If I want to make a game mod for say, a first person shooter, is there any way to just take an existing model from a 3D game? How would I do this? How would I do it if the 3D game I want to get the model from is a console game? Maybe there would have to be a way to get to the info of the model and all it''s animations, because in many 3D games even though you can rotate the camera, it doesn''t work at all times for all animations. I wonder how to do this because I would love to play as Sonic in Unreal (not Tourn just Unreal), or play as one of the Fur Fighters in Unreal. Otherwise the only way I can make a new playable character is to make new 2D sprites for Duke Nukem 3D, if it allows you to make a new playable character. But how can I get polygon models from games rather than remake them? For example, someone made a Sonic model for Quake 3, but why not just use the EXACT model from Sonic Adventure 2? Is there no way to get it? Is it because it has way too many polygons for the PC game to accept or what? Does anyone know a lot about what I''m talking about?

well then there is that whole copyright protection thing. when you recreate the model from scratch you at least have the ability to say its art you created based on something else and under fair use you have some leeway.

dont try getting things from conosle games. they use special formats for everything, but unlike pc games that tend to have tools for use, consoels dont. models could also be encrypted, use hardware optimized textures stored in an alien format, file system may not be readable by cd drive, files could be hidden instead a wad/zip style file system that is non standard, model could be split up in a million ways and stored in pieces all over the place, animation could vastly change things depending on skelatal, frame based, delta frame based, etc. ie there are way too many varibles in try to decphier console game models if you can even access all the data on the disk (pcs cant read game data session of a gdrom).

dont steal models from polycount. ask permission before using any work (ask the artist not the website maintainers). look into milkshape which can help you create and view models from various pc games. also you need to own the full version of the game, as most pc demo versions do not allow you do modify game data.

- Quote
dont try getting things from conosle games. they use special formats for everything, but unlike pc games that tend to have tools for use, consoels dont. models could also be encrypted, use hardware optimized textures stored in an alien format, file system may not be readable by cd drive, files could be hidden instead a wad/zip style file system that is non standard, model could be split up in a million ways and stored in pieces all over the place, animation could vastly change things depending on skelatal, frame based, delta frame based, etc. ie there are way too many varibles in try to decphier console game models if you can even access all the data on the disk (pcs cant read game data session of a gdrom).
- A person



I disagree. Console models are NEVER encrypted and are in a common and simple format (Playstation GTE and GPU assembly ... well documented and easier than PC assembly). They do need a little processing to convert into usable form, but it''s the same procedure for pretty much every game, with only minor variations. Console models are also tiny, being saved in 16 bit fixed format, and usually very efficient use of textures. They''re also 100% quad + triangle meshes, which is pretty nice for my uses.

The trick is to have an emulator dump you the model. With the playstation, you can find the 3d-to-2d projection that the model underwent when being projected to the screen by hacking the GTE portion, and all the faces and textures (in screen coordinates) from the GPU portion (in the graphics plugin for most emulators). Those 2 can be used to reconstuct an original textured mesh (which can be easily animated with the skeleton system I''m using for my current project).

My particular tools were AdriPSX + the PEOPS GPU plugin (both open source).

The only way a game can prevent this is by not using software rendering (which is not particularly fast on a playstation), so I think it''s safe to assume that most games will fall to this trick. I''ve tested it with Chrono Cross and managed to get a well animated Serge model:
screenshot of Serge: (http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~bj92077/serge.jpg)
modeller + source + 2 dumped models: (http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~bj92077/modeller.zip)

The numpad is used to control the bones, INSERT, HOME, DEL, END, PGUP, PGDN constrol the position, and the arrow keys control rotation. Sorry the modeller is so hard to use, but it was never intended for release (just a tool to help me play around with 3d).

You should know that reverse engineering a game or using any kind of material from a commercial product (meaning ripping it from the game or whatever) is illegal and could put you in trouble. Not all developers are that light on people stealing their hard work.

Reverse Engineering is legal (except in the case of DMCA, but the Playstation hardware is not encrypted, so that''s not the case).

I own a copy of the game, and unless I''m not getting something, that includes all the parts of the game, including the models, and I can do whatever I want in terms of personal use.

If I had a non-copyrighted 3d model that I could dump for my demonstration, I would, but I don''t know of any non-copyrighted PSX games with 3d models.

Is that program available anywhere for download by any chance? :D I''d love to take a closer look at the Final Fantasy IX models!

Unfortunately, it''s not a stand alone program. It''s a hacked version of AdriPSX, and a hacked version of the PEOPS graphics plugin. The stuff is extremely hard to use, and requires re-compiling to change some of the settings (I need to use an unhacked and old copy of AdriPSX to generate the savestates for use in the hacked copy, as the hacked copy is severly crippled (can''t control anything, and can''t access the CD-ROM ... but can load a save state and render (and dump) a frame).

AdriPSX doesn''t run FFIX unfortunately.



The big limitation right now to having a good dumper is the lack of a good open source emulator to latch it on to.

Ok