Using the Viewer to Attach Meshes

[Munderbunny]

Oh sorry, it wasn´t my intention to insult you. I just didn´t know how to response to your post before.

No love.

And occult spoilers? I just posted the news you which you wrote in the occult thread.

*cough* You know I saw the date on those posts, right? Obviously, I forgive you because you're like 17, and because you did a lot of work for Occult and all, and it's not exactly a matter of national security, but you know, I mean...you know.

Anyway, I'm only ever half-serious with most stuff I say, so don't take it to heart. Whenever I feel underappreciated in life, I come to the TQ forums and demand my "thanks for" credits. I'm rather precious about it.

[ASYLUM101]

Ok, I'm assuming no one has really bothered much with this since no one has posted anything about the fairly difficult part....

SO, I will jump in and say I've gotten past the poking part of this tutorial(or explainatorial), and now I'm trying to figure out what exactly you mean by ...

Once you got your mesh or effect in position, save mif data. Then, open the mif data and copy and paste it over the mif data in your decompiled mesh file. Then you need to change the section count to whatever it is now. Thanks to Kreeloo, I now know that you can just select the text in Notepad++ and it'll tell you how big it is. My method before was to cut and paste the section into a blank text file then save it, then right-click on it and show properties to show the exact byte count (when I used to work on meshes, I'd have like 93487593485748 of these files littering my desktop--god bless the Kreeloo for ending this madness).

What is this section count?

What I'm guessing is, the size of the new .msh file has to be the size of the old .msh file, correct? If so, HOW exactly do you do this? Adding spaces?

EDIT: Ok, I got SOMETHING to work. Now when I go ingame my summon pops out of the floor...but has no model or textures apparently, so I'm gonna go fiddle with this a bit more.

Yeah ****, I don't know what I'm missing. The viewer won't load my mesh cause it says something about bad physics data. Any ideas?

[Munderbunny]

Ok, so, the size is just the character count (with spaces) of the section. It's like section 3. So, if you cut and paste your mif data into section 3, put the section count as the character count of the section. With notepad++ you can just highlight and see how many bytes it is.

Set the correct section size before recompiling the mesh. When you get the invisible mesh in game, that means the game failed to load it--either the mesh is broken or the game couldn't find your mesh (bad link).

Don't worry about physics data. Though, I could make another post about that--I figured some physics stuff out, which is how I was able to add ragdoll to the acolytes. But, outside of that, it really has no use. :/

[ASYLUM101]

And so, how do you set the correct size? Is there a field somewhere, or do you just have to add spaces and tabs til it matches up?

I have Notepad++ and I was keeping an eye on the bit count for each section. Since I didn't change the Rigid Bodies or whatever it's called and the Joints, I copied/pasted from the old msh file and just changed the attachment points with mine. Also, I changed the glow map to direct towards my own as well. Hard to say if ANY of it worked since the mesh didn't show up ingame. But yeah, basically just redid the mesh JUST to change the glow map and tack on 3 effects.(it's one of them firesprites, except I'm using him as an nature sprite thingy. looks cool, just can't get him to spawn ingame.) I'm not doing anything else with this until I get a clear understanding cause it took me like a whole day to get this far and nothing... I'd rather enjoy my winter break than fuss with this.

[Munderbunny]

Change the count to match the section, not the other way around. Like, if the count is 4,211 and your changes make the section 5448, then actually change the number to 5448.

[ASYLUM101]

How exactly do you change that count?

Also, for some reason I was under the impression that when you copied your final-saved version of the mif file over the .msh file, you kept all the symbols that is in there. Do I keep this or do I literally ...

open the mif data and copy and paste it over the mif data in your decompiled mesh file.

leaving just the attach points and joints?

Cause, originally I had kept that stuff so I could edit the glowtextures.

[Munderbunny]

p0a's decompiler is a key element to this whole process. Without it, you cannot perform the steps I outlined. With it, you will find that each section has a plaintext count of the section size. You can just change the number before recompiling it again.

[ASYLUM101]

Oh, I had no idea I needed the decompiler. How did I miss that...
/facepalm

Let me try this again...

P0a's site seems to be down atm... No documentation for this decompiler makes it kinda hard to use.

EDIT:

Ok, so I tried again. Ripped the .msh from the arc, converted it to .csv with the decompiler, saved my mif, copied the attachment infos into the mif, saved again, made my changes, saved again. Opened the mif, copied that data into section 3 of the csv, and compiled back into msh format. Opened this file, renamed the glow from spritefireglow to spriteacidglow(my texture), and saved. Went into my .bat file, ran this :

archivetool "f:\steam\steamapps\common\titan quest\resources\creatures.arc" -add "monster\sprite\spriteacidglow.tex" "f:\steam\steamapps\common\titan quest\resources\"
archivetool "f:\steam\steamapps\common\titan quest\resources\creatures.arc" -add "monster\sprite\AMspritefire01.msh" "f:\steam\steamapps\common\titan quest\resources\"
archivetool "f:\steam\steamapps\common\titan quest\resources\effects.arc" -add "projectiles\venomcloudFX.dbr" "f:\steam\steamapps\common\titan quest\resources\"
archivetool "f:\steam\steamapps\common\titan quest\resources\effects.arc" -add "projectiles\poisonfx.dbr" "f:\steam\steamapps\common\titan quest\resources\"

and opened the viewer to see that same physics error with my new mesh.(which did appear in the list.) Also doesn't spawn ingame either. I'm assuming I'm still missing something, just dunno what.

[Munderbunny]

I honestly can't follow all those steps. The saving of the mif over and over again is not making sense to me.

The MIF file location is defined in the mesh. I don't believe this is used by the game--only the viewer. So the viewer sees and opens your mesh and then looks for the MIF data by the path defined in the mesh. You can edit this path as well, though not necessary unless you're going to be using the same mesh over and over again (as I did with the blood cult), in which case it might pay to rename it.

1. So, take your target msh file, check the path it lists for the mif info and create that path and put a plain text file in there by the same name with a .mif extension.
   
2. Copy the plaintext section 3 info into that mif file you just created.
   
3. Open that mesh with the viewer. The viewer will look for, and find the .mif file you created.
   
4. Make whatever changes you want in the viewer.
   
5. Once you are happy with your changes/additions/whatevers, then in the viewer go to File-->Save MIF data.
   
6. The viewer will add your info appropriately to the mif file you created.
   
7. Now, use p0a's decompiler to save that mesh file as a .csv file.
   
8. Open the .csv file with a plain-text editor.
   
9. Copy the contents of the mif file into section 3 of your csv file.
   
10. Change the count of section 3 to match the new character count (this must include spaces--notepad++ will show 2 counts--use the larger one).
    
11. Save the .csv file.
    
12. Use p0a's converter to build a .msh file from the csv.
    
13. Pack up the mesh into a .arc file and place it in your build directory.
    
14. Open the art manager fresh, select the creature or item record you want to use the mesh with, then browse for the mesh you created. You must browse for the mesh to be sure that the link is set correctly.
    
15. Start the game, check the mesh in game.

If you get the invisible mesh, it's possible the link is bad, or that the mesh itself is corrupted/not-usable.

If you get a game crash, the mesh itself is corrupted/not-usable, but the link is good.

Do those steps to make sure you can actually get a changed mesh into the game. Do not spend a lot of time working with the viewer and making your model awesome until you can be assured you will be able to import the mesh successfully. Some mesh files do not work well or at all with p0a's decompiler, so you don't want to waste your time with them. There's no way around this that I know of.

[ASYLUM101]

Ok, just erased my post cause I figured out what I did wrong. forgot a backslash in my script. Buuuut the mesh still won't show up ingame. I'm guessing maybe this mesh is borked, cause I followed idiot proof steps you posted. Built the mesh directly into my preexisting customeffects.arc file, saw a change in file size, so I opened up the AM.

Checked my links, redirected them to customeffects/amspritefire01.msh then built the mod and loaded up the game. Once again, same problem ensues. I guess I'll try something more simple, like a custom weapon or whatever before I try custom monsters.