The missing plotline cutscene ending "The Party" leaves modders an opening!

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Hank001
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The missing plotline cutscene ending "The Party" leaves modders an opening!

Post by Hank001 » Fri, 10. Mar 06, 22:26

If anyone is interested and have 3D Max and DBox2 plug-ins and like looking though about a hundered .bod files in the objects\cuts directory
if you've unpacked the .cat files using X3 mod manager:

There's a full cutscene in there that you'll need Character Studio 4.2 or higher to really see that can only be the "Party" Saya talks about going to at the end of the plot line!!!!!! it's in about seven parts and it really takes a long search of the .bod in a text editor to piece together, but it's all there if anyone's interested it includes a full planet surface scene, a shuttle landing-Saya and Julian entering a room with a crowd of characters that are really fantastic, but the anamation is screwed up as the motion files for the character's bone rigs is missing. Finally AND GET THIS! It finishes with a FTB (Fade to black) with Julian and Saya kissing, only in the .bod the direct to the bones is missing and it substitutes two oblong box "helpers" moving together, but those are the helpers for Julian's and Saya's bone rigs!!!!! It would have been fantastic in the game but I guess since EGOSOFT opted for mostly rendered cutscenes instead of in-game ones they dropped the project from the game, but the files are still there in the cuts!!!! This might give modders the ability to have "On the planet" mods" as the scenes are there for the using!
(Listen, there is a BUNCH of them strung together, so find which ones yourself as there listed in NUMBERS like "10900.bod...etc" So just
truck though the .bod scenes, there's also entire stations not seen in the game that make BALLY's CASINO look like a Church! Complete with rotating signs and massive thrusters on the bottom!!!! If you have 3D Studio Max with Character Studio you'll also find the bone rigs and body for SAYA!!!! WOOOHOO!!! Only the textures were re-directed to others so she'll look pretty screwed up UNTIL you change the .dds files to .jpg and look for her face texture (IT's there) and put in on the body mesh, then if you clean up the other textures you'll have a working SAYA from head to toe!!!!

Thought I'd pass this along to the modding people as I spent about two whole days looking at all the neat stuff in the objects\cuts directories and others and shocked at how much isn't even in the game!!!!! TALK ABOUT
"DELETED SCENES!!!" PLUS this directory also has the .bods for the missing EARTH ships that are really neat!!!!

Good hunting!!!

Hank001

bendyspex
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Post by bendyspex » Fri, 10. Mar 06, 22:34

VERY interesting. Although I have no idea how to do any of this stuff, it is definetely very interesting that it can be done. Maybe now you've found them, egosoft will have to do them properly.
Good find :thumb_up:

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Hank001
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Post by Hank001 » Fri, 10. Mar 06, 22:41

See the thread under modding called :
To many places, too many hidden details

It will have the how-to rundown on how to look at all the models in the game and how to add your own. Downside? 3DMAX with Charater Studio costs about the price of a really good used car. ($3500-$6000+ depending on licenses.) But, that's what EGOSOFT wrote them in so it's what your stuck with peeking at them with.

Hank001

gwakamoli
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Post by gwakamoli » Sat, 11. Mar 06, 04:01

you can get a "student" license for around 300-450 in some places

not sure what it cuts out though to make it so cheap:S

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nuclear_eclipse
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Post by nuclear_eclipse » Sat, 11. Mar 06, 05:38

Student edition doesnt lose any features, but the pricing is different because they expect you to not be creating anything big with it.

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Hank001
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Post by Hank001 » Thu, 15. Feb 18, 13:10

11 Years later and I found missing pieces of lost in game cutscenes, lots of missing motions and textures. They were shooting for in game cutscenes and production costs were to high. They took out scenes and went with bik and rendered cutscenes. Had most of them rigged, textured and etc in spare time in 2007 but dropped it. Looking for the files in my backups. I even pulled out the old copy of Max 7 I used and had the setup ready for character studio to load them in. Problem? Hank has 15+ Terabytes of backups. Want previs for the Matrix series? Got it. Skip those 3 TB's. Otherwise it hit or miss finding them on so many pop in drives, most are from old IDE that I converted to Sata drives when Win 7 made using 3+ GB drives possible without partitioning. Really hunting for those files using keyword and file name searches. Wish me luck. Have no intention of tracking down where all those scenes fit to the next. And if nobody's found those missing stations after those clues I dropped I'm in the wrong community! It's just I've boned and rigged so long now I could piece that animation together and get it rendered in my sleep. Character Studio 4. Don't make me laugh! That's close to a one button operation now. :P
The answer to life, the universe and everything:
MIND THE GAP

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Hank001
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Post by Hank001 » Wed, 21. Feb 18, 08:37

Well yesterday I accidently tripped over some of the notes I made in my cutscene search. They were painful to read, as sometimes is when an adult reads their own musings from grade school. I'd "boned and rigged" on early biped and knew just enough to understand what I was seeing. I still can't find the Saya I rigged. Now if I wanted one it would take an hour tops. Now 11 years later I know what's there and know what's missing. It's previs with positional data, no animation and how long it would take to get it into cutscene shape given what's there. In 2006 I an only the vaguest idea what "previsualization" was.I put myself in the now familiar art director's role. Good move dumping this. Long production time, huge investment in voice acting, lip synching, mocap, little return where the overall storyline was concerned. In fact at the time these scenes, even in closure, would have shot a big chunk of whatever budget they had and as far as production values? Great decision!
My hats off to whomever made the right call! 👍
The answer to life, the universe and everything:
MIND THE GAP

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