GR2 Editor/Viewer/Extractor/Importer

[THE_MASK]

How do i turn it side on , world axis ?

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by sober

How do i turn it side on , world axis ?

Left mouse click and hold and move mouse left/right/forward/backwards to rotate camera. Center mouse click and hold and move mouse left/right to pan left/right, forward/backward to pan up/down

EDIT:

I've been debating about adding another camera mode. I like the camera mode I have now but it is sometimes annoying when trying to get up close to something positioned far out and rotate it. The camera mode now rotates around the look at point. The other mode I'm debating about adding would let the look at point rotate around the eye (same thing as transforming the world). I may even drop my now camera mode for this other mode as it offers greater flexibility in positioning/rotating.

[Will-Rommel]

No updates today? Must be the first time in 2 weeks!

Courage tdw !

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Will-Rommel

No updates today? Must be the first time in 2 weeks!

Courage tdw !

Had to work on the UIs mod today (and still working on it)

[redcoat22]

Very exciting stuff

[Ekmek]

First off - Great Work!

I apologize if this has been asked (I haven't gone throug the 15 pages of this thread yet). But is it possible to get a GR2 exported into something that Blender can import. I saw that exporting to OBJ is in work. Does that include Bones and meshes?

Thanks!

EDIT: I do het an error that says:

Info header tag value expected to be 0x80000032

When I try to open a Civ5 GR2 file

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Ekmek

First off - Great Work!

I apologize if this has been asked (I haven't gone throug the 15 pages of this thread yet). But is it possible to get a GR2 exported into something that Blender can import. I saw that exporting to OBJ is in work. Does that include Bones and meshes?

Thanks!

EDIT: I do het an error that says:

Info header tag value expected to be 0x80000032

When I try to open a Civ5 GR2 file

Yes you will get that error on non-SH5 GR2 files currently. I have it 'locked' to only SH5 GR2 file format for the time being. If I can get everything working with SH5 files then making it work with everything else should be easier. Key word being should.
Right now working on something that I flagged for follow-up that I forgot about. It deals with bone bindings or more specifically mesh to bone bindings. Each mesh is assigned (bound) to a bone in the GR2 files. I went back and reviewed this section of my code and found that I wasn't setting the transform for the mesh before rendering it. So I adjusted the code to set the transform to the bound bone then rendering the mesh and it totally screwed up everything. The meshes were all in the incorrect places. Now I have to figure out how this bone binding is supposed to work

[TheDarkWraith]

maybe someone will find this interesting:

I coded the GR2 editor/viewer to be able to change parameters in the GR2 file now (transform, inverseworldtransform, rotation, maxproperties, etc.). For a test to see if I have the app working correctly I changed the position of crane01 of the King George V. I set the X position to -1.25 from -0.7. Now my app showed the crane as having moved to the new spot but when I checked in Goblin and GrannyViewer they show it hasn't moved. This tells me that the transform data is only used to derive the inverseworldtransform which is what is used to place the item. Interesting

This also means that everything is flipped as to how I'm presenting it with the app. Crane01 is actually on the right side of the ship vice the left like I render it. Wow. I have to make some major changes...

EDIT:

went back and looked at GrannyViewer again and noticed that yes everything is flipped from how I'm presenting it but the crane01 was in fact moved to it's new position. This tells me that the transform used when rendering the mesh is the bounded bone transform (rotation and position) * bounded bone inverseworldtransform.

Everything is flipped because GrannyViewer is using a left hand coordinate system and I'm rendering with a right handed coordinate system.

[0rpheus]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

maybe someone will find this interesting:

I coded the GR2 editor/viewer to be able to change parameters in the GR2 file now (transform, inverseworldtransform, rotation, maxproperties, etc.). For a test to see if I have the app working correctly I changed the position of crane01 of the King George V. I set the X position to -1.25 from -0.7. Now my app showed the crane as having moved to the new spot but when I checked in Goblin and GrannyViewer they show it hasn't moved. This tells me that the transform data is only used to derive the inverseworldtransform which is what is used to place the item. Interesting

This also means that everything is flipped as to how I'm presenting it with the app. Crane01 is actually on the right side of the ship vice the left like I render it. Wow. I have to make some major changes...

Blimey, sounds a bit but good luck!

[TheDarkWraith]

now you want to talk about confusing check this out:

I moved crane01 to a new position (X of -1.25 from -0.7) and GrannyViewer showed it as moved to new position. I check Goblin Editor and it shows it as not moved (still in original position). Either the devs didn't fully understand the Granny system or they chose to impose their own way of rendering.

To add insult to injury GrannyViewer renders with a left-hand coordinate system and Goblin Editor renders with a right-hand coordinate system...

Now the kicker is how is it actually rendered in game....time to find out...if it renders differently I'm going to pull my hair out!

[TheDarkWraith]

This is sad, just utterly sad

I changed the position, rotation, scaling, and flags of the crane01 (this mesh is supposedly bound to a bone of the same name) of the King George V and NOTHING happened. GrannyViewer shows all the changes but Goblin Editor shows no changes (everything rendered just as nothing had changed). This means that SH5 uses the GR2 files just for storing mesh data and nothing more I wondered why when I viewed the individual meshes they were already pre-positioned to where they needed to be This means we cannot move meshes around without extracting them, repositioning them in 3D model program, then re-importing them back into the GR2 file. That's nuts.

Now the questions begs to be asked, why did they use the Granny system when they don't even use 10% of it's potential?

At least with SH3/4 I could change the position and rotation of meshes in the DAT file and those changes were reflected in game...

Bones at least reflect changes made to them but those are only good for waypoints. Talk about a big let down...

Now I have to go back and try my version of the app that used the granny2.dll and see what happens...

I'd tend to think they got saddled with it but did not have the time to work with it as well as they could have.


To do the Open Bunker I had to move the verts themselves.
Same thing on some of SteelVikings stuff I did.

Many of the Games I've checked GR2 files on suffer the same problem.
The Dev's of many Games never went the extra steps that can be done.
Now SWTOR is an interesting use of the Granny System.
As is the First Templar.

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by privateer

I'd tend to think they got saddled with it but did not have the time to work with it as well as they could have.


To do the Open Bunker I had to move the verts themselves.
Same thing on some of SteelVikings stuff I did.

It's quite obvious they either didn't understand what the Granny system can do or just totally ignored it.

The whole point of this app was to make it easier to work with the GR2 files for SH5 but every little step forward I make it's 10 steps backwards I was working towards taking a piece from a unit and adding it to a different unit but now that's out the window due to not being able to specify rotation and position in the file itself. It's totally absurd to have to pre-position every mesh....I mean what the hell were they thinking? To me that's a basic concept in model building....you build a model of say a crane around world origin then when you add it to another item you specify the rotation and position so that it's positioned where it needs to be on the item.....but pre-positioning?? Did they hire people off the street to program this game?

Here's how it appears they created the GR2 files used in this game: a 3D modeller made the entire unit - the stacks, extra objects, funnels, hull, etc. - in one drawing. Then they took this one drawing and diced it up (preserving the position of every item) and made a GR2 file out of it. I just can't believe it...

The positioning was the first thing I noted that was going to be an issue when we reach import ability.
Mostly because of the Tangent stuff.
Now we don't NEED to do the tangents before hand.
But it will force the Game Engine to calculate them on the fly.
So up the system specs when massive imports start rolling in!
(It may also be happening already with imported SH4 Units?)

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by privateer

The positioning was the first thing I noted that was going to be an issue when we reach import ability.
Mostly because of the Tangent stuff.
Now we don't NEED to do the tangents before hand.
But it will force the Game Engine to calculate them on the fly.
So up the system specs when massive imports start rolling in!
(It may also be happening already with imported SH4 Units?)

The only thing I can see to do is store an offset of the sum where the item was originally and where the user wants it to be. Then apply this offset to every vertice in the mesh thus achieving the same effect. Nuts

Thank god that if I set the mesh's transform to be the bone's transform * the bone's inversetransform it positions the mesh where it needs to be. Thus I can figure out the offset required by doing what I mentioned.