Creature BAM files

Methuselas

Can anyone point me to the Creature BAM files, for monsters? Mainly I just need either goblin or orc sprites for some research I'm doing. I've been stripping the bif files, but can't seem to find them. It would be a lot easier if I knew specifically where to look, so I can extract them.

I'm going to need the following Actions:

GU - Get up (switches to the SC/SD sequence)
SD - Stand
SC - Stance (ready for attack)
GH - Get hit (switches to the SC/DE sequence)
DE - Die (switches to the TW sequence)
TW - Twitch (dead, still images most of the time). Played till the last frame, then freezes.
SP - Spell (After an arbitary number of loops, switches to CA)
CA - Cast (Ending sequence of spell casting) (switches to SC/SD)
SL - Sleep. Played till the last frame then freezes (May switch to the GU sequence).
WK - Walk
A1 - Attack
A2 - Attack
A4 - Attack

Also, do the majority of creature BAMS use the weapon overlays? For example, does say the orc archer use a bow overlay or are the weapon overlays specifically for the character sprites?

Cheers!

-M

Cuv

You can find the goblins in CRIWAnim.bif Prefixes are MGO1, MGO2, MOGO3 and MGO4. The weapons animations are built into the creatures.

You can find the goblins in the same BIFF; CRIWAnim.bif Prefixes are MOR1, MOR2, MOR3, MOR4 and lastly MOR5 for the Orc Shaman. Again, on these creatures the weapons are part of the animations.

Methuselas

Figures they were in one of the ones I hadn't checked. Does that include all the angle poses? I need to study the movements of the sprites, in the hopes I can replicate them with a rig. It's been ages since I messed with BG graphics.

I remember many of the monsters having the same animations. Is there a list of which bipedal monsters do anywhere on the Net?

Cuv

Hmm... probably, but cant point you to a particular site. Are you looking to create some new animations? You mentioned rig.. so figure that must mean 3dsMax or zBrush?

Methuselas

Maya, actually. Don't get your hopes up. Right now, this is all research.

In theory, I'm hoping I can replace all the internal animations, with new animated rigs. If people follow a simple polycount limit (I'm estimating it to be around 1k polys for a humanoid sized biped), it's as simple as binding your model, importing my paint weights and rendering.

The most time consuming aspect of this is the rendering, high quality and then going in photoshop and dithering each frame to 256 colors on an 8bit channel. I can write a simple action in photoshop for that, but it's still time consuming.

Methuselas

Hmm...... All these animations are running at 30fps (well, 29.97 frames. ;P), correct? I would assume so. Just from looking at the BAMs in Bam Workshop, it wouldn't be too hard to re-create a lot of these biped animations with rigs. I've just looked at the orc and goblin though. =/ Cuv, can you tell me what bifs have the majority of the creature animation sprites in them.


I wish I knew what unit measurements the Developers were using for the new Areas in Max. I'm guessing it's 1 unit = 1 foot, but don't quote me on that.

Chime in at any time, Guys?

SFisch

I have a camera setup that I created in 3ds max that allows you to use US measurements. Let me know if you'd want it. I don't know what the difference between Max and Maya would be in terms of importing a camera FBX

Methuselas

Should be 45 degrees Z and X with an ortho cam, if I remember correctly. Cameras work fine, Lights work fine, burned animations work fine, constraints on character rigs, not so much. =/ I think they've fixed all that with the new Autodesk Creative Suite, as Max and Maya files are autoload, but I'm still using 2011. Don't see the need to update, with every version and pay to update plugins I've purchased.

Methuselas

What I really need to know is what unit measurement they're using in Max. As soon as I get that, I can change my Maya preferences to match theirs. Then, I don't have to tweak nearly as much.

Cuv

Sorry, I do not know the measurement/scale:(

Methuselas

No worries, Cuv. It's appreciated.

Well, I mean, I can scale it, but it's the problem of then having to create an area and matching it to doors and what not. I probably could get away with just judging size against sprites in photoshop. I really don't know yet. If I can find out the measurement they used for the Black Pits, I'd know exactly the size a "human" model would be and could extrapolate from that. Typically, I try and use 1 unit = 1 foot, cos I'm a character animator. Well, I used to be..... =/

The rigs I'll build will be simple ones, no eye curve controls, no arm twists (I think), no finger curve controls, but they'll be fully fk/ik switchable (not that you're really gonna need all that) and the rig itself can scale, globally, so if you wanted to make a Hill Giant model, but wanted to use the "orc animations", you could scale those animation rigs to match the height of the Giant model and then bind the model to the rig. For ease of use, I'm probably going to tie all the animations together on the same time line, so you won't have to load, render, load, render, load, render. You'll just have to know when an animation starts and ends, remove that one, clean it up in your paint program, throw it in BAM Workshop to create the BAM and then add it to the engine. It will just make life easier for modders, 'cos they'll only have to render once and if I have to bake animations to models for Max users, using FBX, I won't have to send multiple files.

Lulz. I'm probably giving away a lot of "trade secrets" here.

Cuv

LOL... not to me:P Just a word of warning... you will need to use both BAMWorkshop I and II. Its really best to just use those to clean up the frames and sequences then compile them in DLTCEP.

SFisch

Well, my camera setup is a bit archaic. I basically renders everything at full size, but you need to do cropping in the renderer to cut down on all the unnecessary stuff. Like I said though, it's at a zoom level that emulates full scale of things. I don't know anything about animation, but it's useful for area art! Here's a link just in case.

http://www.bhaalspawn.org/3d/index.html#template

Methuselas

Pssh. All that compiling is for you code monkeys, not me. ;P

Actually, it would probably be best to do all the clean up in Photoshop. After pulling the Attack 1 (I'm assuming, 'cos I didn't cross-reference the IWD to BG2 naming scheme) animations to grab keyframes, I noticed that the colors of the sprites are actually dithered, but use a 256 color palette, based of the colors used. So, if you use 16 colors, each color has a potential of 16 different shades. 8 colors, 32, etc.

You can force Photoshop to use Index Coloring for an image and that will truncate the 16.8 million colors down to 256, but since you're using a limited number of colors anyways, it's just going to make things look cleaner, cos Photoshop will just use whatever colors it has available from the image itself. Add in most of these sprites were probably rendered in software mode and not something robust, like Mental Ray, new sprites will look *MUCH* crisper. The downside is, all these images will have to be reduced to 8bit, one at a time, but I can write an action that makes it a one-click process.

So far, the only use I've seen for myself, at least, with Bam Workshop is just to create the BAM files, themselves.

Methuselas

@SFisch

That's exactly what I need, for rendering purposes. Thanks for that. I can use that as a template for when people want to make their own renders. I'm gonna have to play around with that. That door and ground plane reference are to scale with the engine, correct?

One other interesting note I just discovered in Bam Workshop. I accidentally grabbed some weapon files. Now, I know how IE uses weapon overlays for character sprites. Well, at least, I think I do. If I can figure out how the character sprites work and the creature sprites follow the same specifications, I'm pretty sure it's possible to make dynamic sprites for creatures. Ie, an Orc sprite could use a long sword, mace or axe. The weapons would obviously be limited to the animation itself, however.

SFisch

The ground is there as a starting point, since it encompasses an entire 5120x3840 px area. And yeah, the door is meant to be a reference for scale. Ideally your people would fit into it, roughly! Glad I could help though!

Methuselas

Okay, so the door is roughly 7' tall then?

SFisch

Yep!

Methuselas

@SFisch,

Question. I noticed that the ground level is higher than the house. Is it that way in Max or is this a bug in the import? I only ask, 'cos the doors are scaled approximately 7ft, which proves my assessment that BW was using 1 unit =1 foot measurement, which makes things *REALLY* easy for me. Granted, I'm gonna have to tweak your camera a bit, to get it to work correctly in Maya, but this is a big start! Thank you. If you could tell me what version fbx you saved it as, it may help me correct it.

@Cuv,

Are all the monster files listed as M(Monster Tag)? I don't want to crack all the bif files searching for them all, unless I absolutely have to, but I need to get all the sprites out, so I can go through and start cross-referencing all the shared animations.

Also, I noticed that there's only 5 animations per cycle. Seems BioWare used my plan with the animations. There's just S, SW, W, NW and N all tied into one BAM file. I take it code flips the animations automatically? Nice, but a little lazy IMO.

SFisch

Strange. The ground level should be directly under the house. I exported using 3ds max 2012, so I'm not sure if that's the version number that you're looking for or not.

Methuselas

Ah, that's probably why. I'm using Maya 2011. Can you kick me an fbx that's saved in 2011?

Cuv

@Methuselas If you want the monster list to know what to look at... Use Near Infinity or DLTCEP and take a look at the ANISND.ids. Yes, you can just extract it and open it with notepad to view while on desktop. It will list a hex assignment and then four digits which are the BAM prefixes. To the right you will see the name of the animation.

ANISND.ids

   
...snip
0xE070 MMIN     CGAMEANIMATIONTYPE_MINOTAUR        
0xE080 MMUM     CGAMEANIMATIONTYPE_MUMMY           
0xE0B0 MTRO     CGAMEANIMATIONTYPE_TROLL1          
0xE400 MGO1     CGAMEANIMATIONTYPE_GOBLIN_AXE      
0xE410 MGO2     CGAMEANIMATIONTYPE_GOBLIN_BOW      
0xE420 MGO3     CGAMEANIMATIONTYPE_GOBLINELITE_AXE 
0xE430 MGO4     CGAMEANIMATIONTYPE_GOBLINELITE_BOW 
0xE500 MLIZ     CGAMEANIMATIONTYPE_LIZARDCASTER1   
0xE520 MLI3     CGAMEANIMATIONTYPE_LIZARDCASTER3
snip...

Methuselas

Thanks for the info. I've already ripped all the animations, I'm sure. I tried to batch decompress them to bmps for easier use, but ran into a few complications. Seems the bam batcher app likes to crash a lot. This should help me find all the animations and cross-reference them quicker. It looks like I'll have to decompress each one, one at a time, with Bam Workshop. I did, however, manage to find all the character sprites.

One thing I have noticed in some of the sprites is it seems BW may have been using models roughly 3k-5k, instead of 1k, as I originally thought. Many of the sprites have fingers that move. This isn't a problem, I can easily create a rig with finger bones. Polycount isn't a big deal, either. Just more time consuming. Add in all the different renders that need to be done for each direction, I understand and sympathize with Overhaul on why they say they're unable to re-create art and animation files.

Thing is, in my search to find info on all the creature animations, I came across something called "Infinity Animations." It's my understanding that all the animation files are sorted out in an external 2da file. It seems logical that these will eventually make it into a mod. Lulz. This just means I have more animations to have to deal with.

Overhaul is right. High-quality renders will stand out, against these older software renders. It's easy to keep them at 8bit, but they're going to look crisp. Once I get a working camera, I'll do a test render with some of my demo reel models. They're around 8k and sub-d, so it's going to be overkill, but I wanna see what the difference is going to look like. Our only saving grace is the fact that the area maps seem to still be 16 bit colors.

I still want to clone the animations for humanoids (and possibly quadrupeds), for use at a later date, but once Overhaul updates to 32bit graphics, I would really want to change as many of the sprites as possible to 32bit, but this may end up being pointless, if we can't update animations, like dragons, beholders, etc.

Question is, what to do?

IchigoRXC

What we need to do is put a call out for modellers and animators of the beastly variety. There must be more people that way inclined. (Amateur here, did Animation at uni. A lot of 2D but have 3D experience too).

Methuselas

IchigoRXC said:

What we need to do is put a call out for modellers and animators of the beastly variety. There must be more people that way inclined. (Amateur here, did Animation at uni. A lot of 2D but have 3D experience too).

"If you build it, they will come."

Being an animator, even an "amateur" one, I'm sure you understand how much goes into doing animation. Having one person doing all the rigging, skinning, modeling and animating is a long and arduous project. That's why game developers have teams. Being a "mod group" is even harder, as Cuv can attest to. You don't have the time (and sometimes, the energy) to get things finished and completed. That's why project leads give deadlines. When you're getting paid, it's one thing. When it's a labor of love and something many of us do in our spare time, it's something else entirely.

Hence, why I said that right now, this is all "research."

BW reused a lot of animations and models. For example, the goblins all pretty much use the same models and animations, with just minor differences, such as helmets and breastplates. The Orogs use the same models and animations, just different textures (or materials - not really sure which.) If we do this and do it right, we need to follow their footsteps. We focus on the monsters that use the same animations, the same models first, as we maximize our time and efforts. I'm still thinking like a developer. Old habits die hard.

Most people won't be interested until they have something to gain from it. Fact of life. That's how the modding community works. People show interest, when they have something they see and want to use. Until they have something to see that they want, nobody's really willing to put their own personal time together to assist.

SFisch

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xbyr0sqj0uijq39/2011Template.FBX

To be precise, the door is 6'8"

Methuselas

Cool. Thanks. Although, I ended up fixing the original. ;P Bad import. Updated my FBX plugin and it worked fine. Sorry you went through trouble of getting me a new one. One thing is strange about your camera. The floor is just that, a floor. For example, if I were to throw a ton of models on it, to make an Area, I would place a ground texture on it. Thing is, it's not showing up in my viewport all the way. I may have to just install Max 2011 and see the difference in each application for myself.

So Bioware did use centimeters, as opposed to feet. I did a test render last night, of an unrigged model, but my scale was off. I didn't render full size, like I should have. I cropped it at 640x480. This is good for me, though, as I like to model in feet, as opposed to centimeters. I can just scale models, based on their height in centimeters.

@SFisch, I may be using you as a guinea pig, to test animations in Max, to see if they'll import without fuss. Most everyone uses Max (it's for "games"), whereas I use Maya (it's for "motion picture production.") I know someone else doing Area builds for BG in Max. I'll hound him for a copy of his camera, so I can see if I can't extrapolate to make a camera of my own. For now, when it comes to Max, yours will be the de-facto standard.

SFisch

If you want, I have a copy of Overhaul's camera from when they did a casting call for area modelers that I could send you. I don't mind giving you a hand though!

EDIT:
Overhaul's camera was super complex for me to understand. I think there were just a lot of crop zones or something. I'm only self taught, so there's a lot of stuff I'm still figuring out.

Methuselas

SFisch said:

If you want, I have a copy of Overhaul's camera from when they did a casting call for area modelers that I could send you. I don't mind giving you a hand though!

EDIT:
Overhaul's camera was super complex for me to understand. I think there were just a lot of crop zones or something. I'm only self taught, so there's a lot of stuff I'm still figuring out.

You have Overhaul's main camera? You've been holding out on me, Sir. ;P

Methuselas

Okay, I caved and re-installed Max 2011 (God, I loathe this program. So kludgy, to me).

Anyways, let's get the ball rolling.

IchigoRXC

So how's it going. I just re-installed Max 2011 too, oh it has been a while. Going to see how long it takes me to make a low poly human for now and then see if anything I could ever do would be worth the time Going to try and get one done over Christmas to re acquaint myself with the program.