Asset Viewer General
Asset Viewer allows you to see all 3D models and animations used in the game, as well as listen to game music, sounds and voiceover. It also has options to extract currently viewed assets and to synchronize with GameData Editor. Game directory has to be specified before using this tool, since it uses game PAKs to load resources in.
Here's a short description of Asset Viewer interface.
There are 6 available modes, listed below.
When you select Mesh viewer mode, primary item list fills up with all meshes found in game PAKs. Select an item from the list to show the mesh on the 3D display.
Selecting Animation viewer mode activates animation player. Primary item list fills up with all animated meshes found in game PAKs. Selecting an item from the list fills up secondary item list with all animations potentially fitting for the selected items, and shows the animated mesh on the 3D display. When you select an item from the secondary list, the selected animation will play (if it fits the animated mesh).
Note: Sometimes Asset Viewer can't find any animation suitable for the selected animated mesh, or it finds animations which do not fit the mesh. This is a limit of the application: it uses file names to find animations for the mesh, and some file names don't follow the expected pattern.
This is a special viewer mode. Selecting it clears everything from Asset Viewer. Instead, it will display models and animations, depending on what is currently selected in GameData Editor.
When you select any element in GameData Editor while Asset Viever is in synchronization mode, the viewer will display the selected element (whenever possible). If the selected element is an animated object (a military unit, for example), animation player is activated, and the secondary list fills up with any suitable animations found for the object.
Selecting Music viewer mode activates sound player. Upon selecting Music viewer mode, primary item list fills up with all music pieces found in game PAKs. Selecting an item from the primary list loads the music piece. Click "Play" on sound player to listen to music.
Selecting Sounds viewer mode activates sound player. Similarly to Music viewer mods, primary item list fills up with all general type sounds (not voiceover) found in game PAKs.
Selecting Messages viewer mode activates sound player. In addition to selecting this mode, you must also specify message type to load in items. Available message types:
- Male
- Female
- RTS Workers
- RTS Battle
- NPC
After you select message type, primary list fills up with all sounds belonging to the type found in game PAKs.
In addition to displaying list of items depending on viewer mode, the panels contain the "Extract button. Using it will extract all assets displayed/played currently in the viewer to the specified directory. See below for more info.
After you open an animation or sound in Asset Viewer, you can use this player to control the played resource. It's pretty straightforward: Play plays/resumes the animation/sound, Stop stops the animation/sound. Dragging the scroll bar will set the animation/sound time to a given value.
When you select a mesh or an animated mesh, or use synchronized viewer mode, this is where the 3D resource will be displayed.
While you hold Left Mouse Button over the display, you can move around the camera. Controls:
- Left, Right, Up, Down - control position of 3D camera
- Move mouse around - control angle of 3D camera
- Mouse Scroll - zoom in/out
These options are currently available in Asset Viewer.
Resets camera position and rotation to its original position. Useful when you get lost.
Hot reloads currently viewed scene. When you add new assets to the game files while you're viewing the current ones in Asset Viewer, this option will allow you to see the new assets immediately in the viewer.
Files extracted using the Extract button will be placed in this directory. When left empty, it will be the SpellForce Editor directory.
There are two extraction modes available:
- All in one directory: all files will be placed directly in the extraction directory
- Subdirectories: files will be placed in their respective directories, which follow the SpellForce directory layout. These directories will be created in the extraction directory.
Written with StackEdit.