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Yesterday I was interested making a mod to a costume, f_pilot_civilian, so I fired up MED thinking I would load the costume and see what went into it. To my horror, the costume did not appear in MED. It took some digging to find out what the problem was, so I am writing this note to document what I learned and share with my fellow obsessives.
In order for a category to appear in MED, it must be listed in the category.ini file. The
category.ini file is extracted from the PAK files, but that can be overridden by a
category.ini file installed in "The Movies/data/costume" and that file can be overridden by a
category.ini file installed in your workspace.
Example: If we have a category.ini file in the MED workspace and we remove the category
"military" from the one in the workspace, when we start MED, it no longer lists "military" in
the category options for costumes. Files are read in the order PAK, costume folder, and
workspace folder, and the last file read completely replaces any earlier version.
Which is nice, in a way. If you want to experiment with categories, you can do it in your
workspace folder and leave your game/costume folder intact.
Before editting category.ini file, make sure there is no conflict with the one in your work
space.
rule 1: The active category.ini file must list a category, or it will not appear in MED.
rule 2: In order for a costume to appear in MED, it must be listed in the
"category_category.ini" file. For example, if you want a costume, say f_pilot_civilian to
appear in the "work" category, then "category_work.ini must contain the name of the
f_pilot_civilian.cos file (extension is omitted in the category_*.ini file).
I also learned that MED cannot extract the *.ini files for the Stunts & Effects upgrade to The Movies (read this). You can download a modified set of ini files at the link, but you still need to edit the individual categories to make sure all of the costumes you want to edit are listed. Finally, make sure there are no conflicts with anything in your MED workspace, otherwise you will wind up like me, beating yourself over the head and wondering why your changes don't show up MED.
In order for a category to appear in MED, it must be listed in the category.ini file. The
category.ini file is extracted from the PAK files, but that can be overridden by a
category.ini file installed in "The Movies/data/costume" and that file can be overridden by a
category.ini file installed in your workspace.
Example: If we have a category.ini file in the MED workspace and we remove the category
"military" from the one in the workspace, when we start MED, it no longer lists "military" in
the category options for costumes. Files are read in the order PAK, costume folder, and
workspace folder, and the last file read completely replaces any earlier version.
Which is nice, in a way. If you want to experiment with categories, you can do it in your
workspace folder and leave your game/costume folder intact.
Before editting category.ini file, make sure there is no conflict with the one in your work
space.
rule 1: The active category.ini file must list a category, or it will not appear in MED.
rule 2: In order for a costume to appear in MED, it must be listed in the
"category_category.ini" file. For example, if you want a costume, say f_pilot_civilian to
appear in the "work" category, then "category_work.ini must contain the name of the
f_pilot_civilian.cos file (extension is omitted in the category_*.ini file).
I also learned that MED cannot extract the *.ini files for the Stunts & Effects upgrade to The Movies (read this). You can download a modified set of ini files at the link, but you still need to edit the individual categories to make sure all of the costumes you want to edit are listed. Finally, make sure there are no conflicts with anything in your MED workspace, otherwise you will wind up like me, beating yourself over the head and wondering why your changes don't show up MED.
Blender and the Unforgiven
It was not until I came in contact with Sexymaria and "The Movies Group" here on Deviant Art that I became interested in blender. It took awhile to get up the courage to tackle blender because I had heard that it was user unfriendly and unforgiving. I would imagine that any persistent user of "The Movies" at some point is tempted to get into modding and with the help of the tutorials on Sexymaria's web-site I was able to learn enough about blender to get hooked. I have learned a lot in the past eight years, but I have not mastered it and I know I never will. One of the most frustrating aspects of Blender is the interface, which always keeps changing, and when you get into the world of materials and textures, there are many traps you can fall into. One reason for this is that this user tends to do things by rote without really understanding what's going on under the hood. If something doesn't work, I just keep trying things until suddenly, miraculously, the thing works and I am
Cartoony Heads in Blender from TM Characters
Cartoonists working in certain genres usually draw their characters with larger than life heads. I was curious to see if there was an easy way to achieve the same effect in Blender using a character imported from "The Movies Game." It turns out that all you have to do is scale up the 'head' bone in the armature and you can get something like the figure above. On the right, the non-scaled figure is included for comparison. Even after re-scaling, the poses and expressions created from regular figures still seem to work. This means that you can still do animations with such a figure and even lip syncing, if you were willing to put in the effort.
Windows XP, The Movies, and Medieval Libraries
I recently reported on a problem I was having with The Movies, i.e., that set mods had mysteriously quit working, first on windows 10, then on my windows 8 machine. IMA-Ouima told me that he had not experienced any problems with running the game on a windows XP machine, so I looked around to see if I could get my hands on a refurbished computer with XP installed. I eventually bought one from an outfit called JSC Computers. The computer was a Dell Optiflex. It came with a new keyboard and mouse, but no video cable. All the video cables I found in my parts drawer were HDMI, so I had to order a VGA video cable before I could try my new acquisition. When I turned it on, it booted up okay and everything seemed to be working. For old times' sake I played a game of freecell, which was a favorite of mine in the XP days (I won!). The next step was to install "The Movies" and the "Stunts and Effects" upgrade from CD. That took awhile, but I eventually got the game running in full screen
Utility Python Scripts for TM Characters
There are certain operations that I find myself performing over and over ad nauseum, so I have started automating these procedures with python scripts. Here is a list of the scripts that I have created so far: left_grasp.py right_grasp.py tm_export_expression.py tm_import_expression.py tm_export_pose.py tm_import_pose.py The first two scripts were written to pose the thumb and fingers of the character to hold a sword or a spear. The data for the pose is embedded in the code. To use these scripts, you simply select the armature object of the character and run the script in a text window. The script does not create key frames, so to make sure the pose sticks, you will need to set a keyframe for it. The only bones affected are the bones in the hand. The next two scripts deal with expressions. Creating an expression in blender takes some work. You need to move the facebones around to pose the lips, teeth, and eyes. The third script in the list, tm_export_expression.py
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Interesting, Lefty. Keep sharing your fellow obsessives.