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Author Topic: Mass Effect Model Viewing help?  (Read 16765 times)
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Mass Effect Model Viewing help?
« on: August 18, 2009, 00:51 »

Hello everyone

I'm very new to this program. all I'm trying to do is view the weapon meshes with textures applied so I can take clean screenshots from different angles.

I'm not sure how to go about doing this? Would someone be able to give a helping hand? I've downloaded and extracted umodel to the root directory of Mass Effect, but I'm not sure what to do next.

I'm using Windows XP Pro SP3, I believe.

Any help would be appreciated! Thank you.
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zardalu
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Re: Mass Effect Model Viewing help?
« Reply #1 on: August 18, 2009, 03:41 »

Hi Counciler,

I can't get the textures to show up in umodel yet, but you can extract the weapons to md5 format and view them with an MD5 viewer with textures. Here's how I got the meshes to show up in umodel:

1. Put umodel.exe and SDL.dll into your \(your_mass_effect_folder)\GameObjects\Equipment\Weapons folder

2. Go to start > run > type "cmd" (no quotes) then at the dos c: prompt you have to navigate to c:\(your_mass_effect_folder)\GameObjects\Equipment\Weapons, (Let me know if you don't know how to do this, I can be more specific.)

3. type in (no quotes):
"umodel BIOG_WPN_ASL_R.upk" or whichever .upk you want to look at.  If you want to export them to MD5Mesh format, type "umodel -export -md5 BIOG_WPN_ASL_R.upk"

This will extract all textures as .tga, and all meshes as MD5mesh, which you can see using these tools:
http://www.modwiki.net/wiki/MD5_%28file_format%29#Tools

Good luck!

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Gildor
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Re: Mass Effect Model Viewing help?
« Reply #2 on: August 18, 2009, 11:39 »

For md5 also check this page.
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Re: Mass Effect Model Viewing help?
« Reply #3 on: August 18, 2009, 23:34 »

I successfully extracted all the packages in the weapons folder. I moved them to a folder on my desktop, and have tried viewing them with der_ton's model viewer. The meshes are working, but the program cant seem to recognize the textures that are packaged with the meshes. Is there something I'm missing? I even tried putting all the textures and meshes in the same folder and viewing them, to no luck. The ones packaged with the meshes seem to be lighting/bump mapping textures mostly. They don't look much like the actual -textures- of the guns.
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zardalu
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Re: Mass Effect Model Viewing help?
« Reply #4 on: August 20, 2009, 03:59 »

Hmm I think maybe der_ton's viewer needs the textures to be properly named according to Doom 3 standards. I can't remember for sure. I will check it out tonight and let you know. Your best solution would be to load the MD5Meshes and textures into 3dsmax using Gildor's tool which he linked above.... if you have max.
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Gildor
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Re: Mass Effect Model Viewing help?
« Reply #5 on: August 20, 2009, 13:47 »

The meshes are working, but the program cant seem to recognize the textures that are packaged with the meshes.
Meshes are exported by umodel with material names, not texture names. Usually materials and textures has different names. You should reassing textures by hands.
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interloko
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Re: Mass Effect Model Viewing help?
« Reply #6 on: August 20, 2009, 21:47 »

is there a way to know what texture is for what material? maybe stored in a text file or similar? or there isn't way?
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Gildor
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Re: Mass Effect Model Viewing help?
« Reply #7 on: August 21, 2009, 14:00 »

No way.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2009, 03:31 by esr911 » Logged
Ace-Angel
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Re: Mass Effect Model Viewing help?
« Reply #8 on: August 21, 2009, 19:15 »

Manual labor here, sorry mate.

But hey, at least the models are packed in the right folders, would have been a nightmare to extract everything in one folder and figure out which character and weapons textures belonged to who...
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zomg
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Re: Mass Effect Model Viewing help?
« Reply #9 on: August 26, 2009, 14:50 »

Hi there,

didnt want to start a new thread, so ill take this one.

Anyone else having problems getting all the textures from ME ? Geth for example, the packages name is "BIOG_GTH_STP_NKD_R"
I get the mesh perfectly, but a lot of textures are missing. Like the diffuse one and the normal map.
Normal map got extracted tho, but came out as a 0 Byte file. Same for other models btw.



No problem i thought, take DXripper and get them ingame, but same fail here  Sad

thx for reading Smiley
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Gildor
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Re: Mass Effect Model Viewing help?
« Reply #10 on: August 26, 2009, 15:03 »

Mass Effect uses unsupported normal map compression algorithm. Possibly - 3Dc.
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zomg
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Re: Mass Effect Model Viewing help?
« Reply #11 on: August 26, 2009, 15:57 »

ahh thats why... the compression of the textures.
Makes sense now, got already another game (not UE based) that seems to do the same. Some of the ME textures work tho, but a very few.
Thx man.
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serenity44
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Re: Mass Effect Model Viewing help?
« Reply #12 on: August 30, 2009, 18:41 »

So because of how mass effect compresses the textures they all get ruined? can a fix/update for this ever be made?
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esr911
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Re: Mass Effect Model Viewing help?
« Reply #13 on: August 30, 2009, 19:01 »

So because of how mass effect compresses the textures they all get ruined? can a fix/update for this ever be made?

The solution: use a program called Texmod. It should be able to get what you need.


http://www.gamedaily.com/games/texmod/pc/game-downloads/texmod/


..:: ESR911 ::..
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serenity44
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Re: Mass Effect Model Viewing help?
« Reply #14 on: August 30, 2009, 21:21 »

So because of how mass effect compresses the textures they all get ruined? can a fix/update for this ever be made?

The solution: use a program called Texmod. It should be able to get what you need.


http://www.gamedaily.com/games/texmod/pc/game-downloads/texmod/


..:: ESR911 ::..

thanks! i knew of the program but didn't know that it worked for mass effect. thanks again!

*edit* didn't work. texmod did the exact same thing. all red/orange/blue textures. guess nothing can be done about these. thanks anyway.
« Last Edit: August 30, 2009, 22:17 by serenity44 » Logged
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