Thomas Daggerbones
Honorable Pirate
Is there a currently way to export our pirate models outside of TLOPO into 3D models or characters?
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3D Playermodels
- Thread starter Thomas Daggerbones
- Start date
Johnny Sea Slasher
Forum Mod
There is no singular way to copy your exact character. The player model is very complex and functions quite differently than you'd expect. Essentially, every player is wearing every single clothing item, piece of jewelry, and hairstyle at the same time. It's just the game that hides them for you, showing only the items you have equipped. In addition, there are sliders in-game that manipulate your facial structure, height, body type, and more.
Even if you did export the player model, which is out there via POTCO phase files floating around the web, converting the model into an editable format in a program like Maya or Blender is a hassle, and messes up the model's rigging.
Say you get to this point, you'd have to re-rig the character model yourself, delete all the extra customization items, manually sculpt the face and body to match what it looks like in-game, AND add color overlays to skin and hair.
TL;DR, unless you're a TLOPO dev with Panda3D experience or a really dedicated fan/animator (Hi, @Bart Gunshot), it's kinda an impossible task.
Even if you did export the player model, which is out there via POTCO phase files floating around the web, converting the model into an editable format in a program like Maya or Blender is a hassle, and messes up the model's rigging.
Say you get to this point, you'd have to re-rig the character model yourself, delete all the extra customization items, manually sculpt the face and body to match what it looks like in-game, AND add color overlays to skin and hair.
TL;DR, unless you're a TLOPO dev with Panda3D experience or a really dedicated fan/animator (Hi, @Bart Gunshot), it's kinda an impossible task.
Thomas Daggerbones
Honorable Pirate
Aw dang.
Sooo, basically we are running around as this giant glob extraneous data blorping around the map? Wearing everything in our inventory? Or just the overlaying image of about 7 items or so that we equiped? And how is this an efficient use of resources if it's more than just what we're wearing. Doesn't this mean when we delete something. it needs to be removed multiple times? Am I understanding this correctly?
Bart Gunshot
Site Founder
The character 3D model has on every single clothing, jewelry, hats, or most equipable items in the game (See below). To be more specific, every unique geometry of a clothing item, many items reuse the same geometry and just apply a different texture. The game enables/disables certain objects in the file based on what items you are wearing.
Interesting. So, to clarify it for myself. Our game model when standing there in sack shorts only visible, has all the polys loaded that would be in my complete inventory at that moment? All 2 full pages of clothes, weapons, jewelry... tattoo's, but all hidden except the shorts that I put on? I don't see how this is supposed to be efficient. But explains how you can switch an item instantly.
I guess it would take too long when someone switches something on the fly to call to a routine to fetch such and such then equip it. as opposed to just making whatever layer visible and hiding the last layer. I still don't see this as that great of a efficient use of resources.
So, I suppose other games do the same thing, or maybe they're just more advanced and don't bulk up a sprite. I really need to look at graphics theory.
Bart Gunshot
Site Founder
No, when the objects are disabled the game no longer has to render that object so the polys are not there. Any performance hits if at all would only be on load and any updates. I assume they did this for two reasons: to scale clothing along with the body scaling, and to maintain compatibility between clothing items so that they don't clip. I haven't really seen any other games do it this way (though I admittedly haven't messed with many other games), they normally have separate models for all the clothing and then apply it to the avatar's skeleton (or bones, rig, whatever you want to call it). Although, to be fair POTCO has a pretty extensive equipable cosmetic array.