MT Framework tools

MT Framework is Capcom proprietary in-house engine used in many of their games.
For over than 10 years was their animation format completely unresearched, until now.

Tool provides model, animation import and Simple IK creation.

Tool is written under 3ds max 2017 SP3 however it should work for older versions aswell.
Tested pc games:

• Lost Planet
• Devil May Cry 4
• Resident Evil 5
• Devil May Cry 4 SE
• Lost Planet 2
• Resident Evil 6
• Resident Evil Revelations
• Resident Evil Remaster
• Dragons Dogma Dark Arisen
• Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 (x64)
• Monster Hunter World (x64)

Tested PS3 games:

• Lost Planet
• Resident Evil 6
• EX Troopers
• Dragons Dogma
• Sengogu Basara 4

Tested other games

• Resident Evil Mercenaries (3ds)
• Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (3ds)
• Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (WiiU)
• Monster Hunter XX (NSW)

List may change during time.

Tool is working with Sequencer plugin aswell. Get Sequencer plugin
Also I recommend you to read Node name blacelet suffixes

Making this tool took few months of my free time. Be sure to read EULA. Enjoy.

UI description

1. Loading assets used in 64 bit versions of MTF.
2. Prints Object_% in node name.
3. Sorts meshes by lod into layers. This os usefull if you want to show/hide/delete LOD parts.
4. Keeps node name suffix. Disabling this, user will lose important informations about mesh.
5. Will change loading of vertex normals for Monster Hunter XX
6. Removes all keyframes for all bones in scene and restores default pose. This is useful when you importing single animations, so you don’t want to reimport model each time.
7. Number of bones in IK Chain, limited to 2 – 5 bones.
8. End bones are Nub bones. That means those bones are kept for IK Target and are not used by mesh skin.
9. Parent bone of IK Target. Default is bone255. Usage is for special purposes, like IK on hands where hands use shoulder pad bone instead of root.
10. Control bone offset. Will create control bone with in scene.
11. You can pick bone from scene and copy its world position, on whinch will be created control bone. Or put world position manually.
12. Loading and Saving Created IK Controllers. More in IK Presets.
13. Imports All animations from loaded file (experimental), or imports animation by selected ID. If you don’t have Sequencer plugin present those buttons will be disabled, only thing you can change is ID number.

Installation

Just drag’n’drop mzp file into the scene. Or run it via Run Script.

Step-by step tutorial

• Check Import Meshes if you want to import meshes aswell.
• Click on folder button and select desired file. (I choose pl2100.mod from Resident Evil Revelations 2)
• Click on second folder button and select desired animation file.
• (Sequencer only) I have changed mode to Selected ID becouse I want to import only one animation to test if I need to apply IKs.
• Scene should look like on right image.

• Click on Load button to import animation. Important note: RE games have separated animations for lower and upper body. So one ID have lower body and next ID is for upper body.

• Now the scene should look like on upper image. Now we can see that legs and hands are weirdly posed, you can see wrong positions on end bones (toes) aswell. That detects the model uses IK. So now we know there are IKs used.
• Click on [Re]generate skeleton (5.) to restore scene to default pose.
• Select both toe bones (bone8 and bone13 in this case), uncheck Nubs (7.) and click on Create IK link button.
• For hand we apply diferent rules. We need to pickup parent bone for our hand IK. In this case it’s shoulder pad bone (bone22). So click on Pick IKTarget Parent (8.) and pick bone22 from scene or layer manager. Current name should change.
• Now select hand bone (bone28) and click on Create IK link button. Make sure you that have diabled Nubs (7.), or you won’t get rotations on hands.
• Now repeat same process on other arm.
• Try to to import animation now.
• 
• Oh my gov’d what’s wrong with you arms man. But we can fix it, right?
• Of course we can, since we have 0 rotations for arm bones when we created IK Chain, then we will need to set Preffered Angles manually.
• Select middle bone in IK Chain (bone27) and head to Hierarchy/IK/Rotational Joint, now to Y Axis and set Preffered Angle to 1,0
• If you don’t know where to find these, on the right is guide image.
• Now apply this process to other arm. (But with Preffered Angle -1,0 since we are on opposite side)
• You can also tweak constraints (limits) to any bone in IK Chain, and Swivel angles in IKTarget to get more realistic look.

Well done, everything works as it should. NOTE: We should tweak IKTarget position to match body proportions, nobody likes their hands in their bodies.

IK Presets

You can save your created IK Chains into preset, that can loaded anytime.
Tool can save only IK Chains created by tool.
DO NOT load presets to scenes where IK Chains are already created!

What can be saved:

• Complete IK Creation, anything you set in IK Creation
  • Bones in chain
  • Nubs
  • Control bones
  • IK Parents
• Properties of bones in IK Chain
  • Swivel Angles
  • Parent Spaces
  • Rotational Joint Properties
  • IK Solver names

Produced presets will have .tit extension. They are generated MaxScript compatible files. So you can add more commands and creation techniques inside of them, just make sure you don’t overwrite them, becouse you would lose all modifications you made.

Produced presets are model independent, that means, you can use single preset for many other models.

Presets are in early version, please report any problems asap.

Listener messages

Unknown block hash %hash in hex% for MTF v%version% model format.
Selected model have unsupported blocks, those will be skipped. You can post hashes along filename and game or sample file itself in comment section on forum or here.

Skipping anibone%bone id% since its not enabled in current skeleton.
Required bone was not found in scene. This bone is not present in loaded model. This message is purely informational.

cannot find node: Bone%bone name%
Required bone was not found in scene. This will happen if user deletes any bone in scene.

Unknown frame usage: %number%
Unsupported frame usage ID, it’s crusial to report this issue asap, but probability this message will show is extremly low.

AnimationData Class not found, creating limitations.
This will show if you don’t have Sequencer plugin present. Animation mode buttons will be disabled.

Known issues

• IK links must be set manually.
• Bone scales are artifacted, this applies if bone where scale is applied to have child bones. So far bones without children are fine. I still don’t know how Framework handles them.

 

Download Tool

Current Version: BETA 4

Changelog

BETA 2

• Added MOD support for Mercenaries 3d, Dragon’s Dogma and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 (UMvsC3)
• Fixed inverted faces for pc versions
• Added full support for Resident Evil 6 skinned models.
• Added support for 64 bit versions (so far UMvsC3 only as I know)
• Fixed Dragons Dogma animations to be loadable, but wrongly offsetted (rotations only, not known fix for now).
• Note: UMvsC3 animations can be loaded, but thats all.

BETA 3

• Added MOD support for Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (3ds), Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (WiiU), EX Troopers (PS3), Dragons Dogma (PS3)
• Changed ik solver from IKLimb to IKHISolver
• Reworked ik creation
• Fixed loading large models for v1 engine
• Fixed wrong skin weight loading
• Added load/save ik preset
• Added independent LMT loading (you no longer need to load mod file in order to load animations, does not work if you’ll use model loaded from BETA1 and 2)
• Added naming and sorting options for model loading
• Reworked UI, more simple, less confusing
• NOTE: Do not use models loaded witch BETA2 or BETA1 with BETA3. BETA3 uses different pipeline!

BETA 4

• Added MOD support for Monster Hunter XX, Sengogu Basara 4
• Added over 20 new model formats for MTF v2
• Fixed exporting corrupted FBX files (this may affect other exporters aswell, those who can export more that 1 uv channel)
• Fixed bitmap loading issues for 2018 version
• Added config saves for Model loading UI

BETA 5

• Added MOD and LMT support for Monster Hunter World

BETA 5.1

• Fixed “Invalid Header” false message for non monster hunter world games