How to use TPDinoCreator tool?

[Tormer]

Hi everybody! i was checking this tool and i feel a bit confused about its operation. When i select "New", a window keeps popping up saying the following:

I am not sure what the "dinosaur preset" has to do with the new dino model and the "dinosaur skin model" is for adding a new dino model or only a new texture to current Trespasser dinosaurs?

[machf]

Here's the official page:

http://www.bytehazard.com/trespasser/tpdc/

Unfortunately, I don't see the tutorials anymore...

The "Dinosaur preset" is the skeleton you want to use for the mesh you select wit the "Dinosaur skin" button. I guess it's called "skin" vecause it's just the "hollow" mesh without ny bones yet... or maybe because 3D Studio calls it that.

Check my old tutorial BEFORE you start using TPDC:

https://www.trescomforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=4749

[tatu]

One of these day I will give it a try to learn TPDC. Does TPDC allow skeleton placement based on retail? And with that I mean, was it used to convert the old dinosaurs by you machf? The ones that are "corrected" to work in retail?

[machf]

I had to do lots of things to do that...


Anyway, here's an archivd copy of Remdul's tutorials page:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100119172 ... azard.com/

Unfortunately, the tutorials themselves don't seem to have been archived.

However, I have copies of them on my backup discs, I'll see if I upload them later. Only the first three ones exist, Remdul never got around to writing/finishing/publishing the rest, apparently...


EDIT: here are links to the temporary copies of Remdul's tutorials:

https://www.trescom.org/hosted/remdul/createskin.html

https://www.trescom.org/hosted/remdul/export.html

https://www.trescom.org/hosted/remdul/rigging.html

[TheIdiot]

I'm also working with TPDC and I've managed to get my dino working properly in-game, however I can't quite get its bones positioned properly. I've adjusted the actual dinosaur mesh to match the retail dino (in this case the parasaur) position-wise quite closely, but those bones in the upper body are being finnicky.

As a note, I didn't have to do much in Max other than line the new model up closely with the retail para (I completely forgot that the tutorials existed). I then Attached my model to the para, and deleted the old para Element. Then imported the TPM straight from Max into TPDC and worked from there, starting with automatic weight assignments and then manually cleaning up where appropriate. There was a weird scale problem I had with the dinosaur model in-game which was solved by matching it to the same scale as the original parasaur in TresEd, but after that everything worked fine. I'm still completely new to this and am not completely satisfied with my rigging job, but I can confirm that this version of the process did work...I believe the rigging issue can be solved by opening a retail parasaur in TPDC and comparing it to my new model and assigning weights as appropriate.

[Tormer]

Rigged the JPOG Gallimimus in TPDC. But, when i imported it in GeomAdd, a long list of "Bad joint index in line..." error appeared. Is it a rigging issue?

[machf]

No idea. Have you renamed the bones to match the name of the dinosaur mesh after you finished the assignments? Open the .tpm file with a text editor and do a global replace...

[Rebel]

Something's wrong somewhere, what those errors are telling you is that those joint indexes have no bone assignments. Do
as machf suggested, open the tpm and give it a look.

[Tormer]

i opened the TPM with notepad and renamed bones to match with the mesh name ("galli" in this case). Even, i deleted some lines that had ParaBody, ParaHead and ParaTail instances/mesh (also, they appeared in TPDC after selecting Parasaur preset -there was an option to choose a skin and i chose galli skin). But now, GeomAdd throws this Error:


So, i tested my map to see if the Gallimimus works in game and i got this:



In TPDC, the Gallimimus position displays OK but I had to rotate the gallimimus in TresEd with that xyz option in the menu bar and "show normal objects" option enabled because its position was with head down and tail up but seems that its bones don't match with body rotation:

It makes the sounds (only the Parasaur sound effects just to see how it works) and it looks weird with strange animations.
Here are the values that i wrote in the gallimimus.values file:


Besides, my gallimimus doesn't have these large squares in its head, body and tail like the other dinosaurs have when you enable to see classes, objects and invisible instances in TresEd:

[machf]

i opened the TPM with notepad and renamed bones to match with the mesh name ("galli" in this case). Even, i deleted some lines that had ParaBody, ParaHead and ParaTail instances/mesh (also, they appeared in TPDC after selecting Parasaur preset -there was an option to choose a skin and i chose galli skin). But now, GeomAdd throws this Error:

Yeah, you shouldn't have deleted those, just renamed them too. Doing a global replace from "Para" to "galli" was the way.

So, i tested my map to see if the Gallimimus works in game and i got this:



In TPDC, the Gallimimus position displays OK but I had to rotate the gallimimus in TresEd with that xyz option in the menu bar and "show normal objects" option enabled because its position was with head down and tail up but seems that its bones don't match with body rotation:

It makes the sounds (only the Parasaur sound effects just to see how it works) and it looks weird with strange animations.
Here are the values that i wrote in the gallimimus.values file:

Looks like the bones simply don't have the same name as the body... otherwise they should have rotated together with it.
Either that, or you don't have the option "Auto-move Sub-objects" checked in the "Hacking" menu.

Besides, my gallimimus doesn't have these large squares in its head, body and tail like the other dinosaurs have when you enable to see classes, objects and invisible instances in TresEd:

See my answer further up...

[Tormer]

Alright, i re-rigged the gallimimus, replaced "Para" with "galli" in TPM file and imported it in TresEd. But seems that the mesh doesn't match with the bones so i rotated the mesh only to fit with bones position. Is there a way to fix this? because in TPDC the galli fits well with bones position. (Keep in mind that i copied the Para.values file, replaced the Para words inside it with "galli" word and saved this file as galli.values and i don't know if some values there are causing this mismatch between bones and mesh).


When i exported the parasaurolophus as 3ds with TresEd, it appears very small when reimporting it in Blender. I mean, it is so small that i can't use it to edit gallimimus mesh in a way to resemble the parasaurolophus pose because imported Para skin is very tiny in TPDC and won't match with the bones position of the Parasaurolophus preset. Is there a way to export the dinosaurs with their right size from TresEd?

Coming back to my dino, my error with Gallimimus is that its arms are strange, like sometimes they are outside body and "some arm part" is floating near chest; there is a gap in that body area too. Take a look at my screenshots:

[Rebel]

You can't really use the 3ds format for dinosaurs, Tormer, it wrecks the mesh. Export as tpm only, Blender has a tpm import
script, doesn't it?

[TrespasserGuy]

I get that you're doing this to learn how to use TPDC, but if you want a working JPOG Gallimimus for a potential level someone already rigged one for the game many years ago.

[TheIdiot]

Is the axis orientation correct on your mesh in Max? If not, try orienting it to the world and using the "Reset X-Form" option.

[Tormer]

You can't really use the 3ds format for dinosaurs, Tormer, it wrecks the mesh. Export as tpm only, Blender has a tpm import
script, doesn't it?

I only found a Blender TPM exporter in moddb site. If you have a Blender TPM importer, could you send me the download link?