Sims 2 and Spore model viewer

[weshowe]

While this program is deeply indebted to Ogre for the rendering technology, it uses a lot of home-grown stuff for the file converters.

The program, which I call SpView, is housed here. What it does is load either Sims 2 game meshes (gmdc) or Spore format meshes (gmdl or gmsh). There are other programs (SimPE) that will extract Sims 2 meshes from the game archives. SpView does include an archive splitter function and a tool that converts the Spore internal .rast format to a DDS file for texturing.

Anyone that has played with the Spore Creature Creator knows how easy it is to create something with. This is just an alternate way to display the models that are built when a creature is made.

The Sims 2 file format parser has been around since right after Cain slew Abel I think, but the Spore formats were included after the Creature Creator was released last month, so there is a lot of "evolution" to go (considering the game itself will not be released until early September).

Redistribution of creation you make with the Spore Creature Creator may well be limited by the terms of the EULA that came with the package.

<* Wes *>

Screenshot shows a Sims 2 model (selected) and a Spore Creature model with game textures applied.

[/img]

[Kojack]

Where are the Spore meshes stored? I've looked in all the usual places something like that would be stored, all I can find is the pngs containing creature specification data for giving to other people.

[betajaen]

I thought it they were procedural? The PNGs contain presumably in the meta-data the parameters of the Spore model - but any base textures/shaders and meshes must be in the Spore folder.

[weshowe]

Game data is located in three places. Yes, when you create or download the creatures, the data is procedural. But for it to be used, the software converts it to meshes and textures. As noted, in your User/Documents/My Spore Creations folder are just the PNGs, which have the procedural data interleaved. I do not decode that.

In your User/AppData/Roaming/SPORE Creature Creator, or in User/ApplicationData/SPORE Creature Creator (on XP) is a set of *.package files that are your creations and most recently used characters. The AppData folder and all subfolders will be hidden by Windows Explorer by default, you have to change an option that hides 'system files'.

Moving along, the two most relevant files are EditorSaves.package and GraphicsCache.package. There is a function in the Tool menu that will split these archives into files, it does so by creating a separate directory and placing all the data in there. While I *think* it should be safe with your original files (opened as "rb"), prudence would dictate making copies, moving them elsewhere and then splitting them up.

Among other things, EditorSaves has a series of XML files describing the creature construction details that may be interesting. But the GraphicsCache will have the Creature Mesh (in 4 LOD versions) and texture file (this is a *.rast file, I have included a tool that will convert the largest mipmap to a .DDS file).

There are additional basic parts and loads of other stuff in .package files that are in your Installation Directory (Program Files/Electronic Arts/Spore/Data). Those archives are big, and may take several minutes and a couple hundred megabytes of disk space to split.

<* Wes *>

[Kojack]

I had a quick browse through the appdata stuff previously looking for creatures, but ignored the package files (if I was in a full reverse engineering mood I would have checked harder, I just assumed it left it procedural to save space).

[weshowe]

Pretty much everything used by the game other than the PNG files (and screenshots and videos) is archived into .package files, these are a newer format than used in Sims 2 and SimCity 4 games.

<* Wes *>

[3DEXILE]

Hello Sir THANKS SO much for your efforts ...

MAibe the pioneer in all net ...


Everything works great and grand in the workflow ...

I just have a reaaly litle request plz..

The s2view program is made for very low meshes "only" ...

Simple normal not many limbs figures work ok ...
When one try to load a "more complex" full limbs with more poly figure more than 1.3 mg .gmdl size and more than 65.500 poly faces points ...

as you can see here



the program simply Refuses to load the model ....... just because as more than 65.500 poly faces points ....

And....
its reaaly reaaly a shame ....


Its there anyway to the coder raise alil bit the bar of poly points per model loading like 2 or 3 or 4x imes more polys ....

On some more complex .gmdl models the poly size can reach the 4.mb if not 5mb ..... and it reaaly only loads figures with less than 1.4 mb and no more than and more than 65.500 poly faces points ... per .gmdl model ...

Would be reaaly important if could be fixed that ...

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Ps: To better reproduce the error i attached some examples of gmdl files that dont load and produce the error , for correcting and better debuguing only.

3mb 3 gmdl files of 2.5mb each in example of how to reproduce the error, in this link Here -» http://www.axifile.com/?3230229

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Thank you so deeply much for the wounderfull first worldwide working tool of this nature ...........

Thank you so much


Aaron Etsuky
3DExile.

[weshowe]

I have fixed this; without thinking I allocated 65536 short ints for the face buffer instead of 65536*3.

None of the Sims 2 or Spore formats support 32-bit indexes, so we should be good to go there.

<* Wes *>