An idea :)

Nulion · Post by **Nulion** » Wed Nov 09, 2005 8:54 pm

Okay, bear with me, but you guys are doing such an awesome job and are very much seeming to aim for things that players need. Really, this has to be the best AO website in years

At any rate...I suggested this on the official AO forums, but is it possible for someone (There has to be a talented person out there

) to develop some sort of Model Viewer for AO?

To be more specific, a program that lets you select a character model, then dress it up with any armor or weapon from the game, and then lets you run it through an animation. This could be an invaluable tool for the AO fan art community, as well as a very fun tool to simply play around with, right?

I know for a fact a tool like this exists for games such as Final Fantasy XI, and had always wondered since I first saw that version of it, why AO can't have the same thing

And with all the talent that AOU has been attracting, maybe there's a way to do it

I only regret that I don't know a thing about programming or about hwo things like this work...but hey, it's an idea for consideration, right?

Post by **Snakebite** » Thu Nov 10, 2005 5:53 am

First let me point out that I am in NO WAY WHATSOEVER anything like a programer...

That said, I'm assuming that to do this FC would need to release all the relevant textures & frames that would be needed (which is a damn lot!!!)

Whilst I imagine this would be handy for some reasons, I can't help feeling it could be abused.
Wasn't there an exploit some time ago where you could install HUGE implants in a lvl1 char thru use of the item reference tool?
I'm sure someone would have a field day with this idea lol.

Nulion · Post by **Nulion** » Thu Nov 10, 2005 4:10 pm

Well, I don't see why you'd need FC to release the textures. Just have a way of accessing them and displaying them on a program that you can only view, not play. I mean after all, we did install all of the textures and motion frames and everything on our computers, right? The program would only have to draw from THAT information. I think

I don't know if that violates the EULA...but it'd be so much fun to try

If I was a programmer I'd definitely try my hand at this one.

So, anybody know if that's even possible?

Windguaerd · Post by **Windguaerd** » Thu Nov 10, 2005 8:17 pm

Ok...believe it or not, I have thought of that idea 2 years ago. At that time someone HAD been doing animation of armor he created and used a program to re-create an AO avatar.

I did ask him if he could make such a program, he said creating an animation was not within his field of knowledge since he was an animator/artist not a programmer.

In theory is COULD be possible to create a program that uses all 7 basic models (solitus, nano, opifex, atrox) with both genders (except trox) in 3D and use textures from AO.

Problem is...that the textures for AO are:

1. Compressed into a database
2. Too many armor pieces to work on, think of every piece of armor and multiply by at least 7 (boots, helmet, chest, pants, gloves, back item, x2 sleeves)

Also working a way to make ALL the textures of an armor FIT on the 3D avatar model I believe would be a challenge (plus pulling all the textures in the correct order).

So in theory...POSSIBLE.

But in reality...would take a whole team of programmers and artists to work on it...FC could be able to do it...but not us, sorry.

Nulion · Post by **Nulion** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 3:55 am

Aw....Well, at least I know it is possible, but no way I'd expect a whole team to get together to do this.

Always did think that a program like this could be done though by simply using the exact same method the game does of fitting textures onto models, right down to the opifex shoulderpad bug, hehe. But it sounds a whole lot more complicated than that. I wouldn't have thought that the entire thing would need to be designed from the ground up and not simply borrow heavily from how AO renders things. It really isn't possible to have the program access the AO files and display an avatar using the information there?

Who knows though

Stranger things have happened I guess. Thanks for the input though Wind, that's exactly the kind of stuff I wanted to know

Eomaia · Post by **Eomaia** » Sat Nov 12, 2005 3:49 am

The textures can be ripped out of the database easily enough. The hard part would be to figure out what the geometry sets are to get an accurate representation of the actual models used in the game.

Of course all of this sounds a bit like it might violate the EULA...

But here are some examples of the textures used:

[img]http://static.flickr.com/33/62298922_58d26d5875.jpg[/img]
(Texture of Omni-Pol helmet)

[img]http://static.flickr.com/31/62296479_aa9fd535f5.jpg[/img]
(Texture of Morgana)

[img]http://static.flickr.com/32/62296917_8b34131077.jpg[/img]
(Texture of the ship that floats above Omni-1 HQ)

Nulion · Post by **Nulion** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 3:14 am

Hmm, very nice! Very clear and cool textures really

As for geometry used in the game...isn't that sort of data stored somewhere else in the AO files? Forgve me, again I'm a total noob, hehe.

As for violating the EULA...sure sounds like it would. Bleh...