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Having some trouble with Sacred 2 modding, and a question regarding software. Additionally, how can I mod animations?


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Hello there. I've begun messing around with modding this game. I'm interested in editing character models, especifically the Seraphim in this case. Right now I'm just importing/exporting her mesh without alterations just to see if it all works correctly before I start modifying it.

I believe I have downloaded all the tools I've found here so far, and also followed all the steps of the Tutorial - Importing and Exporting GR2 Models thread. Her model exported fine from 3Ds Max 8 and looks almost perfect in-game, but her jaw is extremely distorted, as if the jaw bone has been moved around one meter in front of her, stretching her lower jaw vertices.

I haven't found any mention of this in the forum, except for the thread Sacred 2 Model and Animation Tools where OP mentions Grnreader "contains critical deficiencies regarding jaws, eyes and certain animation curves". I haven't been able to successfully convert the game's GR2 to SMD using any other tool except for Grnreader, not even the ones provided in the quoted post. That thread also mentions Norbyte's GR2 Converter 1.9.0, which I haven't been able to find.

Does anyone know how I could proceed, or could give me a link to said software so that I might see if it converts the GR2 better?

As an addendum, I could not find a tutorial on how to modify an animation. Grnreader refuses to export GR2 animation files since they have no mesh. Could someone give me some information on this matter?

Any help would be appreciated.

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On 4/21/2023 at 6:17 PM, flamingbird said:

Hello there. I've begun messing around with modding this game. I'm interested in editing character models, especifically the Seraphim in this case. Right now I'm just importing/exporting her mesh without alterations just to see if it all works correctly before I start modifying it.

I believe I have downloaded all the tools I've found here so far, and also followed all the steps of the Tutorial - Importing and Exporting GR2 Models thread. Her model exported fine from 3Ds Max 8 and looks almost perfect in-game, but her jaw is extremely distorted, as if the jaw bone has been moved around one meter in front of her, stretching her lower jaw vertices.

I haven't found any mention of this in the forum, except for the thread Sacred 2 Model and Animation Tools where OP mentions Grnreader "contains critical deficiencies regarding jaws, eyes and certain animation curves". I haven't been able to successfully convert the game's GR2 to SMD using any other tool except for Grnreader, not even the ones provided in the quoted post. That thread also mentions Norbyte's GR2 Converter 1.9.0, which I haven't been able to find.

Does anyone know how I could proceed, or could give me a link to said software so that I might see if it converts the GR2 better?

As an addendum, I could not find a tutorial on how to modify an animation. Grnreader refuses to export GR2 animation files since they have no mesh. Could someone give me some information on this matter?

Any help would be appreciated.

Hi! I'm sorry but I'm not a modder :( However I do love this game, its given me a sleepless night and even a few days off from work or family get togethers :lol: There's a fair number of modders here like Flix or Dimitriy, @idbeholdME who's documented much of their attire (ill see if i can find his thread ) and There's also a modder here @Vishanka who does a lot of work with Seraphims and High Elves, if you're looking to get better results with your Seraphim, hopefully her or even someone else who has some time will have some tips .

In the meantime...there's always time for our glorious and most welcome hello to our community of friendly Sacredites :bounce: 

Welcome to DarkMattes!

:hugs:

gogo

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  • The title was changed to Having some trouble with Sacred 2 modding, and a question regarding software. Additionally, how can I mod animations?
On 4/24/2023 at 7:16 AM, gogoblender said:

Hi! I'm sorry but I'm not a modder :( However I do love this game, its given me a sleepless night and even a few days off from work or family get togethers :lol: There's a fair number of modders here like Flix or Dimitriy, @idbeholdME who's documented much of their attire (ill see if I can find his thread ) and There's also a modder here @Vishanka who does a lot of work with Seraphims and High Elves, if you're looking to get better results with your Seraphim, hopefully her or even someone else who has some time will have some tips .

In the meantime...there's always time for our glorious and most welcome hello to our community of friendly Sacredites :bounce: 

Welcome to DarkMattes!

:hugs:

gogo

Hey, thanks for the reply and welcome!

So can I just send these users a message to see if they they'll give me some help? Also, did you find the thread you mentioned?

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Although I am honored by gogo's mention, but I am more of a surface level modder. Can't really help with anything relating to changing models or animations. You are definitely better off asking the others he mentioned.

The thread gogo meant was probably just the one where I collected every single piece of Seraphim armor and its color variations.

Edited by idbeholdME
  • Like! 1
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7 hours ago, flamingbird said:

Hey, thanks for the reply and welcome!

So can I just send these users a message to see if they they'll give me some help? Also, did you find the thread you mentioned?

HI!

Your topic is the best way to reach them .  Now that you have an idea of who's been modding, you can research their topics here and hopefully find some more info that can help.  Keeping information right on the forum is the best way to share info, and allows people to get to topics when they can.

:)

 

gogo

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4 hours ago, gogoblender said:

HI!

Your topic is the best way to reach them .  Now that you have an idea of who's been modding, you can research their topics here and hopefully find some more info that can help.  Keeping information right on the forum is the best way to share info, and allows people to get to topics when they can.

:)

 

gogo

Well any relevant info I gather, I'll post here anyway, regardless of where I get it. This seems to be the go-to place for this kind of stuff and should be made richer in information so that more mods for Sacred can surface.

 

6 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

Although I am honored by gogo's mention, but I am more of a surface level modder. Can't really help with anything relating to changing models or animations. You are definitely better off asking the others he mentioned.

The thread gogo meant was probably just the one where I collected every single piece of Seraphim armor and its color variations.

Haha I'll see what I'm gonna do. You seem to be a Blood fan judging by your picture. Fantastic game.

  • Appreciation 1
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17 minutes ago, flamingbird said:

Well any relevant info I gather, I'll post here anyway, regardless of where I get it. This seems to be the go-to place for this kind of stuff and should be made richer in information so that more mods for Sacred can surface.

 

Bravo!

Very kind to gather it for new comers!

And... dont forget your avatar good friend .. its all the style ^^

:gogo: 

 

gogo

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On 4/21/2023 at 5:17 PM, flamingbird said:

That thread also mentions Norbyte's GR2 Converter 1.9.0, which I haven't been able to find.

I'm pretty sure this is included in the pack that dimitrius uploaded.  It was designed for Divinity Original Sin models so it's probably the stuff in that GR2ConverterDAE folder.

The days when I had the tools set up on my PC to do anything with 3Ds Max are long gone.  We had to avoid exporting anything with complex jaw/eye animations for most of the stuff we did for D2F because of issues with the bones. So the new monsters/NPCs just copied the basic skeletons of existing creatures in order to use their animations.

If you want really fine control over animations, the only one I know to have mastered that is Dmitriy.

Welcome to the forums!

  • Appreciation 1
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13 hours ago, Flix said:

If you want really fine control over animations, the only one I know to have mastered that is Dmitriy.

Yee, what he and Pesmontis did for Elite Mounts mod looks absolutely gorgeous. I think the armoured spider is Dmitriys work, isn't it?

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19 hours ago, Flix said:

I'm pretty sure this is included in the pack that dimitrius uploaded.  It was designed for Divinity Original Sin models so it's probably the stuff in that GR2ConverterDAE folder.

The days when I had the tools set up on my PC to do anything with 3Ds Max are long gone.  We had to avoid exporting anything with complex jaw/eye animations for most of the stuff we did for D2F because of issues with the bones. So the new monsters/NPCs just copied the basic skeletons of existing creatures in order to use their animations.

If you want really fine control over animations, the only one I know to have mastered that is Dmitriy.

Welcome to the forums!

I did see that folder and I think I unsuccessfully tried a conversion with the software inside, but the fact it listed Divinity as supported and no Sacred caused me to think I was looking in the wrong place. The fact it's not titled Norbyte's GR2 Converter or something to that extent didn't help. Unfortunately there's basically no documentation for it, or at least I didn't find it when I looked.

I'll give it another attempt this weekend, which is when I usually boot up my desktop and fiddle with more demanding games. Hopefully a successful conversion with that program will give me a model that doesn't have a troublesome jaw bone; assuming the GR2 to SMD conversion is even the actual step that's causing it. It could be the exporting from 3DS Max to GR2 for all I know, especially considering the bone and its vertices all work fine in Max. Meanwhile I can make do by weighting the lower jaw vertices to the head bone. It's not ideal and I imagine people here have managed to edit the character models without resorting to this kind of work around.

Regarding animations, I don't want to do anything fancy for now, I just want to be able to tweak a few things if necessary. I imagine that if I were to move a bone in the 3D model (and change the weights to compensate for it) I would also have to update that bone's position in some animations, otherwise distortion would follow.

Thank you for your input for now!

  • Like! 1
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On 4/25/2023 at 9:52 PM, Flix said:

I'm pretty sure this is included in the pack that dimitrius uploaded.  It was designed for Divinity Original Sin models so it's probably the stuff in that GR2ConverterDAE folder.

The days when I had the tools set up on my PC to do anything with 3Ds Max are long gone.  We had to avoid exporting anything with complex jaw/eye animations for most of the stuff we did for D2F because of issues with the bones. So the new monsters/NPCs just copied the basic skeletons of existing creatures in order to use their animations.

If you want really fine control over animations, the only one I know to have mastered that is Dmitriy.

Welcome to the forums!

Now that I'm on my desktop, I realize the GR2ConverterDAE indeed has a V1.9.0 folder inside it. That seems to be Norbyte's GR2 Converter then. Thanks for that!

Unfortunately, still no dice. The DAE created from this program has an issue with that exact same jaw bone, this time visible even in 3DS Max.

I've also just learned that this seems to be a problem exclusive to the Seraphim, or at least a problem that doesn't happen to every character. I just converted a High Elf to SMD and back to GR2 from 3DS Max, no issues whatsoever. Additionally, during some of my conversion attempts with the various tools, the DOS prompts would display bone scales for the models. Whereas the High Elf had only two bone scales applied to it, the Seraphim had scales applied to most if not all her bones, and the scale numbers for the jaw bone were in fact very abnormal looking, with a value of 4 point something whereas every other scale was around 1. It's clear then that the issue is happening during the conversion from GR2, not with the exporting from Max.

Unfortunately I'm not sure I have the know-how to do anything about this. Unless I get a converter that properly gets me a Seraphim model with no jaw issues, or learn how to use one of these so that the issue doesn't happen, I'll have to stick to my workaround of giving her jaw vertices to her head bone instead. She won't be able to move her mouth, but at least there will be no distortion.

 

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58 minutes ago, Flix said:

I know what you mean, that Seraphim jaw was the first I realized how difficult it was going to be to work with the models.

You could try it with the seraphim model that Dmitriy has already imported and exported and see if that yields better results.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DPZF598qEBd9ygJnW0dvysKLRu9Eyf0J/view?usp=sharing

Thanks! Unfortunately re-converting it to SMD and then back to GR2 still causes the jaw issue. I think I'll have to contact Dimitriy to see if he can tell me what he did to be able to export to GR2 without this issue.

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