VF3tb Texture Extracting

- Hello everybody, I'm DreamMare, a idiot from Portugal who has been playing Virtua Fighter for a while now.
I really like the Dreamcast and I'm currently trying to find a way to extract models and texture from it's games.
-When in comes for 3D Models, I can't still do anything about it, but textures is a new story.
Right now, I'm using 2 software which allow me to extract the textures in a Dreamcast emulator.

- NinjaRipper 1.7.1: Only functions with DirectX applications; Capable from getting models from normal games (not emulators, needs to be made for the PC)
- Texmod: I have no clue if it's capable with every application; Only capable of getting textures, but it's the better one.

NinjaRipper is the software that gave me hope to get models from emulators, allowing players to preserve the Dreamcast in some fashion, but it has too many problems for models.
To start, it only gets what's being rendered by the emulator, not the entire models themselves. Secondly, when you get the .rip files on Blender 2.8 with a plugin, it comes flat, I can scale it in the y axis but the models will be deformed thanks to the camera angle in the capture process. The worst part, front or back of a character/scenery model won't be shown by the camera, so it won't be rendered/exist on blender. Basically, don't bother with dreamcast models if it doesn't have a pc port.

Texmod is a software only for textures, but on that regard it's somewhat better, when you start a application with it, use the + button or the - button on the numpad (only the numpad version of this buttons), if nothing happens, continue until a texture on the becomes green, when that happens push the button you configurated for the extraction, and there you go, do that for the entire model. Here's a example of it:



Now, all of this is for the Dreamcast version, what about the original arcade version? Weeell... I never used the Supermodel emulator and right I can't use it, that's one of the reasons for I'm posting this.
If you want to experiment with extracting textures, preserving gaming history content or other reason, help me with this mini project, I only expect to get the textures, if we get the models that would be amazing.

Lastly, I've been already extracting some images from the game which I'll try to post on Textures and Sprites Resources website, but right now I'll show the stages background images.
And attention, I do not have license to do this, so don't use any of these for commercial reasons in the future:

Firstly, the Stage Backgrounds:

- Akira's Stage


A stupid fact about background textures in this game: they are way taller in the original, but I did a cut for them because it was just the darkest color in at least 700px tall, it would be awful to show in a forum post.
Also, the image name's aren't the original ones, the softwares I use convert the name so I'm not sure how they are named in the GDI.

- Jacky's Stage


- Shun's Stage

Why does this images look different? Basically, the 3tb version has alternative backgrounds, but most of them are just background from other characters, in this case, the first is exclusive for Shun, but the second is used in Kagemaru stage.

- Taka-Arashi Stage


The second background is also for Kagemaru...

- Cavern Multiplayer Stage


First image is used for Lau's and Dural's Stage;
Second image is used for Pai's stage and Lau's Stage;

- Jeffry's Stage


The second image I won't modify because I don't really know what would be the best way to show it, this happens because the max size the dreamcast could put would be 1024x1024 at the time, so they made it like this.

- Wolf's Stage



The first image is just a modification of the Jeffry background;
The same problem Jeffry's moon background translate with Wolf's stage, but it actually needs 2 different images.

And that's it, for the other characters, they don't have background textures.
If you'd like to see more, try it by yourself, and if somebody has time, please try the softwares I named with supermodel emulator, we probably can do it with the better textures.

Anyway, what do you guys think about this?

 

Sweeeeet, definitely going to mod some of these into FS!

 

Thank you for this, should be really cool to see

 

Hello everybody, new update I want to post here: *Dural Textures!!*

Unfortunately, I didn't had time to get the fighters's textures because of school (and I probably won't have enough time now but whatever), but since Dural is only 2 textures, I believe I should at least post them here:

Dural Silver Texture:

Dural Golden Texture:


The texture is really similar to the "Reflection Stage" in the AOU 1996 presentation, showing the power of the Model3:

I believe this is probably some kind of stage made for testing purposes and they simply took a screenshot of it without characters to see if the reflection effect would look good or not.
Does anyone know if it can be found in the debug menu of the Arcade version? I think the Dreamcast version doesn't have.

Now, will I do this with the other fighters? Yes.
However, don't expect much from it, the texture are separated, which will be a pain to see if the texture is a duplicate or not (one of the problem with the software I use, it makes duplicates every 10 seconds).

I'll be updating more about it in the future in this thread, let's make sure that we can get all the textures! (and the models, if somebody finds a way to do that?)

Tchau!

 

Hello again guys, new update: Menus/HUDS!

This time I got the sprites/images for menus, huds, scores and etc.
I'm not the Mr.Know-Everything-About-VF3tb, so there are some texts here that I think I've never so, like "Woodman".
In general, this is a small update, but with this we can make text with this files:

Like I said last time, I changed the original name files because the software I use doesn't show the original name, so we can't do anything about it unfortunately.

Anyway, see you guys with other updates, bye (Sooner or later, I'll be posting all of this in the VG Resources sites.

Tchau!

 

Thank you for sharing all of this and for your hard work extracting the textures, DreamMare! VF3 has such awesome stages and it's really cool to get a closer look at them thanks to your awesome efforts here. After all this time, I never noticed that the night sky in Jeffry's stage was a recolor of Wolf's! I tried to get Texmod working with Supermodel, but had no luck, which I think is due to it being a command line application. I tried using this excellent guide from Stack Overflow for making an executable to run SuperModel with VF3 as an argument, but was unable to get TexMod to run it in Logging Mode. The arcade version's got some really high-resolution textures; here's a screenshot of a Subway Map in Sarah's stage behind Shun here, taken from SuperModel running at 1080p:



The team really went above and beyond with the detail in this game. I'm looking forward to seeing more of your excellent extraction work!!

 

This thread is awesome!

 

Hello Everybody, today is not a update but a response for everyone who has been following this thread, so here we go:

Tumbling Dice: Thanks man for trying the SuperModel, I know it uses OpenGL, maybe if we find a software which captures textures from emulators and opengl applications then it should work as normal. One think about the details you said, you know Render64 on Twitter?
They have been doing texture extract work as well for N64 games, and they found multiple Texture Discs which were on the market at the time, maybe the textures in this game as well were just bought from a disc and then used for the game. It seems too much work making textures for just one game.

Myke: I have no clue what the DEATH BUTTON ~zawa~ is, but maybe it's just a reference button while they were porting the game, the game was somewhat rushed for the Dreamcast so they just forgot to remove the button, I don't think any mechanic could come from.
I'm just disappointed we didn't found a T button, for Team/Tag, where we could tag for more combos like KOF at the time.

Chanchai: Thanks man, I'll make it even more awesome when I start really getting character textures.

MadeMan: I think that is when the game was being tested in the original arcade game, since the portraits probably weren't avaiable when they started character moves, so to make things easier they photographed one of their employees and put it as a draft of how it should be.
I'm going to search for every person in the team to see if I can find a picture that looks like the EC (Employee Challenger, that's what I'm calling him)

Anyway, I'm having school so I have to stop the project this week, I'll try to make update as fast as possible, see ya later.

Tchau!

 

Dude, a tag button in VF3tb would have been sick.

 

Hello Everybody! Small Update and I need help with this one!
Here's the thing, there's a new software to extract 3D MODELS from Naomi games!
I saw what games were supported and VF3 is supported, however, I wasn't capable of extracting the models from it, but suposedly it's been working for other people.
So here's why I'm asking help, here's a video of how to do it and if someone can extract it to blender, show a screenshot in this thread and post it in The Models Resource as fast as possible https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeQoaiVR4Wo&lc=UgyqOjJFjw8K1809VeB4AaABAg.9NtMvHcRcZL9ONsuUEc0ap:
(I believe in you guys can do it, good luck)

 

Hello Everybody!
So I return with more images in a zip file. But what are those images?
Stage Textures! From Virtua Fighter 2...?
Yeah, so I was trying to put the PC port of VF2 to work and then saw a folder called BMP, a type of image that is known for being really good for 3D games.
It only has the stage textures, if someone plays Virtua Fighter 2, please tell me if this is all stages. (In this post I'll leave a zip with only the textures)
https://www.mediafire.com/file/ptgyp4ncpx6q2s7/VF2_Stage_Textures.zip/file
I don't have that much time to extract the character textures from VF3tb, but once I get time, I'll do it.

Tchau!

 

Hello Everybody!
Yikes it's been a year since last post... sorry for the wait, and sorry since this won't be a new update on textures from the game. I came back to explain everything I learned about the topic of extrating files from emulation files.

To start things of, the biggest problem to extract games assets from this type of application is backface culling, basically its the game camera being programmed to not render polygons that aren't being shown, like the face of a character if the camera is looking at the back of the character's head.

I don't know how to solve this issue, maybe if Flycast updates with a force no backface culling for the sake of extractions, but my copy of NinjaRipper couldn't even work with the emulator even with DirectX 9 or 11.
The best extraction test I did was this:
It's more then 60% of the 3d model but it's just luck.
Another thing I noticed with Flycast was the Widescreen mode it allows, using that with VF3tb I noticed character can have their legs and back polygons dissapear when the camera can't find them, making my belief of backface culling 99% possible/true.
With games like Cyber Troopers Virtual-On: Oratorio Tangram, that need 60 fps, the backface culling is so forced that the Widescreen doesn't work at all, I don't know how they forced the camera resolution to be a square no matter what, but congratulations for the programmers, that seems like a nightmare to program.
One thing I noticed in the Shenmue community is that their modding scene seems big, like, they are now capable of extracting the animations from the remaster big. I can't confirm but I remember them talking about someone interviewing someone from the remaster's team, with that person explaining that the game both in DC and PC heavily used backface culling to make the game work, which is understandable since the game is massive, but it means that probably most of the classic DC games use that technique to optimize the framerate.
This is a serious problem for the sake of preservation, with the programmer from the team explaining the files on the gdi are so old that it would probably be better to force backface not happening in emulators than understanding how the old gdi files are coded, each game use a type of file.
If anyone is a programmer and knows how the DC emulators work, use one that uses Direct X9 or X11 and try to make that new no backface mode, that could probably help preservation a lot.
I know that's a high bar to set, but it's a high bar worth jumping for those with enough skill and time to try.
Good luck for anyone that's determined enough to give that a shot.

Tchau!