she sounds, she has a silencing attack and mild physical attack the animation includes a nice sea scene though!

Though I am surprised Alhexx hasn't been asking about FF10's Shiva

So these models are stored in animation sequences in FF8? That would make sense.  I can look for them in the PSX disks by seeing if there textures are on the disk.  I've noticed Ultimecia's textures are on Disk1 in the PSX version.  Weird huh?

My Guess is they are stored in a proprietary animation format however.

The other problems include other scene objects in the animation sequence.  (IE Siren's rock and the ocean she's in) Hmmm lots of .. things to filter through in this case.

Qhimm how do the battle models differ from the 'in game' models? And they must have a way of importing battle models into scenes in the basic engine.  For example the scenes when you  return to guardan.  Hmmm more to think about.

Cyb

 

[Ged]

I've noticed Ultimecia's textures are on Disk1 in the PSX version.  Weird huh?

I'm pretty sure that the battle data is kept the same throughout all the disks. Btw. using Gameshark I managed to get a lot of enemies in my team, many of which you didn't encounter on this disk (i.e Ultimecia, Griever, Fujin, Raijin etc.)

 

[Qhimm]

So these models are stored in animation sequences in FF8? That would make sense.  I can look for them in the PSX disks by seeing if there textures are on the disk.  I've noticed Ultimecia's textures are on Disk1 in the PSX version.  Weird huh?

My Guess is they are stored in a proprietary animation format however.

The other problems include other scene objects in the animation sequence.  (IE Siren's rock and the ocean she's in) Hmmm lots of .. things to filter through in this case.

Qhimm how do the battle models differ from the 'in game' models? And they must have a way of importing battle models into scenes in the basic engine.  For example the scenes when you  return to guardan.  Hmmm more to think about.

From the top:
Yes, all magic and GF summoning sequences (along with all normal attacks as well, I imagine) are stored somewhere as animation sequences. Since a lot of these sequences are interactive (direction of the attack, pressing a button to abort the GF sequences etc.), it is safe to assume that the actual sequences, or the "script" of these sequences, are hard-coded into FF8.exe, with additional resources like textures, models, etc. are spread out in the datafiles a bit at random. The layout of the battle and magic archives support this theory, since there's an obvious lack of structure; the files that are stored look more like a resource pool with random files containing textures, models and sound (and no index or naming convention to determine what each file contains). As I said, most likely these files are referenced from the actual definitions of the sequences, which are probably hard-coded to a good extent (it would make my life easier if I was the developer, so it makes sense).

Pretty much all formats used in FF8 are proprietary (except the TIM textures). The easiest way I found to decode them (and the data of most Square games from that period) is to think from the perspective of the PSX hardware. Things are bound to be stored in a way that is efficient for a PlayStation to process. As an example of this, all the 3D models I've seen so far that use blending effects uses exclusively the additive and subtractive modes of the PSX (actually, I've only seen unmultiplied additive -- halkun knows which mode I've talking about). Why? Because when rendering polygons with additive blending only, sort order does not matter.

I haven't examined the PSX version of FF8, but in the PC version formats for the same type of data varies greatly depending which module uses them (battle, field, etc.). It's possible this was also the case originally in the PSX version, but in the porting some formats were "converted" into a bastard PC version format, probably to compensate for some useful feature of the PSX system that isn't on a PC. As a result, lots of files consist of parts of structured PSX-like data wrapped into some kind of container format that looks like a hack-job. The archives (.fi/.fl/.fs) are one example, the .mch files another (at least, I doubt they looked like that on PSX).

As a result, once you've decoded one format of FF8PC, you still don't have many clues to the other formats. Battle models, field models and common field models each have their own formats and/or container formats. Battle models are stored directly as self-contained files, field models are stored in archives (chara.one) containing both local model definitions and animations used in the scene, and common field models resemble ripped-out model data from one of the field model archives. The last kind also don't contain any animation from what I've seen, rather any animations used by common field models are stored together with the local field models as special animations-for-geometry-defined-elsewhere data.

As for mixing-between-modules: it is very limited. The only mixing I know of is the main characters themselves, which could use the same model data in battle and in the field -- it's equally likely they're duplicated in different formats and I haven't found them yet though. This is also why Ifrit and Odin are stored as enemy models, even though they're also stored elsewhere as magic models. The data just isn't reused that often, if at all.

 

[mirex]

if i knew how to code i would offer to help, but unfortunately all i can offer is my expansive (although sometimes idiotic and anal retentive) knowledge of 3dsmax and softimage XSI...

Yea you could help me by telling me possibilities of XSI ... can it have vertex/point colours ? I mean if you model a triangle face, can the each of triangle's corner have different colour ?
Also, do you know if there are any format importers/exporters for MAX or XSI, that could handle these vertex colours ?

 

[Almighty_gir]

well, at the moment all my modeling is done in max and animations in XSI. so i cant answer the first question right now. as far as im aware, there is no "safe" import/export system between the two softwares, max usually crashes, and XSI screams blue murder... i have to go the long way round by exporting to things like .md3, its fairly annoying....

ill look more into both questions tho

 

[Alhexx]

mirex: here we go:
Shiva & Siren

Cyberman: Yeah, just found Shiva in FF-X 2 days ago... heh, nice  8)


As for that PSX-2-PC conversion: Simple conversions have never been anything good. However, it seems to be clear, that Square has developed the games for PSX first, and them "ported" them to PC...
When I took a closer look at FF7's and FF8's archive structures some time ago, I recognized that FF7 had some kind of structue - just to take a look at the battle.lgp, which I most worked on. FF8, however, seems to be really messed up - thousands of different file formats and no pattern.
Altough I don't know much about PSX formats, expecially how the PSX addresses files and uses them - but for the PC, there would have been better ways to implement and FF engine...

Like I said, I'm gonna take a look at FF-X files soon...
(... and maybe I'll render FF-X Shiva on my own )

 - Alhexx

 - edit -
Am I wrong or is my english getting worse?

 

[Cyberman]

Qhimm:
That makes a great deal of sense.. unfortunately (LOL)

For the PSX there might be an easier way to 'find' things.  By that I mean the IMG file has a few things it MUST fit.
1 All data is stored SECTOR relative.  Even the FMV's are stored this way.  The sectors will be 2304 bytes for FMV data and 2048 bytes for normal data.  This also means that references to this data is likely stored in the FF8 binary. Or in an index at the begining of the Image.  I think I'll add to TV a new util for sector relative scaning when dealing with FF8 and FF9.  I haven't played with that data in many months.  However if I find anything useful out I'll let you know.   I can find all the TIM files on the FF8 discs which is a start.  I can also yank out model files.  I have notice 2 types of textures.  1 set is high resolution and ther other is low res. Now that I think about it, it's likely that one is battle the other is field. (They probably intermix them).  I'll start exporting 'known' information now to an XML file I guess. Maybe I'll get around to making a data viewer type toy for the program too. (Like L Spiro's in memory device).

Alhexx:
I now regret I mentioned it LOL!  Now Alhexx will be trying to extra as many Lulu models as possible! And Yunaleska let me see there were a few other interesting ones.


mirex:
You wouldn't happen to have a detailed description of common model formats would you?

Cyb

 

[mirex]

mirex:
You wouldn't happen to have a detailed description of common model formats would you?

I have description of FF8 field models if thats what you have in mind...
"Cracking" FFVIII model data, page 1, in the middle

 

[Kislinskiy]

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[Mickeyg]

Thanks to the FF8 battle model viewer that floated up a while ago, I was able to make some important progress on the decoding of FF8 models. I have made my own battle model viewer which improves on the original viewer in a couple of ways, most importantly the elimination of visual artifacts and correct display of transparency and additive blending.

Also, inspired by mirex' Biturn, I've tried to implement ASE exporting to the viewer, which is really the point of this topic. Now it's 7:42 in the morning here (and I'm not up early), so I'll limit the explanations to that these images are 3DSMAX renders done a few minutes ago.

I shall now sleep.

sorry to bring up such an old post.. but is it possible that you can explain how you got the gf? iwant to extract somemodels from my PC version of FFVIII but i don't know how..

can you give me a zip with needed files? or models.. or something?? is that possible.. thatnks


yer im a total noob here but i like it here ^^

 

[halkun]

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