Resurrecting PMG Modding: By the Byte.

[Buggyman]

First, a couple of things:

One, I am still relatively new to this level of modding. The most experience I've ever had with Mabimodding before really was trying (and failing) to put Champion Wings onto a Nakuru Robe back in G-whatever.
Two, I am prone to sudden bouts of a terrible disease called "Real Life", which may cause long periods of spontaneous inactivity.
Three, I am a very visual person. My posts will often be accompanied by several redundant images with pointless circles and arrows on them.
Four, feel free to move this topic if necessary. I didn't know exactly where to put it, haha.

So, onto the topic at hand.

I tried to get back into modding for mabi a while ago, and found that SUDDENLY the PMG Editor doesn't work anymore.
Well, darn. Guess we're hooped.

I poked around on these forums for a bit and had a quick chat with Europe a while ago, before being affected by a sudden IRL Attack and having to deal with student stuff for a while.

But now, I've had a chance to look at how the PMG file works, and how we can begin to decode it once again, from scratch.


Now, if you've tried to use the standard old methods of PMG Editing, you're bound to get results like this:

Joints are broken all over, stretching parts of the mesh are also disconnected.
(The clothing is white because I replace all models with _underwear_bss.pmg for simplicity's sake.)

So, using the PMG Editor, 010 editor and a template given to me by Europe (Thanks, mate), I dove in to see what this inexperienced programmer could find.
I think I made a good start.

First of all, let's look at an unedited mesh.
Mari's clothes, for example.

Now, let's take a look at a specific vertex on this outfit.
arm2r's point 4 is easily visible, so we'll go with that one.

Take note of the X, Y and Z coordinates on the right. Those are what we'll be messing with.

Now, editing anything relating to the mesh in PMG Editor will result in the above... results. The disjointed mess. Naturally, we don't want that.

So, we'll go into 010 editor and take a look.
There's our mesh!

So let's find point 4 and change that X value.

Bingo!

And now, the moment of truth:

Well, the edit has been made successfully...

And no disjointed parts!


So there, that's how to move a vertex around in a .pmg file.
Now we just need to figure out how to add a new vertex, and how to delete an unwanted one.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do either of those and as such we will probably have to wait for someone with more experience than me to come along.

I'll be happy to give it a (probably unsuccessful) go if someone can give me a point at which to begin.

Once we can add a vertex and delete an unwanted vertex, it's a simple matter of creating a moderately user-friendly program to do all that just by clicking some buttons.

[AOIKID]

someone can give me template please?
i want to try use this thing to fix ripping mod(almost mqo->pmg)

[[Bloodhound]]

As someone that used to make mostly Pmg edits, using PMG to MQO is a great tool but i do agree with what Europe said. It dose has its issues and the main ones I kept seeing is joints don't connect, if some parts was not placed right after an edit and making sure it is correct and sometimes it may not show (like a part of an arm or an leg), when you zoom into the modded file it disappears, or you can tell see a depth of color has changed so textures will show up more or a bit less. If these problems can be fixed one day or someone can find out how PMG to MQO works and redo it that can help threw Pmg edits more and more. Animations is another thing cause I use Autodesk 3DS and PMG editor and it still works great just timing its the issue cause you have to play with it at times. But we need more people to work on Pmg files again. It would be nice to see more out in the later months.