Importing Ages into Blender

[Rabbit]

Let's see how we can fix your issue. What is the latest unsolved error that you have?

I am running Blender 2.45, have all the whatnots installed (again!), import pyprp, pick Age, point dialogue to my UruLive dat folder, pick an age (a .age file)..then blegh! Console error.

The latest in the long, long list of errors is RuntimeError: sanity check on Urustring failed!, invalid file, or is it corrupted?

The wiki troubleshoot says this is the easiest to fix, but then fails to say how.

[Aloys]

I don't see that particular error referenced in the wiki page. If you are referencing the ""Files are corrupted or missing" in that page this is actually an Uru error pop-up; not a PyPRP error message.
What Age are you trying to import. It looks like the PyPRP importer has been installed correctly but it can't import that particular Age. Have you tried to import various Ages? (especially Cyan Ages)

[Corvus]

point dialogue to my UruLive dat folder

I don't think the importer works with UruLive. You can import prp files from your offline Uru though (Uru Complete Chronicles, Beyond Myst and PotS).

[Aloys]

Woops, I totally missed the UruLive part..
So yeah; what Corvus said.

[Rabbit]

Thanks to everyone here, I have managed to calm my bloodpressure a little.

I can't believe I have had a little success with this. I managed to Drizzle my MOUL ages and they are being seen by Blender 2.45 and 2.49b versions - so something appears to be working. However, I am still trying stuff out. I have looked an Anhonney, the wireframe is there, but no textures. The Pods (Tet, Payf) are not even that. I get a few shapes, but thats it. (its these Ages I'm interested in).

I seem to be picking up some stuff, but not all of it. Any advice how I can see 'all' of an Age?

Thanks guys.

[Aloys]

I have to bring bad news, but I'm afraid you're out of options here. PyPRP Importer doesn't import everything, so if some objects are missing there isn't much you can do unfortunately.
About the textures though there is something you can do if you really want to. In Blender are all the objects displayed in pink?
I haven't imported Ages in a long while, but I'm pretty sure I remember PyPRP doesn't import textures. Objects are imported with their UV mappings infos, but I needed to extract the textures separately (with Plasmashop/PrpTool) and then manually reassign them to each object in Blender. That's kinda tedious; but as far as I know it's the only way.
Again, I'm not really up to date on this. I imported all the Cyan Ages long ago, and I haven't imported anything other than a couple of my own Ages in a while. I never tried to import the Live Ages though.

[GPNMilano]

Hey,

I probably should have gotten involved earlier in this thread so that I could help out more:

Rabbit,

Not all versions of PyPRP Importer import MOUL ages after they've been converted to POTS with Drizzle. However most do. If your age imports without errors (The black console window will tell you the amount of time it took to import, and when it's done importing) Then here's a few things to keep in mind:

1. The objects that are imported will not go into the default scene. A second scene in blender will be created and have the name of the PRP page. So if you imported Myst Island from Myst V the scene will be called Island. So check that you're not on the default scene first. At the top of the blender window you'll see a drop down box that says Scene, check to see if there's another scene there with your PRP page name. Thats where your objects will all go when they're imported. Some objects physicals may go into the default scene. This is common and a side affect of PhysX baking the physical info onto the objects. These objects will go into the default scene since PyPRP doesn't no where to put them otherwise. So you may get objects that are just wireframes in your default scene. But the full age itself will rest in another scene named after the PRP.

2. Only one version of PyPRP ever actually put the textures onto the objects. Unfortunately in order to do so it broke up the objects with multiple materials into many different objects each with their own material and texture. So this was scrapped so that the objects with multiple materials would not be broken up into several. The disadvantage was that no textures were applied to the objects. However the UV mapping still imported. So you'll have objects with vertex painting and UV mapping but no textures applied to them. The materials still will be just not the actual physical textures.

[Rabbit]

Many thanks.

I seem to have more success with 2.45 and I do with 2.49, as I have managed to get hold of Tetsonot into Blender, but without textures of any kind.

I gather its not possible to import original textures and I will have to use either vertex painting or possibly create my own.

Supposing I just wanted a few basic textures added, Aloys suggested using Plasmashop/PrpTool and I would like to give it a shot and see how hard/easy it is. Is there a tutorial for this?

[GPNMilano]

Many thanks.

I seem to have more success with 2.45 and I do with 2.49, as I have managed to get hold of Tetsonot into Blender, but without textures of any kind.

I gather its not possible to import original textures and I will have to use either vertex painting or possibly create my own.

Supposing I just wanted a few basic textures added, Aloys suggested using Plasmashop/PrpTool and I would like to give it a shot and see how hard/easy it is. Is there a tutorial for this?

1. You have an easier time with the older version of blender because that was the last version used before development of PyPRP advanced to where the import feature was no longer functional 100%. Once it was decided by the devs that they would no longer be working on keeping importing working, pyprp progressed faster as the devs workload was diminished. However this meant that newer versions of Blender would eventually be incompatible with the old versions of PyPRP.

2. If you need i could make an update to the importer to renable the texture import processes. It was only disabled so that the import time would be faster. The importer was to be used to get an idea of how the Cyan ages looked in a 3d model environment, and not in game. It was made to give us an idea of how they did texture blending, wavesets, stuff like that. So textures really weren't needed if that was the primary goal. However it can be changed back if you really need the textures.

Also vertex painting isn't a part of the texture process. Tetsonot should have it's vertex colors still there intact. The only thing that disabling the texture process does is not import the actual texture files and create versions of them in a texture folder. It just ignores them and does the rest of the material process. Vertex paint is a part of the mesh, not the materials.

[Rabbit]

If you need i could make an update to the importer to renable the texture import processes. It was only disabled so that the import time would be faster. The importer was to be used to get an idea of how the Cyan ages looked in a 3d model environment, and not in game. It was made to give us an idea of how they did texture blending, wavesets, stuff like that. So textures really weren't needed if that was the primary goal. However it can be changed back if you really need the textures.

Wow. That would be awesome. I have tried messing with Plasmashop/prptool, but I'm getting no where, because I don't really know what I'm doing with it.

Many thanks again...this is all really helpful.