Hatching-a-plan on 27/10/2007 at 20:40
Things as they stand so far:
I have got the Python script working. So in essence I can now export as .ASE which thief3ed will recognize. Included is a picture of the "mesh" within Thief3Ed.
(
http://img147.imageshack.us/my.php?image=meshinthief3edwl2.png)
Questions that remain: I imported the mesh by using brush < import and then clicking .ase. Is there a way to circumvent doing this and add the file to the list of smeshes within thief3ed?
When I imported the mesh it gave unrealed a hard time. Is this because when I imported it the way I did that it regarded it as a brush instead of a mesh? If this is the case how do I correct this aka Can I convert my .ase file into .tim?
If it was regarded as a mesh and it was still giving unrealed hell then how do I correct this aka what do I need to do to my mesh before or after importing that will eliminate the lag caused by the mesh?
I used a custom texture made in blender to texture my mesh how do I get it from blender into thief3ed so that it can properly texture my mesh?
Remember these are more rhetorical questions more than anything, I mean if you CAN answer them then by all means. But if you don't have any answers they are more here for an idea as to where I am in the process more than anything. I may be able to get some help on the blender forums and see if I can't get a .tim file converter script. I'll keep looking and asking.
Ziemanskye on 27/10/2007 at 21:34
It's causing problems because that imports as a BSP brush, not a static mesh, and unlike in UnrealEd we can't convert BSP to Smesh. Ideally even in UE you shouldn't be doing that, but sometimes it is the quickest and easiest way to get it to do the things you want.
As I said though, we can't do that.
Someone did get (almost) far enough to have a reliable tim file decompiler, I think, so if you could get that person's work into the hands of someone more willing to work on it, you could well get a Blender (or whatever) converter back into tim files, which'd be great. I don't know any programmers anymore, so I haven't tried to shop around for that kind of help, but maybe you do know someone with the required skills.
Similarly the *.mlb material libraries aren't fully understood - they're how a texture goes from being a texture and becomes a material with normal or specular effects, and making sounds relevant to the type of material it looks like and so on. That was just a couple of bytes in the data structure away from being understood I think, so you're odds are much better at getting something to work on that side.
In simple terms though, a texture can be imported into the game just as a plain texture in the Material Browser - File>Import Plain Tex. I actually use that more than it might seem. The only catch is that the texture has to be a *.dds file, but that conversion is easy enough and already covered above, though I don't know how you get it *out* of Blender in the first place. (In Max I'd use the Render to Texture or Export Image functions, maybe Blender has similar you could search out.)
Hatching-a-plan on 27/10/2007 at 21:49
Yea, I figured it was just being converted into a brush. As far as finding someone with the abilities to make a .tim export script in python I think I may be able to find someone to do that, we shall see.
Shadowspawn on 27/10/2007 at 21:51
I started on the TimtoE converter - but never finished a way to reverse the process.
In the past 2 years, I've really lost an enormous amount of free time. I'm still struggling to finish "To Uncurse a Thief", a FM in the works for about 5 years now. Job and lifestyle changes have conspired to rob me of most of my time for Thief.
If anyone wishes to try and pick up where I left off, I'd be glad to dump what I have on them. I never truly finished decompiling .TIM files, we're obviously missing some of the hull and collision model information. And 3DS isn't going to be a great model for these objects, since they can't contain several texture mappings - which .TIM files contain.
I was actually lucky to finish the mission compressor.
If anyone is crazed enough to want to pick up the shards of TimtoE, just email me and I'll package up what I have. I'd love to get back to working on it, but there doesn't seem to be any chance that the job situation will return to what I had before. I really miss the time I was able to devote to Thief.
Hatching-a-plan on 27/10/2007 at 22:31
LOL, I just spent the last hour doing a forum search and finding that old post back in 2005 that you made and then sending you a pm in game and decided to meander back here only to find that you had posted here.
I'd be willing to pick up from where you left off as I have a few more months of free time on my hands before college starts up again. However, I have no idea how to rummage through the .tim file let alone understand what it is I'm looking at. Is there some tutorials or something out there that can help me decipher all of that?
I guess I should start learning python again. I had tried to pick it up a few years ago but never got very far. Looks like its time to go back to it. I think if I could just figure out whats going on in the .tim file I might be able to get some blender python script-ers to help me on the project and get a working script out.
Shadowspawn on 28/10/2007 at 15:38
The TIM file is a unique format used by only DeusEx : Invisible War and Thief 3, as far as I know.
The file consists of fairly easily parsed sections, each with a type code and a length. After that, it's a binary blob in each section. The sections are painful to decipher - if there was a document out there anywhere I would have been able to finish the converter. But as it is, there are MANY sections of the TIM file which I have no idea what they are about.
And of course, you can't build a 3DS to TIM converter unless you understand damn near everything about the file.
One question for anyone who may know; Are the 3dsMAX plug-ins in a scripting language, or are they already compiled? If they were available in script, we might be able to figure out the TIM format completely...
Anyway, look for a package from me in the next few days. I have something I need to finish up for Digi first. (I'm SOOOO backlogged) :tsktsk:
Hatching-a-plan on 28/10/2007 at 22:40
Ok, so if I was to create a converter I would need to know everything. But what if all I want to do is take something from Blender and export it as a .tim file?
My idea is to use python to code a script which will export things from Blender as a .tim file as Blender supports using python scripts right there in the program. I'm not sure what I would need to do that or if its even possible but I'm asking around in one of the blender scripting forums to find out. From what my friend was telling me it will be much easier to just make a script for blender as I won't have to know everything about both file formats.
OrbWeaver on 29/10/2007 at 13:45
Quote Posted by Hatching-a-plan
Ok, so if I was to create a converter I would need to know everything. But what if all I want to do is take something from Blender and export it as a .tim file?
It's exactly the same thing. In order to write a TIM file you need to understand pretty much everything about the format, otherwise what you write will not be correct and may not be loaded correctly by the game.
Whether the data you want to write comes from a 3DS file or from Blender's internal Python API makes no difference to the issues with understanding the destination file format.
Hatching-a-plan on 31/10/2007 at 17:48
Well I'm still waiting on shadowspawn to send me the stuff he was going to so until then I've just been using Blender to make stuff for my level and I got 3ds max from someone to convert things to .tim file format. Only to find out that the tut written by Ulukai is a load of shite as there is no way to export as .tim files unless there is something you need to dl from somewhere. I also have been doing some looking around the deus ex scene to see if I can find out if someone on that end of the spectrum came up with something to convert .tim files or figured out a better way to make them rather than having to use 3ds max. A process which is hampered by the fact that there is no large repository of information like there is here for the thief series. From what I've read in the forums that I visited it seems like our friends that are mapping for deus ex are just forgoing making custom meshes and just sticking to bsp (deus ex shares the .tim file type with thief 3 according to what I've read).
My woes continue. I would defect to Doom3 but I've seen Dark Radiant and its an ugly thing. The doom 3 editor isn't as bad however, but that dark radiant editor is horrendous looking. In the end I might just have to settle for it though.
