I'm a bit of a noob at this. I have a game I'm investigating the models on, where the models are divided between two or three files each. For the main mesh and textures, I've gotten all the way to texture and normals mapping and have a plan going forward for ambient occlusion and something called "colorset" on the one that's easiest to reverse.

However, in the file I don't get raw mesh data from (though it points to offsets in other files) the XYZ coordinates of the bones are included, and I also can find their names among the files! I can outright see the bone verts in Model Researcher if I plug their offset and count in. 

Can I export these verts with Model Researcher and then import them as an Obj to then turn into a skeleton? What data does an individual bone need?

1 hour ago, gryphongirl said:

I'm a bit of a noob at this. I have a game I'm investigating the models on, where the models are divided between two or three files each. For the main mesh and textures, I've gotten all the way to texture and normals mapping and have a plan going forward for ambient occlusion and something called "colorset" on the one that's easiest to reverse.

However, in the file I don't get raw mesh data from (though it points to offsets in other files) the XYZ coordinates of the bones are included, and I also can find their names among the files! I can outright see the bone verts in Model Researcher if I plug their offset and count in. 

Can I export these verts with Model Researcher and then import them as an Obj to then turn into a skeleton? What data does an individual bone need?

If you're dealing with bones, you need the bone hierarchy information - this indicates which bones are connected to each other to give you the skeleton structure.  You also need the information to indicate which vertices the bones are tied to.  Just using Model Researcher for the positions won't be enough.  It's better to use something like Noesis, which has specific commands for displaying the skeleton and binding the bone data to mesh data.  Using Model Researcher is good for finding the data, but not for displaying it properly.

 

Plus, I'll add a link to links (SkelFinder, Durik256 and AXE, Bigchillghost)

Edited January 11Jan 11 by shak-otay

13 hours ago, shak-otay said:

Plus, I'll add a link to links (SkelFinder, Durik256 and AXE, Bigchillghost)

Thank you so much! I'll definitely look into getting one of those to work, though some things just absolutely throw a fit trying to run through Crossover on Mac.

Also shak-otay I wanted to thank you because hex2obj was the first program I used that gave me any idea what in the world I was doing with these game models. The only reason I moved on to MR was once I wanted to assess new parts of the data like normals or look at a console version whose indices structure I needed to test against more options. I'm working with a group of other fans of this franchise on this RE project and there's a Python program in the works with your name in the "Special Thanks" section on the main UI.

14 hours ago, DKDave said:

If you're dealing with bones, you need the bone hierarchy information - this indicates which bones are connected to each other to give you the skeleton structure.  You also need the information to indicate which vertices the bones are tied to.  Just using Model Researcher for the positions won't be enough.  It's better to use something like Noesis, which has specific commands for displaying the skeleton and binding the bone data to mesh data.  Using Model Researcher is good for finding the data, but not for displaying it properly.

 

Ahhhh, I see! I have data between the XYZ of the bones that definitely looks like it could be hierarchy. I've also seen the bone names, many starting with something like "z_C". We even pinned down the location of skin indices and weights in the model geometry files. 

I've included a little preview of what I'm looking at (all the blank space is null bytes, I have vision problems that make this easier).