Idea: THN animation editor with 3D display.

TheDvDMan wrote:
Can we please get back to the subject?

Sure.

So you want a 3D editor.

This editor should (add to it):

• Read or access FL’s files

• Read and display objects (in 3D)

• Position the objects and cameras

• Create the paths

• Have a timeline

• Write LUA files

• Compile and write THN files

This is a big project.

Is there an animation software we may “upgrade” to read/access FL files and write LUA files?

i’d rather suggest some plugin to convert animations done with C4D, 3ds max or LightWave than an entirely new rendering program. because what we have there pretty much is doing what we write in thn’s, so only thing is to read out the format, convert it to the thn format and save it up as a thn file.

After seeing everything else it can do… anyone ever thought of Blender?? It WOULD take a ton of scripting… but with the right params in the right places it could well be used for the visual part…

Just have to work out how to crosstalk between THN’s and Python… but its about the most versatile platform i can think of… & no… i have no idea how you’d do it… It’s just a theory based on the fact Blender is fast becoming the tool for mostly everything else (via Python scripting) in other games.

So what you’d need is…

A THN/Python converter/re-converter <-this would be the “magic”
All FL’s tga/dds’s extracted from the FX files (for consistency)
& way! Too much time on your hands… 8-)

Best of luck… be nice to stop doing all this in my head and have a tool for the task… (like Doom3’s particle ed… yay… that saved me weeks)

i think, the effects conversion is not even necessary, as particle effects and beam effects are supported by blender and the conversion would not translate effects but only names and reference names, so the visual of effects or the models are unnecessary, only dimensions, positions, motions.

Xarian_Prime wrote:
All FL’s tga/dds’s extracted from the FX files (for consistency)

This would be the latest FL SDK, isn’t it?

So, Blender is an option.
Is there any other suggestion?

LightWave. 3d artists even such developing FL mods are using it quite frequently for modeling and (advertising) rendering purposes.

I easy found information about LUA for blender. I was not so lucky for Lightwave.

How hard is it to refer to FL SDK folders in your respective software (Blender/Lightwave/etc.) ?

I think I will have to take some time to try these software…

UTFImageExporter will extract the lot (not .thn’s though… i think…) if pointed towards the DATA file of Freelancer… you may want to be a bit more precise though… extracting SHIPS, SOLAR & FX separately will save trying to sort it all out after extraction…

As i said…l not sure if it works on .thn’s but UTF Editor will do that if needed.

Blender wont read a .mat file… or a .thn no matter what scripts you throw at it… and besides… it takes a few mins to extract the textures… but would take forever to try and get python to read a .mat file 8-)

EDIT: Using LW / 3dsMax or other commercial app for this task defeats the purpose… bad enough we MUST use ms3d to convert ships already… Please… I beg ye… Use blender… “think of the children”

okay, now, the extraction of all the mat and txm texture nodes is no SDK and can be done by simply saving the nodes as tga/dds depending on whether the node is called MIP[digit] or MIPS. the image extractor does nothing else but searching for these nodes and saving them up with a file extension as needed for graphic programs to read.
besides we only would need bounding boxes or approximations of the models to plan and convert a thn from a rendering program (the thn does NOT contain any models, effects or textures, ONLY references), so we don’t even need a script to make the program read utf’s; it however is possible by using the same decryption code we have in the UTF editors, the image extractor and the model importer and the ale editor (or simply the UTF/XML) already. there is no problem with this.
and, last but not least, the UTF editor would not make anything with a thn file as the thorn is a standalone freelancer format rather than any kind of UTF archive. it is more comparable with the ini’s themselves - a pure code file. what you see on the editor when opening up a thn, and you think its rubbish, it is the encrypted version. open a vanilla ini and you see the same rubbish.

For your information, an other group discuss of “THN Rotation Matrix Calculator”

Please let me summarize for my own (and others) understanding.

• We can NOT directly access FL files from, let say, Blender. We need to first convert them - or those needed. We already have UTF editors that do this. UTFImageExporter seems to be the tool to use. Our editor might use it. To be seen.

• Thorn files are scripts referring ini files referring to tga/dds files.
  This mean will will have to generate these ini files too - if needed.

i don’t think we need. it would make things easier, if we see in the rendering program the same as we later see ingame but for the creation of a thn it is irrelevant, what a ship or an effect looks like, the thorn itself only specifies what ship and what effect is used, where it appears, how it is rotated and when and how it changes these aspects (or for effects - appears and holds on) during the scene.
we can think of a simulator based on the FL engine later, first off we need something that would convert the pure thn to an animation script and back again.
i take example of the LightWave format “lws”: there are no models defined, only reference to the model and how it appears during the scene. okay, the lws also defines particle emitters but again, only their properties as any geometry, even a null geometry can be made an emitter.
btw the lws format is readable for humans, so it prolly is not even complicated to code a translation tool using null objects instead of geometry. however, the modder must be in knowledge of the dimensions of the objects he uses.

Please bear with me as I am not a designer. I never have used such a software (Blender or LW - only Google’s SketchUp)…

we can think of a simulator based on the FL engine later, first off we need something that would convert the pure thn to an animation script and back again.

We actually have the FL-ED Thorn for the THN to script part. And there is the LUA Compiler with FL-ED Thorn util. I am working on an interface (GUI) for the LUA Compiler.

Unless your are refering to a script to use in the Blender/LW software. In this case we will have to decide which one we will invest on because they are not using the same script language (Python vs Lscript).

Guys…Look, thn we here mainly for create animation, i mean people create thn animation just made thn as an additional stuff for mod.

Right now we don’t need to change or create hard thn like Story Animation so i think a text based thn edit is enough for this.

I guess most people here just edit thn for MainScreen and Bases background. Obvious, it’s not the main part of a mod. So i don’t think we need take too much time on the unmainly things unless the main things is good enough.

And for this, a huge problem now is i need to know how to understand path in thn script, not create a 3D thn editor.

Uh, about the “reverse engineering”, i prefer to persuade someone to make a encrypted supported Freelancer File Reader Lib for anitcheat and hide secret.

=========Please ignore below==========

I greedy selected the first option…Because i want to see if someone selected the last option…

For the pathing you will need to look into curve generation. Examples include bezier and cat/mull/rom curve creation. I don’t remember which one the thns use but that is the common method of making smooth movement. For point to point movement it will be a simple lerp with ease in/out.