How to Rip Models (with their Animations) from Console Game Roms/Isos

JackParadigm

I've been scouring different forum sites for help, so I hope I get lucky here! [fingers crossed]

I'm working on making a little fan game project that involves certain videogame characters.

Although there are a few [now old-ish] programs I've come across from Googling that are capable of ripping 3D models from roms/isos via emulators, the problem is that I'd like those models' animations too. For example, although I can use a program to rip a model of Claude from GTA3, I also want to get his animations for walking, running, etc.

To give more detail to my problem, I'm focusing on ripping models + animations just from Playstation games (PS1, PS2, PS3, etc.)

If this is possible, how do I go about doing this?

Eric Chadwick

This is probably do-able, do you have any programming skills? It'll likely require some experimentation with hex.

BTW, we generally are OK with ripping content, as long as it's purely for educational purposes, to learn how other artists have solved difficult problems. But we don't condone sharing those rips with anyone who doesn't own the game themselves, or making money off them somehow (don't ever try to sell ripped content, or sell a game that uses it, make ad revenue off a site with rips on it, etc.). Most of us make our living as game developers; empowering piracy is antithetical for us.

Anyhow good luck!

JackParadigm

I have the basics down in C# from classes I've taken in Unity and Visual Studio in the past. However, I've never messed with hex editing before. But I am definitely willing to learn. If anything, learning about hex will help me understand game design a lot more.

And as I said in the OP, I just want to make a small fan game. I don't intend to sell the game, animation rips, models, etc.

Chev

I've made a couple unfinished model viewers in the past (for FF9 and Omikron) and for starters your best bet is whether a format has already been documented. A lot have (although depending on when they've been documented the relevant wikis or files may not have been archived)! These days some of them even have web viewers.

This tends to be more common for the models themselves than for their animations because there aren't all that many ways to encode geometry and textures and for that matter formats themselves are usually dictated by the GPU but there are definitely a lot of ways to encode animations (even though on the GPU end it's usually gonna be good old matrix-based skinning, there's a number of ways to generate those and when you want animatons to be compact you're likely gonna use some form of compression). This has become easier these days since Unity and UE have standardized asset formats across a wide variety of games.

Anyway, for old stuff, start by seeing if Noesis, an extensible model viewer that's been around for a long time, supports the relevant games. The Xentax community may have documented the format or be able to help if it doesn't. Otherwise you'll have to dig up forums sepcialized in the game you're aiming to decode. For unreal games there's also the Unreal Engine Resource Viewer although of course that's not gonna help you for the PS1 era. 

JackParadigm

I see. Thanks for the tip about Noesis, as it can serve as a stepping stone to ripping models from old games. And as for Xentax, I will join their forums for more information on my issue. Thanks for that as well Chev.