Guild of Writers

Hello.

I searched on this forum how to import a PRP in 3D max.
The only answer I have found is the one of Christopher (Augustus 18, 2013) that this is impossible.
Is this response still valid or is that now possible ?

I ask this because, for my "Fabulous Magical Treasure" , I would like recreate the city of Ae'gura completely without barriers, cracks, DRC tents, etc., in short, make a city "clean".

So, my idea is import the PRPs of the existing Ae'gura, delete some objects and add some new one.

Do feasible without redo all the PRPs?

Thanks

Many of the things you want to remove can be done simply by modifying the SDL variables, or barring that, using Python to manually modify their visibility.

Due to the nature of 3DSMax and the data files, an importer for that program does not exist, and is not likely to be made. There is an importer for old versions of Blender which functions well enough to recompose a good amount of the visual data. With that, you could conceivably import the many pages of the Island, convert it to a common format, and import into 3DSMax, but this would be exceptionally tedious and error-prone.

If you want to edit and remove objects, the easiest way is probably going to be using a tool like PRPShop to rip them out (though this too is limited for your purpose). I recommend using the above importer for reference to find objects you wish to remove.

Given that a lot of important information is lost during an export, making importing a lossy proposition, and the fact that the Ae'gura layout is severely limited in many ways, if you truly want to build a better Island, you might be best served building a better one from scratch.

I think their is an age importer for Blender here someplace
and im not to sure on this however you might be able to import Ae'gua to Blender' export it as a FBX and then open it up in Max.
Also its a rather large and complex age the way it was constructed due to the limits the pc's back then.

Christopher was working on an age importer plug-in for Max unfortunately it kept crashing instead of importing the prp's
So I guess your stuck with the long way around.

The only other solution I can think of is the way I Build the Selenic ship in the walking maze, which basically was done by switching back and forth from Uru CC with the Myst 5 Myst island and Max holding a ruler up to the screen for reference
I renumber Kicking the Cones in Bevin around for what seemed like hours trying to get the dimensions of the mesh to look right for the Cones Relto page

Murphy s law
The short cut is always a mind field

Karkadann wrote:I think their is an age importer for Blender here someplace

I linked it in my post.

To lay out how I would go about doing this:

• Turn off what I can with the City's SDL.
• Load up the areas of the City I want to edit in Blender using Chloe's PyPRP Importer (if I were using 3DS, I'd then export from Blender and import into Max here).
• Find the objects I want to remove that have no SDL. Delete them from the PRPs using PRPShop.
• As some of the debris and broken places are part of very large meshes (sometimes whole chunks of the island are one big mesh), I'll need to rebuild these entirely. I will need to remake them from scratch, or edit and re-export the mesh, importing it back into the old PRP over the existing objects (this is not easy to do correctly) or removing the old one and adding mine in a new page.
• Add new geometry to fill in the gaps and broken places, matching up the locations and the UV mapping meticulously by hand to seamlessly transition the repairs.
• Repaint the lightmaps by hand to match the new geometry, as the lighting and shadows will be very different around debris, lamps, and tents which are no longer there. Vertex colors will probably need to be modified as well, and there is no easy tool for doing this.

Finally, when I'm all done and have spent a lot of time working around all of the extra effort that editing an output-only data format creates, I can't share my creation with anyone because I'd need permission from Cyan to redistribute a modified version of their content, in a place they've said we should avoid making fan modifications (a canon D'ni location; see Rule #3 and #5).

I guess your best bet would be to build one from scratch like the Selenic ship

Hmmm, Deledrius summed this all pretty well. Although I'm not sure about two points:

Deledrius wrote:Find the objects I want to remove that have no SDL. Delete them from the PRPs using PRPShop.

Most objects could be disabled through Python (IMHO that's more simple, especially for visuals. Logic might be more tricky).

Deledrius wrote:Finally, when I'm all done and have spent a lot of time working around all of the extra effort that editing an output-only data format creates, I can't share my creation with anyone because I'd need permission from Cyan to redistribute a modified version of their content, in a place they've said we should avoid making fan modifications (a canon D'ni location; see Rule #3 and #5).

I agree Cyan would not consider the new area as canon, and wouldn't allow it on their servers. But on other shards, isn't it only up to the shard admin to decide ? DI for instance has several modifications (although minor).

As for releasing Cyan's assets, I'm wondering... AFAIK Plasma CAN load other Ages while you're not in them. Meaning you could export a scene containing only a few objects, and load the city at runtime through the ptPageInNode command, meaning you would explore the City while being in another Age entirely (not really good practice, but doable).
I don't know if the textures would load, though: you can't load a texture PRP through ptPageInNode. But I remember seeing pictures of mixed up Ages (for instance, the Cleft stuck inside Kadish's Vault), so maybe it would still work ?

Regardless, it's still a lot of work and in my opinion not worth the trouble (just my opinion again, but I think I would have more fun building a whole new D'ni district than editing existing stuff, if only my modeling skills would allow it).

Thank you for your answers.

I know it is possible to change from one age SDL and hide the objects of this age with Python. This is what I do for a long time.
Import PRP in another age, I do that too and even clone objects.

For the FMT I realized Treasure Light City (TLCity) that way. But to implement all these changes, it takes a relatively long time. Furthermore, as is my robot that performs these operations, it must remove the objects every time a new player arrives at this age. All this slows down the game for both players and the bot.
That is why I intend to recreate TLCity by removing unnecessary objects Ae'gura and redesigning parts. For example, if I remove "Treebolisk" and its collision wall, then the player falls into the void. There are no ground collision around TreeBolisk. I Must redraw an invisible wall on the floor at that location.
I would afterwards, repair the pub of Kahlo and other locations (Tokotah Alley, for example). I know that will take a lot of time, but I have

Regarding the modified PRPs.
Indeed, I do not think Cyan agree to add a new age (TLCity) in Moul: a. But it would be possible, I think, to distribute it to players who use a Client Internal (Plclient). Or, why not consider putting all the FMT in a Shard that would agree to host it?

Anyway, I'm at the very beginning of my studies in modeling of an age with 3DSmax. I have successfully created a simple test with age 3DSmax 2012 and convert the PRP with Drizzle. My avatar can link it by the Nexus then with the command "/Link".

I will try the solution you suggest me: import in Blender, export, and import with 3DSmax. Edit, and then export the modified PRPs.

But I thought of something: Delete objects with PlasmaShop and save the modified Prps . This would be a lot of work done prior to import these PRPs in Blender and work on them. Currently, I'm using PlasmaShop 3.0 beta (build 167). In this regard, is there a most recent version of Plasmashop?

Thank you for your help.