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  #1  
Unread 01-10-2011, 08:52 AM
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LotRO annoyance number one.

First off, a "confession" of sorts. For the last 2 weeks I've been living the WoW life. Although I'd be lying if I said I wasn't having fun, most of the reason why I took a friend up on an offer was to get a chance to experience the game now - as opposed to how I remembered it when I left shortly after BC.

However, through dealing with WoWHead and what used to be the Armory, an old annoyance has been refreshed. I can go to WoWHead, and see my character, his gear, and any other gear on that site in 3D. I can go to Battle.net, and see a picture of my character exactly how he appears in the game (looks like a shot from the char select screen). In LotRO? Oh, well - we can see a class icon, or choose a predefined icon representing our race for the sigs - but that's it.

It's really a pity - considering how much work they put into cosmetics and dyes. Something that WoW still hasn't done. No, it's beyond a pity - it's just downright annoying. It's like someone giving you a free car, but telling you you can't leave the driveway.

Here's the deal - I don't make posts to whine, and I'm not about to start. In an obscure way, Lua Scripting has made what once was infeasible - merely time consuming. Because of the ability to link any item in the chat window via id, it's now possible to "try on" every single piece of gear in the game.

That, in combination with a 3D ripper - should allow for the same web-based try-on, character display. The type of thing this game practically screams for.

Now, like I said - this would still be time consuming, especially if I'm the only one gathering stuff; but I'm not about to start asking for help until I've got something to show for it. I just thought I'd throw this out there - in case there are others interested in this idea. I'm going to start off with a 3D viewer for the individual races/sexes without gear - hopefully including the individual hair/face meshes for each race/sex, and color options.

Whenever that's up - then the search for help comes in.
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  #2  
Unread 01-10-2011, 09:46 AM
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/agree

Isn't one of the main things for MMO's to show off your stuff ? ;P
This should have been done by the turbine devs long ago as DU says (of course there's a lot of other stuff that should be done/fixed long ago but this is definitely one of them).

That's a huge work-load. I'm sure there will be willing helpers around for this kind of project (/careful sign for helping out if time allows it and my skills are sufficient enough).


Quote:
Originally Posted by Digital_Utopia
In LotRO? Oh, well - we can see a class icon, or choose a predefined icon representing our race for the sigs - but that's it.
Hah. We Euro people don't even have that ;D
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Unread 01-10-2011, 10:18 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by daimon
/agree

Isn't one of the main things for MMO's to show off your stuff ? ;P
This should have been done by the turbine devs long ago as DU says (of course there's a lot of other stuff that should be done/fixed long ago but this is definitely one of them).

That's a huge work-load. I'm sure there will be willing helpers around for this kind of project (/careful sign for helping out if time allows it and my skills are sufficient enough).



Hah. We Euro people don't even have that ;D
I think, in order to make it possible for as many people to help out, all you'd need is a copy of the ripper program (which is free), and to submit the textures/scene. probably a list of item IDs and a naming scheme for organization.

People that would want to help out, that do have familiarity with a 3D modeling app or even an image editor - then they could help with the prepping etc.

Based on preliminary testing - the ripper doesn't get the right scaling on the dressing room model, so it has to be scaled width-wise, around 50%. In addition, each texture needs to have a copy for each dye - as the textures themselves are semi-transparent where the dye shows through. So basically the main texture has to be brought into photoshop/paintshop, and saved with a solid color layer below it for each dye color. I'm not sure exactly how it's done in game - but since flash/java 3D viewers aren't exactly the most complex, it's better to keep things simple.

Animation is definitely beyond the scope of this project - as that would require creating a skeleton, weighing each mesh (specifying how the mesh is deformed by the bones), and manually reproducing the animations. Something that's a bit outside my skills. However, some kind of common axis/registration point will probably need to be added to each piece, to make everything assemble correctly.

Again, a lot of this is just theory based off of what I have uncovered throughout experimenting with the ripper and my previous modeling experience. I'm pretty confident this is feasible - otherwise I wouldn't have made this thread; but there are details to iron out, as well as a specific process that needs to be figured out.
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  #4  
Unread 01-12-2011, 09:22 AM
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At this point, I've got a basic script that will resize/position the model in 3ds Max (maxscript), and am currently checking out my options for Flash 3D engines. First choice worked well with the first mesh (head), but caused some weird issues when adding the hair.

The good news is that it appears that most engines accept some form of a movieClip as a texture, so dyes and skin color should be not only possible, but pretty easy.

There are a couple of LotRO related challenges left however - including eye/skin color, and setting up a way to easily mach body skin to face skin. Body textures seem to be a semi-transparent texture that seemingly allows color to show through, but the face/eye texture that's generated from the rip is completely opaque. Some photoshop magics will probably be needed to get the face/eye skins prepped for some form of overlay color (i.e. desaturated/lightened).

I also haven't looked into "details" as of yet - but I'm hoping that all of them are additional meshes/textures (including scars), as opposed to additional head textures/meshes - as it would increase the total number of combinations.

Anyway, that's all for now - I'll continue to update this thread as I progress, and hopefully before too long I'll have a demo.
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