Where's the models? Some thoughts and observations...

[Master Kyodai]

Okay now that i have ripped all the mt5 files that were pure *.mt5 somewhere on the disc, i came up with like 1000 models. Some observations i quickly made:

- All character models are split up in parts, like hands, face , breast, but no feet, arms or stuff.


- If you deduct the "broken" models you can say that a large part of all mt5 files consists "movable" objects or objects you carry around with you. There are some doors, vases and generic stuff as well.

- I extracted all afs files and they only contained sounds (SPSD, mainly speech and sound effects) with the only exception noticed the humans.afs which contained PAKF files

- the MODEL/FACE, MODEL/HAND, MODEL/ROOM are empty, but we know the hands and faces are in SCENE/01/MODEL/FACE, but there is no SCENE/01/MODEL/ROOM, so where did the rooms (scenes) go?


Conclusion and thoughts:

I have been expecting to find the scenes somewhere. they are not blank .mt5 files. Obviously they were originally planned to be in MODEL/ROOM, but along with faces, hands and some other stuff they were moved obviously to somewhere else. So where are the rooms hidden?

It is becoming clearer that the rooms are not an mt5 file. But so what are the rooms? can they be ripped? I curently think that not. Or at least not how we may have expected.

Well to get to further conclusions - there are PKS/PKF files in every subfolder of SCENE/01/. The number of subfolder (if you deduct the ones for FREE/HUMANS, etc) could be the number of scenes in the game (counting a scene as in every time the loading screen comes up when you enter one). the PKS/PKF files are internally all either GZIP packed files that contain a PAKF file. So are the PAKF files the scenes???

At least i think so. the PAKF seems to at least consist of textures (PVR) and on the bottom there are the names of MT5 models.


My theory is that the PAKF is the whole scene including textures. It defines the included textures as billboards for scenes, for characters it has a seperate flag that says like "HUMAN", so it obviously references to standard bone models or something similar. For more complex models the PAKF refers to the mt5 file, some objects like a collectors plate (that ryo breaks for master shen) in the warehouse or the face/hands/body of a character.


So the consequences?

Well i think you can rip some complex models like the gachapon toys from mt5. But with this method you won't get the scenes. Imho it is unlikely we will be able to rip the scenes with a "PAKF converter" in the near future. I'm not saying it is impossible, but it will not be easy or something one could do in a coffee break.
Also ripping a character is quite unlikely with the mt5 ripping. best you can do is getting the face, torso and hands and somehow see how you can get the arms and legs done. hate to say it, but from my current knowledge I'd say stitchin together several 3D ripper DX rips will be easier and less time consuming unless we got a leg master around that uncovers a cool trick to get the missing limbs.


Whjats left to say?

I have seen some mt6 files, prolly just am2 testing around with the "never used" format. Seems quite similar to MT5, but the MT5 converter cant cope with it, I looked at the source of the PVR/MT5 converters and they are in pure C++ with all non-understandable code to me, not my league.

I am sure Yazgoo or someone else will be able to quite easily modify this to mt7 and if bored even mt6, but i expect the same results for mt7/shenmue II as for mt5/Shenmue 1. In the end we stand there with a few faces, umbrellas and gachapon stuff.

Maybe that's usable for some purposes, but i fear the only result we really have is that we need a scene/character converter rather than an mt5 converter... Yeah sorry for being pessimistic... :(

[Master Kyodai]

What i forgot to mention: the mapinfo.bin also seems to contain scene info, it seems to be more related to scene sounds/events and so on, but it also contains references to mt5 files.

[LawXiu]

- All character models are split up in parts, like hands, face , breast, but no feet, arms or stuff.

So in theory you could exchange different character's breasts?

[Master Kyodai]

Yeah, all Torsos, Faces and hands seem to be interchangable.

[dotsona]

Wow amazing work Master Kyodai, that is alot of good information that will be benefiical to Yazgoo. It a shame to hear the bad news about ripping the scene. But this is certainly a big jump in progress for us. Thanks alot!

[Master Kyodai]

Well sorry to bring the bad news. Wish i had nicer news to tell. Actually the scene and characters have been what i am mostly interested, so for me personally the discovery was devastating.

I hope Yazgoo can do something about it, but i fear unlike with MT5 about the PAKF format we barely know anything but that it contains GBIX/PVR textures.

[ReeceKun]

OK please alow me to piss on this pity parade

My mounted shenmue disc folder

H:\SCENE\01\BETD\MAP01.MT5

When extracted with yazgoos ripper



It creates all these files, the scene textures are in there but the OBJ file is only 2kb, surely a scene would be a larger file size.

This is what the OBJ file contains



Clearly a broken mesh of some piece of 'MAP' structure, Lets call it 'beam1'

When I saw that Yazgoos ripper would only rip the head of characters I instantly realised what was happening because I ecountered the same problem when ripping resident evil TMDS

Heres what MAP01.MTS looks like in HEX



Lets just pretend that every repitition of '6a 02 etc etc etc' is a piece of mesh (where actually it could just be a texture file) Its my guess that Yazgoos ripper is only detecting the 'first' mesh piece in each structure, it doesnt yet know how to keep looking for the rest.

Thats just my suspicion , its highly likely that the scene files are different to MT5s, in nearly all games ive looked at I dont think Ive ever seen a character file and a MAP file containing the same mesh data. (although that OBJ is defienately a piece of MAP, but again this isnt uncommon as left over junk or maybe some sort of placement file)

Whatever the case keep an open mind

[dotsona]

Great observation, I will show this to Yazgoo and see what he has to say. Thanks