Ripping Backyard Football (GameCube) Models (.LFG Files)

[TWINMILL12]

Another quickie I've done. This time, it's a football! I didn't get a chance to show my progress yesterday, fo here ya go.

[TWINMILL12]

I rock, dude! As in, I filled all the holes, on the complete OBJ models for both Achmed & Amir Khan. However, the thing with Achmed's hair is that, there's one hair edge part that's not same and fulfilled as the others. Do you think you can fix the little issue for Achmed's hair in Blender?

[TWINMILL12]

This took me longer than I expected. I had some difficulties with Angela's skirts, as I was trying to fill the whole holes on her. Some edges needed to be removed to make some holes all squared up. But at the end of the day, I finally finished her. Angela Delvecchio is Tony's sister by the way.

[Marti]

I understand that. Anyways, have you read my other posts from above? I actually filled the holes of the Pablo OBJ in Blender.

Yes, I did.

Have you ever heard of the concept of shareware programs?

[TWINMILL12]

I understand that. Anyways, have you read my other posts from above? I actually filled the holes of the Pablo OBJ in Blender.

Yes, I did.

Have you ever heard of the concept of shareware programs?

1. They are like free programs for either a free or free trial use (but still needs to be paid to unlock extra features), right?
2. It took you 11 days to respond. LOL XD
3. Are there any other alternative programs to convert .LFG files to .OBJ files?
4. And by the way, check out my progress: https://www.vg-resource.com/thread-43639.html (Now the progress of the model rips is displayed in that thread link.)

[Boxy]

I played around with this a little bit today. The data of the LFG files is written in readable text. If you open it in Notepad++ for example, you can take a look for yourself, and compare that against any obj, if you want to reformat it to make it an obj. Also since it says Maya ASCII export at the top, I tried changing the file extension to .ma and opening it in Maya, just to check. Who knows, maybe that would work for an earlier version of Maya. I tried Maya 2022, was worth a try.

Anyway here's an obj for Pablo attached as a test, just editing with Notepad++. Some screenshots too to show a little bit of process. The VTX-ARRAY section at the top, followed by all the rows of XYZ, is already in order. You just need the XYZ to be v instead for obj. The vertices screenshot shows what it is originally, vs what you want it to look like, below that. You can use replace in Notepad++ to quickly change all of it. Same for the next section for normals, and the next section after that for UVs. Down below the weights section, there's a section with INDICES written over and over, which is the last thing you need, to create all the faces. This is a little bit more confusing so I included an OpenOffice Calc (free software) spreadsheet that shows the thinking, step-by-step, to restructure it from the way they have it to the test obj I attached. They organized it in order of vertex, then normal, then UV, but you want it in the order of vertex, UV, normal. You can hopefully follow what's happening by clicking on a cell and reading the concatenate formula. Basically for a functioning obj I just changed it from 3 lines into 1, for each vertex/UV/normal set.

I've never played this game so wasn't sure about textures, but the UVs seem to be working at least, so you can experiment. I didn't go any deeper with textures or skeleton or weights, but maybe you can keep going and use it as a good example to learn more. I'm sure most of the textures I was using are the wrong ones, I just grabbed some from your texture dump. The UVs need to be flipped, or else you'll notice things are upside-down on the model. Anyway this won't have any holes and includes normals. Since it sounds like you were already doing a bit of manual work, this is something anyone can do if you put in a few minutes of work (maybe just google little questions along the way if you get stuck). You can probably reuse the Pablo spreadsheet in the zip for other characters, if it helps as a template.

One downside to the model all in one mesh is you'll have to manually select which parts you want for each material/texture, and separate it, but it's pretty easy. It looks like the material info is in the LFG file too, if you decide the time spent playing around with it is worth it (I did as much as I felt like doing and quit, haha). Anyway, good luck on your backyard people journey.

[TWINMILL12]

I played around with this a little bit today. The data of the LFG files is written in readable text. If you open it in Notepad++ for example, you can take a look for yourself, and compare that against any obj, if you want to reformat it to make it an obj. Also since it says Maya ASCII export at the top, I tried changing the file extension to .ma and opening it in Maya, just to check. Who knows, maybe that would work for an earlier version of Maya. I tried Maya 2022, was worth a try.

Anyway here's an obj for Pablo attached as a test, just editing with Notepad++. Some screenshots too to show a little bit of process. The VTX-ARRAY section at the top, followed by all the rows of XYZ, is already in order. You just need the XYZ to be v instead for obj. The vertices screenshot shows what it is originally, vs what you want it to look like, below that. You can use replace in Notepad++ to quickly change all of it. Same for the next section for normals, and the next section after that for UVs. Down below the weights section, there's a section with INDICES written over and over, which is the last thing you need, to create all the faces. This is a little bit more confusing so I included an OpenOffice Calc (free software) spreadsheet that shows the thinking, step-by-step, to restructure it from the way they have it to the test obj I attached. They organized it in order of vertex, then normal, then UV, but you want it in the order of vertex, UV, normal. You can hopefully follow what's happening by clicking on a cell and reading the concatenate formula. Basically for a functioning obj I just changed it from 3 lines into 1, for each vertex/UV/normal set.

I've never played this game so wasn't sure about textures, but the UVs seem to be working at least, so you can experiment. I didn't go any deeper with textures or skeleton or weights, but maybe you can keep going and use it as a good example to learn more. I'm sure most of the textures I was using are the wrong ones, I just grabbed some from your texture dump. The UVs need to be flipped, or else you'll notice things are upside-down on the model. Anyway this won't have any holes and includes normals. Since it sounds like you were already doing a bit of manual work, this is something anyone can do if you put in a few minutes of work (maybe just google little questions along the way if you get stuck). You can probably reuse the Pablo spreadsheet in the zip for other characters, if it helps as a template.

One downside to the model all in one mesh is you'll have to manually select which parts you want for each material/texture, and separate it, but it's pretty easy. It looks like the material info is in the LFG file too, if you decide the time spent playing around with it is worth it (I did as much as I felt like doing and quit, haha). Anyway, good luck on your backyard people journey.

Hmm, I think you're on to something, Boxy, and that's a really good process! What programs do I need, and what are steps did you use to do something like that? Feel free to attach a README or text file with the steps of how you did it. And by the way, check this out. https://www.vg-resource.com/thread-43639.html Thanks for the tips by the way, Boxy.

[TWINMILL12]

Hey Boxy, are you there? I wanted to tell you that I tried to do the same thing like you said. I changed the LFG to MA and open it in Autodesk Maya 2022, but nothing is displayed. And plus, all the steps you did with using Notepad++ and OpenOffice Calc to make into an OBJ file seems very confusing to me. Nothing for me worked. I want you to explain more to me easy of how to do the same thing you did, step by step, by sending me a README or text file with instructions (including more screenshots). I still wanted the LFG files to be converted to OBJ files with no holes, and make the models smooth (Gouraud Shading), and apply textures to the OBJ file.

[Boxy]

Here you go, here's a .txt with some steps. It's not difficult, just a bunch of copy/pasting and replace all. Eventually you would want to take what you learn here and automate it. But hopefully this helps you understand the obj format a little better. If you want to know what any of those replace functions mean, you can google the individual parts and find answers.

[TWINMILL12]

Here you go, here's a .txt with some steps. It's not difficult, just a bunch of copy/pasting and replace all. Eventually you would want to take what you learn here and automate it. But hopefully this helps you understand the obj format a little better. If you want to know what any of those replace functions mean, you can google the individual parts and find answers.

Thanks for the step by step text file, Boxy. This helped me a lot! Kind of... I had to copy all the lines from XYZ, NRM, and UV lines and replace them with v , vt, & vn (despite the fact that I had to copy, cut, and paste on top of the NRMs, because it came after UVs). And I had to replace FT3 & FT4 lines with "", and the same thing with the Indicies (except for the numbers). However, the VTX Weights Count section had to be completely removed, because it's not part of the process to reformat to OBJ when I look at the other version of the Pablo.OBJ file you just did. It was all easy at first, and then I opened OpenOffice Calc, and copy & pasted the numbers from the Indicies. But the problem is the for the next step, I couldn't find the features of "the import options use "Separated by" and check "Tab" in OpenOffice Calc. I already figured out like example that the Indicies numbers like 0,1,2,3 need to be added up to 1, and it's 1,2,3,4 and I had to type f 1/1/1 2/2/2 3/3/3 4/4/4. But doing more again make's me feel like this would be a waste of time, take hours or a whole day to make those f +1 value numbers. So I copy & pasted the +1 Value numbers from the spreadsheet you just did, and removed the blank and thus it was complete. I saved the LFG file as .OBJ, and I opened it in Blender, and success! I actually made it as a OBJ, and it appears! I wanted to do the same thing for the other models (like doing Pablo's Helmet next (like in the screenshot I lend to you), but I have three questions in mind.

1. Where's the "Separated by" feature in OpenOffice Calc after pasting the Indicies numbers?
2. What's the quickest way for me to add +1 on the Indicie numbers and make into f +1 value numbers on the spread sheet?
3. What should I do with the texture files (the ones I dumped from Dolphin) after I completed the OBJ file. I need another step by step text file of how to apply textures on the OBJ file in Blender, like you did before?

Feel free to answer me on the reply below. And this Pablo model I did now will be updated on this thread: https://www.vg-resource.com/thread-43639.html

[Boxy]

When you paste values into the spreadsheet, there should be a pop-up with Text Import written at the top. That's where those options are. If it's not giving you those options for some reason, you can also select a cell (or a group of cells) and go to Data > Text to Columns at the top, to split the numbers into multiple columns. The second set of columns with the +1 thing is just there to add 1 to all those raw numbers, since obj starts with a value of 1, not 0, for the face data. If you click on any one of those cells, you can see the formula. You can do the same thing anywhere you want, if you want to change anything. This was just intended to be a relatively easy setup you can see and do for yourself to learn, but if it's too much trouble you could always keep searching for other methods, tools, etc if it doesn't seem to be worth it.

For textures, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... there are tons of Blender tutorials and videos out there. I only slapped some textures on there to see if the UVs were working. I have no idea which of those textures in your dump go to this character. The best way to learn to apply textures is to try doing it yourself. Ideally you would want to try to export textures from the raw files for this character instead of dumping them while playing, but maybe dumping is your best option for now. If you want to be sure that you have the right textures that belong to this character, try to isolate the character in the game as best as you can without any other characters around. For exporting textures from the raw files, I didn't stumble across anything obvious when poking around in a hex editor, but I didn't look too long either. Maybe it's easy, maybe it's not. Maybe someone else will come along and be able to help more with that. You can do it! Good luck!

[TWINMILL12]

When you paste values into the spreadsheet, there should be a pop-up with Text Import written at the top. That's where those options are. If it's not giving you those options for some reason, you can also select a cell (or a group of cells) and go to Data > Text to Columns at the top, to split the numbers into multiple columns. The second set of columns with the +1 thing is just there to add 1 to all those raw numbers, since obj starts with a value of 1, not 0, for the face data. If you click on any one of those cells, you can see the formula. You can do the same thing anywhere you want, if you want to change anything. This was just intended to be a relatively easy setup you can see and do for yourself to learn, but if it's too much trouble you could always keep searching for other methods, tools, etc if it doesn't seem to be worth it.

For textures, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... there are tons of Blender tutorials and videos out there. I only slapped some textures on there to see if the UVs were working. I have no idea which of those textures in your dump go to this character. The best way to learn to apply textures is to try doing it yourself. Ideally you would want to try to export textures from the raw files for this character instead of dumping them while playing, but maybe dumping is your best option for now. If you want to be sure that you have the right textures that belong to this character, try to isolate the character in the game as best as you can without any other characters around. For exporting textures from the raw files, I didn't stumble across anything obvious when poking around in a hex editor, but I didn't look too long either. Maybe it's easy, maybe it's not. Maybe someone else will come along and be able to help more with that. You can do it! Good luck!

Hey Boxy, can you update the step by step text file? I think you forgot to put some steps of how to add +1 on the Indicie numbers (in a quick way) and make into f +1 value numbers on the spread sheet.

So far, now I know where the Text Import and seperated feature is, when I paste all the Indicies numbers to the spreadsheet in OpenOffice Calc, starting with Row A2. I'm still trying my best though, and I'm still working on Pablo's helmet, and these screenshots are my progress.

[Boxy]

You can paste your raw values into the Pablo spreadsheet I gave you, and all the other columns will update automatically. You shouldn't have to do any manual +1 operations, it's already set up there. If you want to recreate it though, when you have a group of cells in a row selected, you can left-click and drag the black square at the bottom-right corner of the selection. Dragging that square down will auto-fill rows below (as many as you want) with the same formulas.

[TWINMILL12]

You can paste your raw values into the Pablo spreadsheet I gave you, and all the other columns will update automatically. You shouldn't have to do any manual +1 operations, it's already set up there. If you want to recreate it though, when you have a group of cells in a row selected, you can left-click and drag the black square at the bottom-right corner of the selection. Dragging that square down will auto-fill rows below (as many as you want) with the same formulas.

Thanks for the tip.

[TWINMILL12]

¡Por fin lo hice! Or I finally did it (in Pablo's terms)! I finally got all the Indicies numbers copied from the spreadsheet I created (starting with Row A2 and until the end of the last Indicie number in the bottom row of Row C6052), and dragged to the Pablo spread sheet you created. And it automatically adds +1 of all Indicies numbers and got the f +1 values! And I finally paste it on the OBJ file (WIP at that time), and FINALLY, Pablo's helmet is now complete! I'm starting to get it now! Thanks for your help, Boxy! Now I won't have to waste days to complete models ending with f +1 values on all LFG files! I think I'm gonna do the same with the other models as well! I mean, screw 3D Object Converter unlicensed, I got it converted to OBJ with Notepad++ & OpenOffice Calc, thanks to you, Boxy! Now the Pablo model will be updated with including a helmet. (https://www.vg-resource.com/thread-43639...#pid685515)