Hello everyone!

Well first who I am: I am not someone who will promise you that by the end of this blog you will have developed Rock Raiders 2 or something like that! What I want is to discover the way what we are able to do with the tools we got - Thanks to the Rock Raiders United Community - and what we are able to modify.

So to clarify things: I am not a scripter - so don´t expect to learn here how to port the LRR PS1 version to the PC;) - I am a 3D Artist. So I will teach you here how we can modify the Models of Lego Rock Raiders!

What we have:

With the WAD Tool we are able to extract the .wad packs (first issue managed;) ) so now we see that all files of LRR (regarding the models -> NOT the other files!) are in the LWS and LWO format.

That means we need Lightwave to open them and to modify them.

Well here the second issue: I am not familiar with Lightwave (sorry about that) the Tool I am using for the modeling, animating and skinning issues is Autodesk 3DS Max Studio 9.

Okay now you may thing: Were is the difference? The difference is that the interface of Lightwave and 3ds max is totally different. You will need a week or so to get used to ALL tools available in these packages.

So to clarify things: Here we will work with 3ds max, whereas you can use Lightwave, Blender or Maya if you know where to find there the tools I am using in Max.

1. Building our Production Pipeline

If you want to use Lightwave you don´t need to follow the steps below. Simply download the trial of Lightwave 9.6 here.

If you don´t want to use Lightwave:

Today we will setup our production Pipeline so we can import the files to 3ds max and export them from there into the Lwo/Lws format to reimport them into the wad files.

(At this point you can also use other modeling packages like Softimage, Blender, Maya etc.)

The format we will use (because we don´t have Lightwave) is the OBJ or the 3DS format (yes I know they have some restrictions but they do their job well here)

We will need a Converter to convert the LWS/LWO files into the OBJ or the 3DS format and back to the LWO/LWS format.

I am using Nugraf for this. As Cyrem commented you can also take use of Milkshape or any other free converter instead of Nugraf.

So our Pipeline looks like this:

1. Extracting the WADs -> 2. Converting the LWO/LWS into OBJ/3DS -> 3. Modify them with your 3d package -> 4. Convert them into LWO/LWS -> 5. Import the LWO/LWS files into the Wad files. -> 6. Test if the new model works and behaves like it should.

If you use Lightwave you don´t need to convert them just modify them and import them into the Wad files.

So that´s it for today.

Next week I will have done my research and then I will give you an tutorial about our first modeling issue.

If you have any suggestions or want to give me feedback please feel free to leave a post!

Cheers,

Masterchief