WHM Model Converter Tool

[mudflap]

Let me know which model comes up like blocks. I'll check it out.

[Ronin-Sage]

Hey Mudflap.

'Getting this issue(Vista SP1) where when I use the whe->ebp and whm->sgm converters. It takes about a solid 5x longer than 1.1, and my machine goes into this morse-code beeping session(the beep you would hear from holding down Shift to prompt for Sticky Keys in Windows).

[mudflap]

beeping is OK. I get it too on Windows XP. I haven't traced what bit of code is causing the beeps. It may be one of the memory conditions it uses to see if some data read is a float or string. The beeping shouldn't affect the file you create. Do you get a sgm file that works after all the beeping?

After a while....

Here is why the computer beeps.

I use the following code to test if some data read is actually a long integer. If it is a string (like words) then is will make an integer that typically is really big. But if the data is a number that makes sense, then it will be at least smaller than the file size. Sometimes readinig of the string makes an integer that is so big that it exceeds the limits of what Python can make an integer out of using the int() function. When this happens the computer beeps. I need to come up with a different test for whether data is a string or an integer.

                    material_namesize_test = struct.unpack('<L', g.read(4))[0]
                    material_namesize_test_int = int(material_namesize_test)
                    if material_namesize_test_int < endoffile_int:
                        start_mat = search_position

[The_DOW_Chief]

this is the Blocky

what is hapenin?

[fneep]

Smoothing groups... or lack thereof.

[The_DOW_Chief]

Smoothing groups??? YOUR WORDS MEAN NOTHING!!!
Please in English? :P

[mudflap]

fneep is right, smoothing groups. Its a 3dsmax function. If you don't have 3dsmax there is nothing you can do about it other than use similar functions in the 3d application you are using.

Here is how you do it in Blender:

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=61087


I have been through every byte of the DOW whm files and have found no place where smoothing group data is stored. Santos 3dsmax tools dont support it either.

I have read that a simple way to program it in is to make the vertex normals the same for all the vertexes in a smoothing group. But that is not how whm files keep the smoothing data.

[The_DOW_Chief]

hmm.. i am using 3Dmax, but i guess I'll try Blender...

[Melooo]

whoa transforming the Initiate model from whm to sgm took quite a long time and all that beeping is quite annoying hehe, also o got a bad new.....the marshall model wont convert correctly

[mudflap]

Hi DOW_Chief,

If you have 3dsmax then use Santos Tools.

[mudflap]

OK I've been shamed into creating a quiet version of the whm to sgm converter. It also works better than the old one and can open the Dark Eldar Raider and the Sisters' Celestian. Here is the link for the new file.

http://www.savefile.com/files/1619906

Meloo, see if you can get the Marshal to open with it. if not, pm me or post the file so I can look at it. I did not see the Marshal in any of the DOW, WXP, DXP, or SS folders, is that file from a mod?

As for using the new file, it works best if it is one of the first things you do when you start your computer. Its senstive to the amount of memory available will stop if too many things are going on in the background.

[Melooo]

hi mudflap, no luck with the new tool.....it seems to crash when converting this model for unknow reasons, hehe and no its not a vanilla model is another medes custom model for my BT mod

here is the link for the model for download so you can test with it
http://www.savefile.com/files/1670755

[mudflap]

i'll check it out

[mudflap]

Hi Meloo,

Thanks for keeping me on my toes with this. I think I have a version now that addresses a big problem with the previous tools. Now when checking for the end of bone data in animations it checks the end against a list of the meshes in the model. Before it just stopped when 3 bytes that appeared to be text were encountered, but even random floats can sometimes yield 3 bytes of alphanumeric data. So now that is not a problem. I have updated the link on the first page of this thread and have also provided a link to the new tool below. The new tool can convert the Marshall whm correctly.

Here is the new converter:

http://www.savefile.com/files/1680875


Here is your Marshall file:

http://www.savefile.com/files/1680881

Cheers,

Mudflap

[Melooo]

youre welcome pal, and thank you for taking the time for developing such a handy tool

[Winterdyne]

Mudflap - a good way of emulating a smoothing group is this:

1 - calculate face normals for all triangles in the group. Generate a vertex list for exclusive use of the group.
2 - step through the vertex list and for each vertex, average the nomals for triangles that contain that vertex. Store the average on the vertex in the group list.

In short, you treat each group as a discrete mesh.

This leads to smooth vertex interpolation on shared edges, and where there's a sharp edge (2 vertices present) the normals point in different directions so there's an edge in the shading. This does tend to show up UV seams (as that's often where there are duplicate verts rather than multiple texture coords on a single vertex).

[mudflap]

Winterdyne. Thanks for the tip about normals and smoothing groups.

The one problem is that the .whm file that has the model data has no indicators for 3dsmax smoothing groups. If what you say is true, then all vertexes in each smoothing group would have the same coordinates for the vert normal. I once tried taking the the vert normal data and sorting it in excel and found that no vert normals matched for a mesh that I knew had at least 2 smoothing groups.

My understanding is that vert normals consist of 3 coordinates. Is there some other calc that is done with those 3 coordinates when rendering the normal?

Are there any other clues I should look for in the whm file? Also the .whm file has no facenormal data. Is facenormal data essential for the smoothing rendering or is it just vertex normals that govern it.

Hopefully only vert normal data is needed since facenormal data is not in the whm files.

[Winterdyne]

Without having a look at the whm format myself I can't tell you. If it has discrete vertex normal already stored, I can't see the point in recalculating them (they should already be smoothed). What do you mean by no matching vertex normals? That no 2 vertices in the entire mesh have the same normal? Remember that within a smoothing group itself, the vertices will probably be merged - the only point where you should have 2 verts with the same normal is when there's a key difference in the vertex data (such as a UV seam) - 2 verts are in the same place, but have different UV's, and belong to different triangles. Ideally they should be smoothed to help hide the UV seam, but because they belong to exclusive triangle the method I mention won't catch them. From what you're describing, they're using that method, and not the actual smoothing groups from max.

[potemkis]

This is a great tool, but I have one major issue with it...

It'll let me do one model (following the ReadMe), and that's it...

Any suggestions?

[Melooo]

Ive been experiencing difficulties to transform eldar harlequin model from whe to sgm :S, does this happen to everyone else?

Never mind....must have been that my pc was overloaded, it now works fine

NO!, actually the SGM file is good what has trouble is the WHE to EBP :S
both harlequin and marshall

ive also troubles for converting DC force commander :S

[nicodemus80]

the whm to sgm crashes when i try to convert the webway_gate.whm and other buildings.

[geodav]

great tool, i now have all the stuff for the new wraithlord, thanks your a "STAR"

[Melooo]

Aparently the WHE->EBP tool has issue with Xrefed anims, each time i convert a file that has xrefed animations i have to Xref them again before saving the EBP/WHE.

[Deliverator]

I am interested in using your WHM to X tool to port some units from DOW to Civilization 4 format. The problem is that the High detail versions have too high a polycount for Civ 4. It looks like the Low and Medium versions may have less. Understandably, the script was only designed for the High detail ones. When I try to run you script on a unit from WXPData-Whm-Low.sga rather than WXPData-Whm-High.sga these are the sort of errors I get:

end of data for script at 99422
meshcode = 39
meshcodeaddress at 2258
start face numbers = 99422
materialsize = 3207411019
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Mudflaps_whm_to_x_converter.py", line 424, in ?
OverflowError: long int too large to convert to int

end of data for script at 13935
meshcode = 39
meshcodeaddress at 2595
start face numbers = 13935
materialsize = 3199075274
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Mudflaps_whm_to_x_converter.py", line 424, in ?
OverflowError: long int too large to convert to int

end of data for script at 9494
meshcode = 37
meshcodeaddress at 1162
start face numbers = 9494
materialsize = 1068878252
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Mudflaps_whm_to_x_converter.py", line 424, in ?
MemoryError

end of data for script at 266256
meshcode = 39
meshcodeaddress at 852
start face numbers = 266256
materialsize = 1050663006
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Mudflaps_whm_to_x_converter.py", line 424, in ?
MemoryError

Is there any chance that this is any easy fix to the script?

[loulou6031992]

Hello all, I initiated in blender and I recently discovered that one could extract the 3d DoW for reuse, I am reaching tool Mudflap (I did not 3ds max) and the first moment I was happy with the result, however, when I converted some files like the leman russ, I feel that lack of tracks (drum and a side), worse still, When I converted a guardian or avatar, I get nothing at all.

I downloaded version 1.0 beta (the only one I found since your links does not work currently)

You can help me?

Sorry for the mistakes, I am French.

[uncle_anaesthesia]

excellent tool....great fun modelling DOW stuff in blender! cheers

[fneep]

Hi all,
I have been looking for a copy of the latest version of this too. If anyone has one, could you post it here? Thanks, fneep

[Reaper297]

Guess it's a good thing I kept a copy of this tool. Here you go guys.
http://www.mediafire.com/?tn4ynroztoa

[Disarray]

Probably a longshot, but heregoes.

Trying to convert DoW ork buildings into any of the following filetypes ( LXO LWO DXF FBX 3DS GEO OBJ [DAE = COLLADA] 3DM)

Extracted the whm/whe files I needed.

This has been the only process that makes it seems possible is, using mudflaps WHM-X converter, using blender to open the .x file, then saving it as one of the file types I need. However I'm getting an error in blender saying it cannot open .x filetypes.

Any advice, tips, or even converting the files for me would be much appreciated!

[Argonaut]

I'm really interested in getting blender files into DOW but the link to 3.0 doesn't work. Anyone got a version of 3.0 available with the tool that converts blender files into the correct format for DOW?

[Edit] Wow! reading the post two above this one answered my own question. I'll just go and stand in the corner for an hour.

[ecyor0]

Nnngg... so close to getting this working! I'm just missing one last thing - Mudflap's custom script for importing multiple .x files into blender, that was uploaded in '07 to this thread. Savefile.com no longer exists, and the file is thus unattainable. A search of the thread, site and google have revealed nothing, so the only option left is to put out a general call to anyone who has a copy of the script lying around (or knows where it is online), to post a link. Failing that, a more generic method for extracting the individual meshes from a .x file without half the vertices missing.

[Reaper297]

I guess it's a good thing that I had a backup of this as well. Here you are.
http://www.mediafire.com/?6p6f2ydrjaqsdfo

Good luck with the modeling mate.

[ecyor0]

Ta. That's a big help.

Also, for those coming after me - the multi-exporter script has the same name as the standard directX importer that comes with windows, so it won't appear in the scripts browser unless you open the script in notepad and modify the name field at the start to something different.

[Deanalot]

Hi bit of a late one here but i'm wondering is there any recent news concerning these tools.. I'm new to Blender and I'm new to theses tools.. I'm not sure If I'm setting things up right or if I have missed anything but I can't seen to open the .x file in blender (I have saved it in notepad but still nothing) ..I'm not sure where to put the script file although It has successfully installed as an add-on in c:\ doc & setting\dean\app data\blender ect.ect. ..I realise this may all be long gone and over with now in 2012 but I live in hope ..I'm using the latest version of blender (obviously) and I have been trying to use the tools posted above by Reaper297 from 2008.. I expect the reason that I haven't been successful is due to that, wish I was around years ago

Great stuff by the way

[Cucc]

Anyone have a backup of 3.0 of mudflaps' tools?
Thank you!

[Croaxleigh]

Post #128.

[Cucc]

Post #128.

That's 2.0. I am seeking 3.0.
Thank you!

[Croaxleigh]

Are you sure? The file name is Mudflap_whm_and_whe_Tools_2008_III, which would seem to indicate that it's the third version. I could be wrong, of course.

[Cucc]

The readme says "Version 1.0 Beta", so I discounted that.
The build numbers in the EXEs are 2.0 and I do get crashes when I try to convert buildings, so I figured it's the buggy 2.0 rather than 3.0 which was supposed to resolve the crashes.
I'm not sure though. Can anyone confirm/deny?
Thank you!

[baz443311]

Just a quick question here would this work with the modeling program MilkShape 3D ?

[RT2]

Mudflaps works like a dream if you can get the correct X format....
Any program that would make a X file will work with mudflaps.

You can also use it to import things into file format editor to give you and animated model set.

I've had success with this using the beaky model with FFE import over SM model....

Edit:

Also a success with a lot more.

I only need a single object at a time and to import them into FFE after body sync.

I got servo skulls done through Wings3d.

[Raven Lance]

@ Deanalot " I can't seem to open the .x file in blender"

You need to use Blender 2.49 with Python 2.6.2
Then you can IMPORT the .x file you made with mudflaps tools.

Once you have it in Blender 2.49 just save it as untitled.blend on your desktop.
After that, Open your newest version of Blender maybe 2.66 or whatever, and Append the file from your desktop.
You should know how to append Object Meshes, if you don't then check the tutorials here http://vimeo.com/nhirsig

@baz443311 - Yes this tool works with Milkshape acourding to mudflaps readme.txt

@Cucc - I can tell you this much, the older version of whm to sgm was a whopping 37kb, and the link that reaper249 posted is a whm to sgm at 39kb. so yeah its proley a third version.

[Cucc]

@Raven Lance
Thanks, but how come it crashes on converting buildings?

[Raven Lance]

@ Cucc
No problem, Cucc as to your last post, I just don't know.

[RT2]

@ Cucc

What buildings?

I can FFE look at the models and see what the difference is.

[Cucc]

@RT2
I you read this thread, you'll find people complaining about crashes when converting buildings - a bug that was supposedly solved in 3.0.
That's precisely the reason why I wanted 3.0.

[RT2]

@Cucc
For the eldar buildings?
I know that they crash the Tool because they call on external Components to make up the whole model.
Like the machine cult for marines calling on external Thunderhawk.
FFE tells me:

Spoiler

RSGM/MSGR-Data
webway_assembly

........webway_assembly............webway_assembly_flag............stage_1............stage_2............stage_3............stage_2a_bits/...art/ebps/races/eldar/base_mesh/stage_build_bits........stage_2b_bits/...art/ebps/races/eldar/base_mesh/stage_build_bits........stage_2c_bits/...art/ebps/races/eldar/base_mesh/stage_build_bits....

As you can see that there is external addresses in there and as I am pretty sure that has caused some errors with mudflaps extraction.

FFE Solution:

Spoiler

make a back up of all files and do a little FFE work.
webway_assembly.whm
art/ebps/races/eldar/base_mesh/stage_build_bits.whm

The MSGR/MSLC you want to copy across from stage_build_bits.whm into the webway_assembly.whm....

stage_2a_bits
stage_2b_bits
stage_2c_bits

Then you want to do a Text replace and replace
stage_2a_bits/...art/ebps/races/eldar/base_mesh/stage_build_bits
with:
stage_2a_bits
As one example.

If text replace doesn't work you can Hex replace using:

Spoiler

Using:
Paste Sel for both
stage_2a_bits/...art/ebps/races/eldar/base_mesh/stage_build_bits
and in the replace window:
stage_2a_bits

Just one solution to making the building more complete.

Does that make it any better for you guys?

I am sorry I don't have time to read through the tread as a full time carer and also busy pushing it hard in Hex/FFE.

[Raven Lance]

What is FFE? is that new?

[RT2]

My Babbling Guide.
File Format Editor(FFE) progress in modding... [Links]... (TOC)

File Format Editor:
File Format Editor v0.41 (Updated 4 Feb 12)

So much you can do, but its not a five second thing until about a month of using FFE.

[Raven Lance]

Ah, righton.. now I wonder how long it will take me to learn how to use this lol. thanks again