Hello, I have purchased some character models from 3drt. They are in direct x format as well as others. Problem is I cant seem to get them in gameguru. I have been trying but no luck. does any one know about this? Any one bought 3d animated models from 3drt before? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you

well, I had a try with the free character "Monster", which can be downloaded from there.
Basically, it is useable with a little work.

What to do :
1. Download the character model file in zip format
2. Download its picture from the website (right click on the picture/store image as ... / select .bmp format / name it Monster.bmp )
3. Load Monster.bmp in paint.exe and change it to size 64x64 Pixels
Be sure to save it as a 256-colour bmp
4. Open the downloaded model zip
5. Extract the .X-file "monster-animated-character-X.X"
6. Rename monster-animated-character-X.X" to "monster.X"
7. Extract the .jpg-file "monster.jpg"
8. Rename "monster.jpg" to "Monster.dds"
9. Edit Monster.x,
change "Monster.jpg" to "Monster.dds"
10. Go to the files directory in your GG Installation and find the directory named "entitybank"
11. Create a folder "rtmodels" inside entitybank
12. Move Monster.x, Monster.dds and Monster.bmp into "rtmodels"

now Comes the hard part
13. Find an appropriate .fpe file from another directory under entitybank
(I took "combat soldier.fpe" for a first, enough to check the model, but not very good) and copy it to "rtmodels" folder
14. Rename "combat soldier.fpe" to "Monster.fpe"
15. Edit "Monster.fpe", change the model line

from

;orientation
model = masked soldier.X

to

;orientation
model = monster.X

And, while you are at it,
change the descriptionentry behind "desc" at the top from

Combat Soldier

to

Monster

(it'll work without the desc correction, but it is untidy to leave the wrong desc in the file)

16. fire up gameguru

17. you should now be able to select Monster as an entity
from the new "rtmodels" folder and place it into your Level
(if you don't see an icon for it, your bmp is not 64x64. but you should at least see the name)

18. Run the level and see the beast running at you and -oddly enough - seemingly firing
at you with a colt or something when it attacks :THAT'S of course caused by the not so appropriate
.fpe respectively the lua it is calling-

19. Find an apppropriate lua to make your model work correctly and enter its name in the fpe

20. Repeat the above analoguously for all you models from 3drt

21 Earn millions with the game you'll be creating

@yrkoon thanks for the tutorial and the link.

I could not get it to work but I am impressed with their human characters - men , women, children - basic civilians of different ethnic groups. Soldiers with the approximate correct uniforms etc. A gold mine for those of us that need characters which are not fantasy/sci-fi/zombie.

Where exactly did you run into problems, Isagabe ?
How far did you get ?

Even if you hadn't got the texture file naming right, an "invisible" monster should have attacked you when you ran the Level with "Monster" set into it as an entity.

Double-check all spellings,
.fpe, .dds, .bmp and .x all should have the exact same basename (=filename without the Extension),
and within the .x file, the (renamed) .dds must be mentioned.
check for stray blanks, too.

I don't have much experience with adapting models, but I practically wrote the instructions while I performed them myself

Did you restart GG after step 15, if it was running while you were doing the file operations ?

I just have added a more precise specification on the bmp in yellow in the instructions.

And yes, there are quite some interesting models there, and at still reasonable Prices, I'd say.

Thank you so much yrkoon, I will get on this now. Will let ya know if I get it to work. Again, thank you

Cryptweaver, you are welcome. feel free to ask if something doesn't work out as described. Admittedly, there will be some work ahead to make models really work as expected, but you should be on the right track with what I wrote. I know there's nothing more annoying than having spent considerable money on models that one can't even get to show up in GG. But once you get the hang of it, the necessary adaptive work is not so bad.

And thank you for pointing us to 3drt, they really have some interesting stuff.

What yrkoon posted worked fine for me for the monster character, however the z/y axis on some of the 3drt is wrong so they appear in gameguru laying down, I know there's a way to sort that out but I cannot remember, hopefully one of the other modellers here will be able to post how.

Also remember that the animations will be out of sync with the fpe's from standard characters because they would be recorded differently, you would need to put it through snimer or fragmotion, or something else that can open .x models and manually go through the animations to get the key frame positions for each and then edit them into the fpe.

When you get the texture naming wrong it should still load into gameguru but will be a black shape instead of textured, if the model is just invisible then you've probably put the wrong name under model in the fpe. Try zooming into the ground close up then placing the model, do you get a tiny white sphere instead? If so then that's because the name of the model doesn't match the model entry in the fpe.

Well, Belidos, like I wrote, the main Goal was to generally Show to cryptweaver that he really can get his models into GameGuru, albeit with some additional work necessary to make them work correctly.
I once went through the same disappointment with another engine and models I obtained from another source. It is soooo frustrating when you don't even get an error message on (not) loading your models.
While seeing that a model does go in and is at least visible but "just" doesn't behave correctly is at least encouraging to go on (and learn something about the target engine's requirements by the way) to me.

Edited once - for clarity.

you guys are awesome, thank you so much. I did get it to work but there are a couple small issues. But I am very determined. Thanks again guys.

Thanks guys.

@yrkoon - I get it to load into GG. It comes up textured but disjointed (looks nothing like the image). And of course the animations don't work. But it's there for what that is worth.

This step I was not sure of:
9. Edit Monster.x,
Do you mean editing it in Blender?

Hopefully GG will refine their model importer to include characters made in other formats that we can buy elsewhere. The GG store is sadly lacking in characters.

It may have been originally exported from 3DS Max. sometimes 3DS max doesn't set the weights of the limbs and animations properly, most game engines don't notice this, but GG is a bit sensitive, I find that if I load the .x files into either fragmotion or animer and save them straight out as .x again it fixes that issue.

@Isagabe
No, I meant open the Monster.x file with an Editor and edit this part:

TextureFilename {
"monster.dds";
}


YES it Looks mangeled/distorted - but not dismembered - to me.
And YES, the Primary Goal was to help cryptweaver to get the Thing into the Editor at all.
The animations are those of a biped, probably the fpe of a quadruped will start making more sense.

On the other Hand, I guess cryptweaver HAS bought biped characters, so the biped fpe may make more sense for those.

I won't find time in the short run to take care of the animations, but I myself found quite some interesting models there,
and if a pattern emerges, I might come up with a converter program, but don't hold your breath until then.
Maybe Belidos hints are already helpful.