I guess I have to admit it.

I have been trying to figure out Riley's mesh reconstruction program, and have ultimately had to throw my arms up in defeat.  The more I try to understand this program, the more I feel my brain become filled with static and nonsense.  I almost cried out of frustration.  In many ways, I'm torn.  I want to be able to use this application, as I feel it would give me some degree of freedom missing from the in-game sets.  At the same time, I feel like my inability to get this thing running is a pretty strong sign that I may not be cut out for the TMO community anymore.  If moviemaking has become a process that must be this convoluted and complex, then I am afraid I may not be able to compete.  I feel like a failure when I try to wade my way through this program, and I am beginning to suspect that failure is a indication that I should throw in the towel.

Sorry, but I am mucho frustrated right now -- and honestly, a little headachy from trying to sort through it all. 

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Oooh Chuck, don't let it bring you down - I'm afraid to even open that thing (have downloaded it ages ago) because I suspect it will be the same for me!

I'm sure everyone around here would be willing to help you - be that with advice or making mods for you -  please don't throw that towel!!

postmodernchuck:

I have been trying to figure out Riley's mesh reconstruction program, and have ultimately had to throw my arms up in defeat.  The more I try to understand this program, the more I feel my brain become filled with static and nonsense.  I almost cried out of frustration.  In many ways, I'm torn.  I want to be able to use this application, as I feel it would give me some degree of freedom missing from the in-game sets.  At the same time, I feel like my inability to get this thing running is a pretty strong sign that I may not be cut out for the TMO community anymore.  If moviemaking has become a process that must be this convoluted and complex, then I am afraid I may not be able to compete.  I feel like a failure when I try to wade my way through this program, and I am beginning to suspect that failure is a indication that I should throw in the towel.

There are five separate programs that come with the Mesh Reconstruction utilities, and only one of them was really intended "for everybody".  That one would be the Set Dressing to Prop application.  Maybe the Room Builder as well, but even that is a bit tricky.  I tried writing decent documentation for it all, but I'm not the best at that.

The rest of the applications can only be used on the command-line.  They're really more intended "for the modders".  They're what I use to create all my mod-packs.  They make it easier to do things like scale or rotate a prop, or pull out objects from a set, etc.

I'm currently in the process of rewriting everything I've done to make them more accessible.  But it takes time, effort, and motivation.  I'm teaching myself how to program the graphical user interface stuff, as well as DirectX.

In the meantime, if you're having trouble with something specific, send along a PM and I'll try to help out as best as I can.  And of course, there's lots of content on my modding site for download; as well as at dcmodding.com, skinshack.co.uk, fraasmovies.com, et. al.  And plenty of other mod people who are willing to help, including with custom content.

Just take a look at the list of modders for rysto's Infested.  He didn't do all that on his own -- nor should anybody.  He and I have a PM thread with over 50 posts now; and I know he was heavily in touch with many others while producing that film.

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Riley Entertainment Website - Movies, Mods, and Modding Applications!
Riley Entertainment on TMU

Patience Chuck.  We all struggle. 

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Teaser out now

Some truely amazing work here riley.  Keep it up!

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Shadow Ops
Starring:
TidyChick ; MefuneAkira ; JetCityWoman ; Master007 ; GoofParade ; Sparky1512 ; The Apostle RJ ; josephkw ; kuroken ; postmodernchuck

View SO Trailer at my studio page.

Sorry about the breakdown there.  I did not want to come across as alarmist and, to be honest, a little crazy -- and my intention was never to offend.  This is, quite obviously, a tremendous little tool that, when put in the right hands, could crank out some beautiful stuff.  So maybe it will just take some time and patience, and a little extra assistance from all those out there in TMO-land. 

For now, I am going to continue working on the "set-dressing-as-prop" conversion tool... and hopefully, some will come out of it as I continue working on my next movie.  We'll see. 

But I digress.  Let's have cake and be friends!

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Thanks Master.

And Chuck, believe me when I say I know these aren't the friendliest apps around.  They're kinda...  retro 80's stuff.   I'm working on it.

The Set Dressing to Prop utility can be used without going to the command-line, like so:

• Go into Advanced Movie Maker.  Start a new scene on the Blue Screen, and dress it up.  Save the set dressing.  Give it a name with no spaces, as short as possible (under 25 characters).  Exit the game.
  
• Open one Windows Explorer window, and navigate it to the folder containing the r3-tm-dress2prop application.
• Open a second Windows Explorer window, and navigate it to \My Documents\The Movies\Set Dressing\set_blue_screen\
• Drag the set dressing file from the second Explorer window, and drop it onto the "r3-tm-dress2prop" application in the first Explorer window.  (You can also highlight multiple set dressing files, and drag them all at once.)
  
• It will create a folder with the same name.  Copy the files it created in the sub-folders into the appropriate folders in your game directory.

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Riley Entertainment Website - Movies, Mods, and Modding Applications!
Riley Entertainment on TMU

Yay for drag and drop - I managed to make my first own prop room!
Riley, you're a genius!!

From drag-and-drop to full blown GUI...

Coming soon:  A Texture Manager application.  I expect a beta version to be ready by early August.  Feature list:

• Navigate The Movies content to view texture files.
  
• Navigate your file system to view or batch convert image files to DDS.
  
• Conversion to DDS supports BMP, TGA, JPG, PNG image formats.
• Automatic resizing for overlays (online quality at 512x256, or high quality at 1024x512) and backdrops (1024x256).  It will also support alternative (ie. user-supplied) dimensions.
  
• Supports conversion for animated overlays, up to 100 at a time.
• Automatic generation of thumbnails.
• Two other features that may cause your pants to fly directly off your (The Movies actors') body, which I will reveal as soon as I'm certain I can achieve them.
  

While the below screenshot may not look like much to the casual observer...  The truth is the bulk of the difficult work (ie. learning Windows programming) is done.  This application is being written in unmanaged C++, using the basic Windows Platform SDK.  The tough stuff has been getting all the file search controls to function smoothly.  My next step is integrating in the DirectX calls so I can actually display the textures (which will appear in the area on the right)...


(Very early screenshot)

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Riley Entertainment Website - Movies, Mods, and Modding Applications!
Riley Entertainment on TMU

Shoooooooweeee!  Automatic conversion of pngs to dds up to 100 in a batch will be saving me hours and hours of work (im a vista user who can't use the point and click functionality of dds converter so yea, this will be nifty).  Cannot wait to see this one.

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Teaser out now

Nice one Riley. 
and I can't wait for pantless movies actors

mGm

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Speaking as an advocate of pants-less behaviour.... bring it on!!!

You'll all see what the "pants" thing is about in due time...

Biz, the 100 at a time is the limit for converting animated overlays only (as that's the game's limit).  Static overlays you'll be able to select an entire directory's worth of files at a time.  (Which will mean, to use this application, you'll probably want to organize all your static overlays in one directory; and all your animated ones in another.)

I want to tread lightly about guaranteeing this will all work on Vista.  I'm still on XP.  You can be my official Vista beta-tester, Biz.

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Riley Entertainment Website - Movies, Mods, and Modding Applications!
Riley Entertainment on TMU

Status Update on the Texture Manager

In its current development state, the application serves as a functioning image viewer.  When multiple image files are chosen, it treats it as though the images are part of an animated overlay -- so the viewer displays them at 10 fps.

Beta-Testing

Beta-testing will begin shortly, on what I've done thus far, as I would like to verify this portion of it is working before proceeding further.  I will be selecting a few specific people, for specific reasons.  One person on XP, one person on Vista, and one person with a foreign language setup.  Initial PMs will go out tonite.

Converting to DDS

To get the animated image viewer working, I had to tread on some new programming grounds (at least when it comes to Windows development).  The application uses a separate processing thread to accomplish the animation.  As odd as it may seem to people, I've gotten to rather like Windows programming now, along with the challenges I've overcome.  My usual programming environment is in Java / Servlets, where multi-threaded coding is a breeze (by comparison).

So with that under my belt, I decided there was no reason I couldn't expand the functionality of this application.  Converting batches of images will be done in separate threads.  This will allow the user to initiate one conversion, and simulateously go back to look for more files to convert.  Physical RAM will be the only limitation on how many conversions the user can initiate simultaneously.

I've also decided to allow the user to choose the original frame rate for an image sequence, for conversion to animated overlays.  This will allow the user to create an anmated image sequence in any frame rate they desire.  The application will automatically "decimate" it down (or up, if need be) to the 10 frames per second required by The Movies.  Oddball rates will be supported (eg. 15, 24, 25), though you're always going to get better quality with frame rates that are divisible by 10 (eg. 20 or 30).

The user will also be able to choose the starting output frame number.  This allows them to piece together one animated overlay from multiple sources.
And choose the maximum number of frames.  This allows them to create animations that cross multiple scenes (as I first did in "To TMO").

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Riley Entertainment Website - Movies, Mods, and Modding Applications!
Riley Entertainment on TMU

Being able to adjust the frame rate will be a super asset to overlay development. I can not wait to see this thing in action.

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Inching ever closer to release stage -- probably sometime during the Olympic games.  Today is a holiday in Canada (at least in my area).  I'll be using part of the day to work on this.

I did hit a minor snag related to DirectX and its redistributions, but I'm hopeful I have it solved.  My target is to make sure anyone who's installed The Movies and S&E won't have to download the latest DirectX run-time.

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Riley Entertainment Website - Movies, Mods, and Modding Applications!
Riley Entertainment on TMU

Glad to hear of some updates Rileyman!

    The 6 sets I created were made using your tools, BTW you see the tut I did on dcmf? I put a fair bit of work into explaining R3TM step by step.

   It's on DCMF ultimate tutorials link

http://www.dcmodding.com/main/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=79&topic=1229.0

basic set creation 101 or a noobs guide to set creation.

Written for people with little or no modding experience.

The Bean
Psyko 1 Productions

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The Bean
Psyko 1 Productions

Looks like a tutorial on building/converting props to sets...  I'm thinking I'll have to drop a link to that thread on the tutorials section of my web site.

And I see you've joined the DCMF team -- glad to have you aboard!

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Riley Entertainment Website - Movies, Mods, and Modding Applications!
Riley Entertainment on TMU

Why thank you,

     I have had the honor of joining DCMF. The team is full of great people. But I knew that before I joined.

     Feel free to use the tutorial. I'm just hopping it helps people. I will be doing more soon. Basic Set Creation 102, which will involve going into the vertexes. Show people how I modded the sci-fi corridor and removed some of the meshes to make it a new corridor. That will be on DCMF before Sunday.

Anyways see you in the dungeon I'm sure they're looking for us by now...

The Bean
Psyko 1 Productions

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The Bean
Psyko 1 Productions

A quickie overlay...  Sisch wanted a transparent overlay with scale markers.  This is useful for compositing / overlaying multiple scenes together when editing externally.  You don't export your movie with it turned on, obviously; it just acts as a guide.

Scale Markers overlay

Regarding the Texture Manager application...  Check the blog.  It's getting close.  Just a bit more coding to do for the DDS conversion, and a whole lot of testing.  I'm putting some consideration into whether I want to try to add a chroma-key feature.  If I do, it'll come in a later release...  It's something that would take a bit of work, and I wouldn't want to delay release just for that.

Edit...  As I haven't posted a screenie in here in a bit...  This is about what the application looks like:

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Riley Entertainment Website - Movies, Mods, and Modding Applications!
Riley Entertainment on TMU

Dear Jebus, Allah, Shiva, Buddha, Zeno, FSM, Cluthulu, Aunt Marci, and The Dude from the Starbucks by my office who thinks he created the Universe (he does make a argument I admit)

I just used Rileys Dress 2 prop program with the fancy drag and drop option and if you aforementioned Deities could grant his every wish, that would be swell. plzkthx

your truly,

jase180

PS I feared using this for so long, now its just awesome.

Chuck,

I feel like you did, but so many people will sit with you on Skype and help out, and things will become clear! I promise!

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rileyman:

A quickie overlay...  Sisch wanted a transparent overlay with scale markers.  This is useful for compositing / overlaying multiple scenes together when editing externally.  You don't export your movie with it turned on, obviously; it just acts as a guide.

Scale Markers overlay

Thank you, Riley! Big kisses to you!

Heh -- let me know if that was actually what you were looking for.

My trio of beta-testers should be on the lookout for the next test.  I'm now looking to complete some of the "loose ends" -- junk like having an "About" box, having some form of functioning help (ie. documentation), putting together an installer, etc.

There's one last bit of functionality I'll be adding in this weekend before release:  basic image compositing.  Until I get to the Animated Actor Prop application, this is what people will be able to use to create new textures for animated actors.  (ie. start with the skin texture, then layer on the pants, then the shirt, etc. and save it as a new texture)

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Riley Entertainment Website - Movies, Mods, and Modding Applications!
Riley Entertainment on TMU

"This weekend" turned into "the following weekend" -- I had my computer go haywire on me.  But I'm back with a newer, faster, better computer and raring to go.

This is what the image compositing portion of the application looks like:  (note you can move each layer up or down, so if you add them in the wrong order you can easily correct it)

Search for image files in the file system or The Movies content... check.
View image files, or animate at slideshow, overlay, or 30fps speeds... check.
Convert static overlays, animated overlays, backdrops, and other textures to DDS, with automatic resizing... check.
Composite new images (as above)... check.

The only things left now are saving the composited images, typing up some sort of help document, and making an installer.  I must say -- I am more proud of this application than I am any of my TMO films.

 

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Riley Entertainment Website - Movies, Mods, and Modding Applications!
Riley Entertainment on TMU

A public beta of the Texture Manager has been released.

 

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Riley Entertainment Website - Movies, Mods, and Modding Applications!
Riley Entertainment on TMU