Wow, your doing some great work here.:rock:

Cool. I'm trying to beat up current version to see if anything blows up :)

Hi skwasjer,

just noticed that v0.53 fails to open ...\data\Library\Binocular01.dat [stock & any other version].

Cheers,
SquareSteelBar ;)

SquareSteelBar, up to v0.5.3 (current public release) S3D is not very stable with SH3 (modded/patched/stock). By the end of the week I will release v0.5.4 which is made fully compatible with SH3 (apart from some issues with GWX, but I contacted their technical crew) :up:

Please check my online changelog for improvements in upcoming release.

Don't worry, mate.
v0.5.3 is much better than v0.5.1 !!! :yep:

Version v0.5.4 - For download link follow link in footer to my site.

This version is now stable enough to use with SH3.

I strongly recommend everyone to update to this release!

This is a new v0.5 release and replaces any previous releases, so don't forget to uninstall previous versions!

New

• Partial cut/copy/paste support. Currently only functioning for SDL-files.
• Added context menu to SDL-editor.
• Added autocompletion of (known) controller names. A drop down will be shown with a list all possible matches when you type in the name of a controller.
• Added option to global file search to search for model id references.
• Added quite a few SH3-specific controllers. Previous 0.5.x releases couldn't open files with the missing controller definitions. My primary goal is to support SH4, but I found some time to run through SH3 controllers. You will find that this release will open most SH3 files now, except for some problematic GWX 2.0 files (see Improved section for more info)
• Added periodic online check for updates (can be disabled in Options screen). This is as far as I will go for the time being. In the future maybe I will add automatic updating (on-the-fly), but now there are more important features to work on.

Fixed

• Fixed crash bug that occurred when moving chunks up/down after inserting them (or undoing delete).
• Removed warning that empty controller names where not allowed. In some cases, it IS allowed (animation controllers).
• Fixed incorrect warning message of duplicate entry in SDL-editor, where in fact, there wasn't a duplicate entry. This sometimes occurred when typing a new name, and then clicking on another item. The editor failed to recognize the new name and attempted to insert the item a second time causing the warning messsage.

Improved

• Improved the controller engine again. Unsupported controllers, or controllers that contain errors (invalid size specifiers, invalid or different data types or unexpected parse errors, like strings without trailing null) are now read as raw data (as was the case in v0.2). This means from this point on v0.5 is again usuable with SH3. You will not find controller errors in stock or patch files, but (hex) modded files (including those of supermods), or even files created with earlier versions of S3D can contain errors. S3D now tries to catch those errors and at least continue to read the file IF possible. I unfortunately found a few (minor) errors with around 10 GWX 2.0 files. I have contact their technical crew and they have told me they have fixed the files. I expect that these fixes will be made available in GWX 2.1. Note that the errors may not be so critical that it causes problem to the game. Thanks again ref and privateer!
• Minor tweaks, both functional and UI.

Sweet :up:

I may be calling it quits for TM, but im still tweaking with stuff! Your work has made modding infiinatley easier, and has infact, improved my understanding of some of the various files! :up: :up:

Great Work, thx:up: :up: :up:

Thanks again skwas!!!!!!!

I'll give the export a shot with Blender and the collabra plugin.

Will add the plugins to the toolbox thread in the next couple of days. I've been so focused on getting the deck gun mod working that I'm pretty much dealing with only a small number of files right now, andS3D has worked w/o a hitch on them.

Thanks guys, I have a question for owners/users of Blender, Maya and Max. I need some of you to export all 5 models from Data\Air\ADB_B5N2_Kate\ADB_B5N2_Kate.dat, open in 3D suite, without changing anything export the model again using Collada exporter, and send the files to me... I need some reference material to work on the importer, and I need to know how every exporter writes the models... I will start on the S3D-importer as soon as I have reference files. :up:

If you do, please post here which version of 3D suite you have used, and if possible the version of the exporter plugin, so that others can see if a specific version is already sent to me.

[edit] I must add model export is still experimental, and contains some mistakes (matrix for translation/rotation is not written correctly!). Models exported with current versions should preferably not be used as a basis for reworked models! Next update of S3D will have improved export.

you can count me on this one, mate ;)

http://rapidshare.com/files/83268350/exported.rar.html

Here's the 5 model files
I used 3dsmax R9 alongside s3d 0.5.4 and collada latest (or the one right before, can't know for sure) importer/exporter.

Aside from rotation/scale problems wich i can't know if it's correct or not, pure 3d model (vertexs, faces etc.) looks perfectly faithfull to SH4. Also, you don't seems to need doing some tricky normal flippings as in Pack3D (i recall using it, at least with SH3 models, some of their faces would have correct normals and some would be flipped hence a tedious task to have them all the same way)

Also, here's a screenshot of what (untouched/default) collada exporting
option i used:

http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/8139/colladaps8.jpg

Hope that helps :smug:

Thanks. I'll have a look at them. As far as export options, normals don't have to be exported for models that don't have normals in the first place. The game will calculate normals in those cases. If I remember correctly, I think only interior models use baked normals... And animations obviously are not supported for the time being.

Whether the scale is right, I don't know. I am unaware of scale info in the SH-files. But the offset/rotation is not working properly in current S3D-export. I've coded it, but there's a small bug that sometimes causes the matrix to be written incorrectly. So yeah, the model is 100% right, but it doesn't per se sit at the correct offset, and may not be rotated correctly...

Anvart, I don't really understand (no offense), could you rephrase?

Maybe my changelog note isn't really clear. I was referring to both the buggyness of S3D (I therefor rewrote my parser engine a bit) and I was also referring to some errors I found in some files (non-stock). Now more controllers are supported, and even if the controller is not supported due to missing definition or a parse error (from my part or due to a real error), a fallback method is now in place in S3D.

Specifically, the errors I was referring to were incorrect size specifiers in some GWX files. I've had contact with them and they told me they'd fix them :)

If you mean otherwise, then we probably talk about different things :)

Ok cool, now I know what you mean.

As far as the tga_file, It's not really a 'hard' error though, the string is fixed length string of 260 chars, yet null terminated as well, so if the string is shorter, the original (stock) files contain leftover bytes from previous saves. S3D handles this and simply drops the extra bytes, and with a save, it pads the string with zero's, which in hex looks a bit cleaner. :up:

:dead::hmm:
Yeea ... You do not understand my humour ... :D
:dead: