Arena Extraction - 3D Models (August 11, 2010)

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
The future is here! AD has managed to extract all of Wing Commander Arena's audio and 3D model files. Time for the modders to start playing... and everyone who likes looking through folders of beautiful textures should take a gander, too! One fun note--the ship wreckage belived to be a Pelican is, according to its internal filenames... a Pelican!




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Original update published on August 11, 2010
 
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Now there wouldn't happen to be a 3ds max/blender plugin for these mesh files somewhere out there...
Don't want to sound greedy, but i need an extra pair of hands to wipe all the drool off my mouth
 
Kay, so there doesn't seem to be a native importer for these files, but I was able to track down the file format. It's Ogre3d .mesh files, and you can view them for free using the ogremax viewer found here:
http://www.ogremax.com/downloads
Tested and works well, no luck getting the textures to show up yet, though. use the typical FPS keys to move around the scene.
Good luck!
 
Kay, so there doesn't seem to be a native importer for these files, but I was able to track down the file format. It's Ogre3d .mesh files, and you can view them for free using the ogremax viewer found here:
http://www.ogremax.com/downloads
Tested and works well, no luck getting the textures to show up yet, though. use the typical FPS keys to move around the scene.
Good luck!

I worked on this problem a while back. Yes they're OGRE files. You can search for OGRE threads in the OT forum and find a thread from a bit ago.

Anyway, it's not hard to make the textures show up, but the trick is that you have to physically recreate the material files yourself. Arena seems to use some kind of custom method of defining shaders and and materials. I guess I ran out of time to post this info with the update.

Here's some (very) basic code that will get the laser gun's textures to show up. Just copy the text into notepad and save as 'Gun_Laser.material' :
Code:
material Gun_Laser

{
   technique
   {
      pass
      {
         texture_unit
         {
           texture gun_laser_paintjob.jpg
         }
          texture_unit normalMap
            { texture gun_laser_normalmap.png             
            
         }
         
         }
      }
   }
}
 
this is awesome! :) I am really impressed AD, keep it up and I hope someone will use these files for a project
 
Jup it seams that you need the .material files to show the textures correctly.
I found a program called "Show Mesh" that also displays .mesh files. It gives me an error message about the missing .material files.

Do you think that you might be able to extract the .material files also and put them up?

Show Mesh -> http://sourceforge.net/projects/showmesh/

PS: Why are there tons of tools to import stuff into Ogre but non that let you export the files to anything usefull. At least I haven't found anything good.
 
PS: Why are there tons of tools to import stuff into Ogre but non that let you export the files to anything usefull. At least I haven't found anything good.
Because the people developing these tools have no need for export tools. They want to get models into the game, not out of it :). This is the case for most game engines - developers actually never have a need to export things back out of the game, so they just don't make any export tools.
 
Most likely. Just thought because its a more or less open envoirment they work with it would also have both, import and export tools but yah, you are right. Most people don't need to extract their own stuff ^_^

Anyway I found a way to get things into 3ds format but only with loosing all uv maps, so I am left with the basic model. It would have been nice to do some renders with the models.
 
Do you think that you might be able to extract the .material files also and put them up?

There just isn't any.

As I said, Arena uses a custom method. In the mesh package you downloaded, there should be a folder called 'Materials' with a single file in it called 'MainLibrary'. It specifies what texture and shader each materials uses ... . It's like one giant material file instead of a bunch of separate ones. I guess they were trying to simplify lighting to keep arena's 50MB budget. (I also included the shader scripts in the "shaders" folder) This info should be enough to recreate at least the basic material files for each ship. Someone more experienced with ogre may be able to do more than that.
 
mmh, with those extracted files is it theoretically possible to "fix" a PC version of arena? I mean a sort of light version with no multiplayer support ( I suppose this would be difficult), only single player mode.

one more thing, were those "WC CONFLICT" missions actually used in arena??
 
Ok now i've found a Blender and a 3ds max import script, which both had a problem with the xmls i made from the mesh files. When i was just about to try different Blender/Python versions, i figured that the Ogre viewer Howie posted was DirectX based. So i found it much easier to just rip the models from the viewer via 3D Ripper DX and apply the textures manually (easiest part). Here's the Arrow for starters, haven't done much regarding specular maps or anything, just applied the basic texture.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7U5HWTUR


Edit: Forgot to thank you Howie. I don't have an XBox, so this is basically the first time i see most of this stuff.
 

Attachments

  • Arena Arrow.jpg
    Arena Arrow.jpg
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The Arrow does look quite formidable with the augmented armour.

This is the first time I've seen them close up as well. It would be nice to see some higher resolution renders, once you've worked out where all the various maps go.
 
Ok now i've found a Blender and a 3ds max import script, which both had a problem with the xmls i made from the mesh files. When i was just about to try different Blender/Python versions, i figured that the Ogre viewer Howie posted was DirectX based. So i found it much easier to just rip the models from the viewer via 3D Ripper DX and apply the textures manually (easiest part). Here's the Arrow for starters, haven't done much regarding specular maps or anything, just applied the basic texture.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7U5HWTUR


Edit: Forgot to thank you Howie. I don't have an XBox, so this is basically the first time i see most of this stuff.

Hey that looks greate. Much better then what I have so far. Currently the download of your file dosn't seam to work.

From what I saw the model has seperated objects so you could strip it down to the very basic Arrow or the different "upgrades/versions" in between.

I hope that I could open your file as soon as the dl is avaible. Do you plan on converting the other files as well?
 
Hmmm download works ok for me.
I could convert the whole bunch, but it really isn't such a big hassle.
Basically what you need is:
-the models package (obviously)
-the Ogre viewer from Howies link
-3D Ripper DX (free)
-a program that reads 3dr and/or obj files (3ds max works best if you have it)
Start up 3d ripper, open the file you want with the Ogre Viewer (important: choose direct3d renderer) and rip the model. The output file should be a 3dr and an obj, open it with whatever program you use and reapply the textures. That's pretty easy, they already have the right names in the archive. I'm used to ripping models where you have to look for the right textures in a 1000 file archive without proper naming, or sometimes the UV is completely messed up.

Or maybe someone is patient enough to try to get the Blender import plugin to work
 
mmh, with those extracted files is it theoretically possible to "fix" a PC version of arena? I mean a sort of light version with no multiplayer support ( I suppose this would be difficult), only single player mode.

one more thing, were those "WC CONFLICT" missions actually used in arena??


would somebody please answer?
 
Thanks I will take a look into that.

mmh, with those extracted files is it theoretically possible to "fix" a PC version of arena? I mean a sort of light version with no multiplayer support ( I suppose this would be difficult), only single player mode.
In theory...I would say yes, quite possible. The question is how much work would that be if you don't have an existing engine that has similar gameplay allready and is easly modable.
Another thing could be to create a more classic way of gameplay useing these models like importing them into the Vision or Freespace-open engine.
 
would somebody please answer?

I highly doubt anyone will recreate all Arena missions in another game engine (you're thinking Prophecy or Freespace right?).
The best you could probably hope is for someone to port a few ships to one of the already existing games or mods.
Believe it or not, but making models is one of the smaller parts that form a game.
 
well I hope something useful will be done with that stuff, some SO shipmodels would be cool though.

what about the WC Conflict missions, where they used in the arena game?
 
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