With ResidualVM now opening up Grim Fandango to us all, I was wondering if a Remastering process could be started. The way I see it there are two things which could be done:

1. Increase texture quality.

2. Remodel the characters.

Ender previously offered to share his knowledge when ResidualVM caught up, saying this was all very easy to do, so while I'll bug him, is there anyone else with knowledge to share?

Last edited by JohnnyWalker2001 on Sun Dec 04, 2011 2:12 pm; edited 1 time in total

   

Ok, so everything I will be messing with lives inside DATAxxx.LAB files. It seems that both the .3do files and .mat files have been altered in some way.

I've tried viewing the textures in MatMaster, but it maps the palette incorrectly -- so you can see the shapes, but the colours are all wrong.

Does anyone know of a good tool for dealing with .mat files?

Thanks.

Edit: It seems that .mat files usually come with a palette file. Does anyone know where I can find Grim Fandango's palette file?

   

Ok, I've managed to figure a few things out:

.mat files contain textures, sometimes several. To extract the BMPs use a tool like MatMaster 2.0, but you need to connect it with the right colormap (.cmp files) to get the right colours.

I found Manny's head and suit (m_eye.mat and m_s_chest.mat from within DATA000.LAB -- connected with suit.cmp).

I opened the BMPs up, converted them from 128x128 to 256x256 and drew all over them and re-saved them (in OS/2 format).

I then recompiled a .mat file and then recompiled the .lab using BGBennyBoy's ResourceCompilerCreator tool.

Unfortunately this is what I saw:


The textures don't scale down and add detail, they just display really big. Is there something ResidualVM can do about this?

   

Just guessing: the materials have the width and height of the textures stored. Did you fiddle with them?

   

quote:

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Originally posted by giucam
Just guessing: the materials have the width and height of the textures stored. Did you fiddle with them?

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code:

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MATM
FILENAME: m_eye.mat

TEXTURES: 1
m_eye-0.bmp

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the width and height for materials are read in binary, not text by the engine, other than that, I don't know where they are defined.

   

quote:

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Originally posted by JohnnyWalker2001

quote:

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Originally posted by giucam
Just guessing: the materials have the width and height of the textures stored. Did you fiddle with them?

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No, that .mat files have only the following text in them:

code:

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MATM
FILENAME: m_eye.mat

TEXTURES: 1
m_eye-0.bmp

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(Presuming you mean the .mat files?)

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quote:

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Originally posted by JohnnyWalker2001

Also, there's nothing in the .3DO files that suggest 128x128 that I could find

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quote:

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Originally posted by giucam
Look at material.cpp. Maybe the tool you're using doesn't show them but they have a width and height field.

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quote:

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Originally posted by JohnnyWalker2001
With ResidualVM now opening up Grim Fandango to us all, I was wondering if a Remastering process could be started. The way I see it there are two things which could be done:

1. Increase texture quality.

2. Remodel the characters.

Ender previously offered to share his knowledge when ResidualVM caught up, saying this was all very easy to do, so while I'll bug him, is there anyone else with knowledge to share?

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The current meshes have VERY few polygons. Just take a look at Glottis.

   

quote:

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Originally posted by JohnnyWalker2001
Nice. You're absolutely right. Does anyone know where the width and height are being read from?

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quote:

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Originally posted by giucam

@ Mogul
Hey, welcome on this forum

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quote:

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Originally posted by mogul
3. Use the existing model meshes as control points for rendering higher-poly version using an interpolating subdivision surface scheme.

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quote:

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Originally posted by giucam
You can see that in material.cpp. The width is usually at offset 76+num_images*40, the height at 80+num_images*40.
The value of num_images is instead at offset 12.

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Sure, or OBJ for that matter, as long as it's a documented format, it shouldn't be that hard to add, the main issue would be detecting that the files are non-standard I guess.

   

quote:

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Originally posted by JohnnyWalker2001
Thanks, I'm getting to understanding what's going on now, although I'm still not sure which *file* the offset is being read from. (Edit: I see you're saying it's in the .mat files?)

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