Proper size and orientation from Blender to SoM

[theschap]

First off, hello everyone! I have been a From Software fan since Dark Souls. I never played the King's Field games until a couple years ago when I dove into KFIV. While I really enjoyed the atmosphere and exploration side of it, I found the movement to be pretty painful and haven't finished it. I've been into Playstation 1 era graphics for a while and trying to incorporate them into my own Unity based projects, but a friend mentioned SoM and here I am. I have really enjoyed messing with the tools and seeing how the pieces fit together and recently started going down the path of custom assets.

Here is the workflow I have been using as of late and getting predictable results from Blender 2.8 into SoM. There are several paths through this, but this has been working for me when doing objects and tiles so far.

Quick facts:

• 1m in Blender = 1m in SoM. Yay!
• Tiles in SoM are often 2m X 2m X 3m
• A side wall will then be 1m X 2m X 3m
• A floor tile 2m X 2m X 3m
• Black in a texture will show up transparent

• Before exporting a model from Blender make sure all transforms have been applied and then cleared.
• I exported as .obj with the following settings. Not all are needed, but things were working so I didn't bother to dig.
  
• I then open the .obj in Metasequoia LE with the following settings:
  
• Before saving this as a .x make sure your texture is applied, and referenced from the .../mqle24/Texture folder.
• Now save as .x with these settings:
  
• There is a post by JC Bailey that I used a lot http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php?topic=930.0 he recommended having a 'Converstions' folder with all the texture files, .x files, and converters. I used the 'SoMHelper' for a lot of my conversions and I'm not sure if you need the files in the same location as the conversion executables when using that, or just for the console commands. The 'SoMHelper' seemed fine with just loading a .x into it, and as long as the texture was in the mqle24/Texture directory all was good.

This was meant to be a blender started workflow tutorial. Things I didn't flesh out here are fleshed out very well here: http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php?topic=710.0

Feel free to comment about things I missed, or flat out got wrong, or would like more explanation and I will try to help.

If anyone is interested I could also share the placeholder box, and wall segment features in the video below that I've been using for greyboxing and getting a feeling for how things are laid out.

[Holy_Diver]

If you're serious here are some links you should acquaint yourself with:

http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/ex/diy/

https://www.patreon.com/posts/23273769

I'm developing a replacement for Blender right now, with SOM in mind. At least half of SOM is 3D art development, which is something that's long seemed too big of a undertaking to justify until SOM itself was more mature. But right now it's the half of the equation that is sorely lacking, and things will come together for it in the next year in order to finish porting King's Field II to SOM.

You should download SOM from that first link in case my websites go offline for a little while this summer while my host's company undergoes a mergers-and-acquisition transition. I'm unsure what to expect.

I recently did some (unreleased) work on a utility for making MDL files in order to convert KF2's models into SOM's format. It was the first time new morph-target animation files had been created. I wrote code for outputting them, but it only accepts KF2 files right now, so I'm interested in developing some code for X or other formats supported by Assimp, but only if someone is going to do something with it in the immediate term; since I'm busy developing a next generation art "tool chain."

Developing level geometry and character models are much more tricky than the basic non-interactive objects. You'll probably give up in short order. We'll see how far you can make it

P.S. Level geometry seems simple, but the DLC tool From Software provided are not really adequate for dealing with how the files get split up for lighting and shadows. And SOM has a really interesting (possibly unique) system now for eliminating "aliasing" but it depends on matching the vertices across the tiles, which is hard to do since x2msm splits them up, and they need to be able to be combined in different combinations. Vertical rises (split level) combinations can't really be generated with x2msm. I have some personal tools though that can... one is actually in those files, since I think the SOM.exe file has the capability, as part of an early system for converting art work into SOM's formats automatically, to dispense with import/export tools.

[theschap]

Hey Holy_Diver!

So I have a few questions about the current SOM I've been working with, and about moving things over to the SOM you mentioned in the SVN repo.

I've been running with this version: http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/Installation.htm

I've been using the recommended tools for conversions and such.

Is the SVN version the newest, and actively developed version?

I checked the repo out and I think I have everything installed, however I'm not completely sure how the language settings work. For English do I need the bottom two options? (default and neutral I think, I'm not sure how to get that dialog open again once things are installed through the .bat)

I'm currently getting hung up on pulling my old project into this one and maintaining my old DATA directory. It looks like everything I've done up to this point is being saved in the SOM install directory which it sounds like will be overwritten when updating. It looks like I could move things from the old some install dir to the new install dir, but I probably want to get the user DATA folder set up. How would I do this?

Thank you!

[Holy_Diver]

I checked the repo out and I think I have everything installed, however I'm not completely sure how the language settings work. For English do I need the bottom two options? (default and neutral I think, I'm not sure how to get that dialog open again once things are installed through the .bat)

Run SOM.exe. Look in the menu bar.

I'm currently getting hung up on pulling my old project into this one and maintaining my old DATA directory. It looks like everything I've done up to this point is being saved in the SOM install directory which it sounds like will be overwritten when updating. It looks like I could move things from the old some install dir to the new install dir, but I probably want to get the user DATA folder set up. How would I do this?

What's best is to make a new project, and the copy your old project over it with Explorer.

If you are going to use any custom artwork (seems you are) then that needs to go in your project's DATA folders. You may want to copy your old install's DATA folder into your project's. I've found the time to cleanup the level geometry a lot (though not completely) but have not yet worked on the other models. You'll likely find that a lot of the files in your project didn't come from From Software, and so those won't work. There is an [Output] option "do_missing_file_dialog_ok" that disables the prompt that tells you files are missing. You will probably want to use it for the time being.

You can edit the project's SOM file to use more than one DATA folder, or to not use the install (public) data folder. You can treat your project like your final product's file tree. The only complicating factor is the files sourced from the install folder will depend on 1) your audience installing SOM, or 2) copying the files to a new folder to package with your game; which can either be done en masse, or selectively; the latter option being more painstaking.

At this stage SOM is not as user-friendly as it needs to be, but it's much more intuitive than the kind of development tools you'll find elsewhere in theory. Right now it's on the cusp of some significant breakthroughs in the area of all original graphics extensions. Working in new features that tie into the graphics and animation facilities for some reason has never come up for years and years, but it's one of those things that is going to be like a dam breaking when the time comes. It's already happening, but only in slow-motion I guess. SOM's development is pretty glacial by impatient people standards... but it's really not bad historically speaking. I think it's probably going to be the first significant 3D RPG Maker like tool at some point. That's fitting if so, since KF was the first modern 3D game to be published as near as I can tell. If past is prologue there may be a lot of competitors all appearing around the same time it arrives. Or if nothing else like SOM exists, it could be a light in the darkness in the years to come.

[Holy_Diver]

EDITED: I don't recommend this, but just to illustrate a point; if you make a new project, and copy your project files into it...

Then open its SOM file, and find the DATA line. You can add a path to your older install's DATA folder to that line, and then it will find the files there.

If you put it first it will find them there first, or if you put it second, it will prefer the files in the new install's DATA folder.

You come at SOM at an interesting time because you can be the first to use the new layer system that makes it possible to do more interesting things with the labyrinths. I also recently added a volume texture system that has a lot of interesting possibilities. It's principally for water, but you can make a layer of haunted fog or something, or cap off an abyss, and probably other interesting effects too. It's not limited to map geometry.

[theschap]

I have my environment stuff set up correctly now I think, at least I have all my assets coming in.

Thanks for the break down on the DATA loading stuff. 

I'm having a DX problem now. I have DirectX 9.0c installed, which was working in my old project, but I'm getting this error:


Do I need to configure something to find that?

I agree with your sentiments towards SoM. I think it has a lot of potential to be a world class 3D RPG building tool. I recently heard about another From gem called Echo Night, which was build in the King's Field engine, and perhaps SoM. I haven't played it, but I am intrigued by the idea of a horror adventure game in this engine.

[Holy_Diver]

You shouldn't be seeing garbled text like that. It's probably Japanese text I've never encountered, but it should be legible. But... why does your OK button have such a thick focus rectangle around it? I've never seen one that's not 1px thick. You need to tinker around more, or provide more information. (I could recommend many things, but would rather not take stabs in the dark. It's a very robust product. It should be working unless you're doing something very weird... but finding new bugs is not uncommon either.)

EDITED: If you have the bandwidth, download that KF2 demo and play it. If you're using a virtual machine or some shit like that, don't.

[theschap]

I have some confusion regarding the languages and themes pack tool.

Here is what I currently have in here:



I have unzipped both the Default and Neutral collections and copied them over into their respective areas. I assumed this was what I needed to do as it gives me English everywhere except for that strange DX error above.

I'll give the KF2 demo a look. Also I am not running a vm. I'm on Windows 10 x64.

[theschap]

 

I reinstalled my DirectX drivers, and things still didn't work. I then downloaded the KF2 demo, and it was giving me the same error. I ran it 'as administrator' and the game ran great! Sigh.... Oh well I got it figured out I guess.

BTW the analog controls in this version feel fantastic. I am even more excited to play around with this toolset. :) I think the controls of those game was the weakest part and with some real analog support it really shines. I just need to get a button configuration going that I like for my xbox one controller. I kept opening the diagnostic overlay, and switching into VR mode. haha

I still have some tweaking to get the language stuff working. The menu's in my project were showing up in Japanese, but the tools were in English.

Anyway, I'm excited to keep working with this.

[theschap]

Holy_Diver,

Is there a way to privately message you that you prefer?