How can i open saturn games 3d models ?

Hi there,

I'm learning 3d studio max right now and I would love to be able to open up models from various saturn games (panzer 2, vf2 etc) and import them into max

I'm sure there must be a way..can anyone point me in the right direction!

Regards
Mac (South Africa)

 

You might be able to grab the models by using an opengl based saturn emu (don't know if their are any), and running GLIntercept with the OGLE pluggin for capturing the 3D and texture data.

 

We used to make our geometry with custom exporters from 3D authoring packages (softIMAGE at the time), and put into a format our 3D engines could "load and go" as painless as possible. This is where we would also do optimizations to speed up any transforms and hardware interactions, so this type of data wouldn't be of much use to any modeling package after-the-fact.

Though in the end, you normally would have a vertex buffer of positions, compressed in some way to normalize the values with the smallest number of bits, a normal stream, one or more texture co-ordinate streams and possibly a diffuse vertex color stream. If you could identify these different arrays, you could re-construct something to spit out a OBJ and/or DXF ascii format model.

Might be easier to re-create the models by hand though in MAX.

--Selgus

 

Does it mean you worked closely on Saturn development ? If so you may own some unseen Saturn stuff/tools.

 

Sorry, didn't see this reply until now.

Yes, I used to work on the Saturn, and worked on a bunch of games that never saw the light-of-day in the stores. I think most of the tools that SEGA gave developers are readily available on the net these days... though we created a bunch of proprietary ones at the studio.
--Selgus

 

Hello Selgus.

Please would be possible for you to tell us or give us some idea of what are those unreleased games???

¿Was really THAT hard to code in 3D engines?

Sorry if this seems an interview but one can't talk everyday with people that worked coding long ago on my favourite console.

And also, sorry for my english...

 

Well lets see, there was many different versions of a basketball game based on Shaq (2D sprite based, 3D polygon based, 2-on-2, 3-on-3, 5-on-5, etc.), a Major League Soccer game, etc.

We were doing Saturn and PS1 development at the same time back then, with one team on each SKU. I was sorta fond of the Saturn, as SH2 assembly was pretty straight forward and the VDP sprite engine had some nice features.
--Selgus

 

in what year was that? the PSX had pretty competent C-based tools and R3000A asm isn't that bad really if you understand RISC. Certainly an easier task than coding for the R4300i and its neighbours, all riding on the same bus to school and paying a cent to RCP on their way each time

 

The PS1 was actually quite easy to develop for. This was back in '95 when you needed to go through the bios and sony libraries to do anything. We actually did a bit of direct GTE work too, but mostly straight C (or math library was in MIPS assembly, but I can't think of too much more at that point).
--Selgus

 

Selgus, first of all, thanks a lot for the reply.

About coding for the Saturn in 3D, how hard it was?? Is the 2 SH2 alignment really the HELL a lot of people constantly told back ago???

Why were those games cancelled?

Thanks a lot for the info you provide.

 

x

 

Druid II.... quads are not polygons???

Then, Saturn can't push polygons??

I feel right now the nooooooooooooooooobest person on the internet

 

It's well known fact for this machine. VDP1 is based on NV1 (first NVidia 3D chip) hardware, this chip does not handle poly, only quadrangle. The same chip can be found in Diamond Edge 3D video card... Fortunately NVidia was able to deal with Sega.

 

Druid II made a simple mistake, he meant that quads are made to look like triangles by having two points sitting on top of each other. not sure how you'd handle UI on textures in that case though. Both triangles and quads are polygons since they all have "many corners", as polygon literally means.

 

x

 

Too bad the industry choose back ago for triangles, because quads in my opinon are a lot more solid option.

If today existing routines of duo-processing coding were back in the day i have no doubt that Saturn would have massacred Psx in the 3D field..

Not sure in the effects and transparency therms..but 100% sure in solid 3D engines..

What could have done people as Scavenger if they had continued early projects as Scorcher and AMOK? a 1998/1999 AMOK2 would have been something really incredible to see

Thanks DruidII as always for the vision and info you provide...i REALLY appreciate it..

By the way:...

SELGUS- :

Did you ever tried to display true transparencies on Saturn ??

 

The Saturn VDP1 did indeed use quads, instead of triangles. What we did back then, is write tools for game that were sharing the same source meshes, to "distort" the texture data, so that quads could be collapsed into tris. The VDP1 also had the ability to do something many other graphics chips couldn't do... a bowtie quad (think of a quad, and then swap the two upper vertices). It would render it correctly.

I don't remember all the details about alpha and transparency... I'd have to look it up.
--Selgus

 

x

 

I guess dithering is the reason people thought the Saturn "couldn't do transparencies"... it can look pretty awful.

 

And looks like shit, especially in RGB or on my TV via S-Video it gives off a nasty rainbow effect.

Yakumo