How To (haphazardly) Mess Around with the Vertexes of the 3D mesh of a scenery model!

[manicminermemer 3]

This image shows a thing that most Mine-imator animators will immediately notice you can't usually do in the program (that being what is apparently polygons in places they shouldn't be) but it's in-program. What is going on here?

Mineimator 2.0 added .meshcache files, which you may have seen in your project folder after importing a scene. The .meshcache file format was created specifically to load scenery models faster, as mentioned by Nimi on the official discord, but he also notes it's actually just a 3D model format and not a construction of blocks.





In this post, I am going to demonstrate that it is an actual 3D model file and you can poke it with a stick a bunch of times to create something as mangled as the first image in this post.
 

First let's import a schematic file, such as the lamp post. You can also import scenery directly from a Minecraft world for this.

Then it shows up in the scene.

Now, to edit meshcache files, first we have to decompress them.
Mineimator automatically compresses meshcache files, so to actually manually inspect or edit them you have to decompress the file using whatever file extractor tool you use, then swap the file inside the meshcache with the meshcache itself.

(Deleting the inital schematic ("1") won't do anything. The project will still load properly because it only uses the meshcache... I'm not sure why imports the schematic as well. Once you decompress the meshcache, you won't need to recompress it again.)

Next, let's open up the meshcache file using a hex editor. The one I use is HexEdit.

Let's change this "A" to a "B". I don't know what I'm doing to the model, but surely nothing will go wrong, right?

And, now, let's save the edit we made and reload the scene!

Boom! One of the vertexes on the lamp post is now inside out and to the side. So what happened? Well, these meshcache files really are just 3D models of Minecraft assets, and the edit done was just moving one of the vertexes of that 3D model to the side. I presume those three columns of symbols correspond to the positions of each vertex in the model, but I wouldn't know about all of the other stuff at the bottom of the file. Someone who is more better versed in knowledge in 3D file formats than I am would probably be able to figure this out!

You can actually continue to mess with the meshcache some more, and this will corrupt the the model of the lamppost even more. Don't try to erase or add more stuff though... it seems to just crash Mineimator instantly when I add or remove stuff.

Q: Could this mean 3D models that I make in Blender or 3DS Max could be loaded in Mine-imator?
A: Theoretically, yes! At the current moment there is no tool to convert 3D model files to the .meshcache format though. If a tool was made to do that, then it would be possible. I wouldn't know how easy it would be to do that though. I suppose you could import a Mine-Imator scenery model and attempt rearranging the vertices manually, but that'd take a lot of trial and error because I couldn't find any other documentation online about the meshcache format. It seems the meshcache format was made specifically for Mine-Imator. So someone would have to look into the source code to see how a meshcache is constructed too.

(Note, I doubt you would be able to import textures with the model too, since scenery models only use Minecraft's block textures. But there might be work-arounds for this.)

[berlin 2]

On 11/23/2023 at 11:27 PM, manicminermemer said:

This image shows a thing that most Mine-imator animators will immediately notice you can't usually do in the program (that being what is apparently polygons in places they shouldn't be) but it's in-program. What is going on here?

Mineimator 2.0 added .meshcache files, which you may have seen in your project folder after importing a scene. The .meshcache file format was created specifically to load scenery models faster, as mentioned by Nimi on the official discord, but he also notes it's actually just a 3D model format and not a construction of blocks.





In this post, I am going to demonstrate that it is an actual 3D model file and you can poke it with a stick a bunch of times to create something as mangled as the first image in this post.
 

First let's import a schematic file, such as the lamp post. You can also import scenery directly from a Minecraft world for this.

Then it shows up in the scene.

Now, to edit meshcache files, first we have to decompress them.
Mineimator automatically compresses meshcache files, so to actually manually inspect or edit them you have to decompress the file using whatever file extractor tool you use, then swap the file inside the meshcache with the meshcache itself.

(Deleting the inital schematic ("1") won't do anything. The project will still load properly because it only uses the meshcache... I'm not sure why imports the schematic as well. Once you decompress the meshcache, you won't need to recompress it again.)

Next, let's open up the meshcache file using a hex editor. The one I use is HexEdit.

Let's change this "A" to a "B". I don't know what I'm doing to the model, but surely nothing will go wrong, right?

And, now, let's save the edit we made and reload the scene!

Boom! One of the vertexes on the lamp post is now inside out and to the side. So what happened? Well, these meshcache files really are just 3D models of Minecraft assets, and the edit done was just moving one of the vertexes of that 3D model to the side. I presume those three columns of symbols correspond to the positions of each vertex in the model, but I wouldn't know about all of the other stuff at the bottom of the file. Someone who is more better versed in knowledge in 3D file formats than I am would probably be able to figure this out!

You can actually continue to mess with the meshcache some more, and this will corrupt the the model of the lamppost even more. Don't try to erase or add more stuff though... it seems to just crash Mineimator instantly when I add or remove stuff.

Q: Could this mean 3D models that I make in Blender or 3DS Max could be loaded in Mine-imator?
A: Theoretically, yes! At the current moment there is no tool to convert 3D model files to the .meshcache format though. If a tool was made to do that, then it would be possible. I wouldn't know how easy it would be to do that though. I suppose you could import a Mine-Imator scenery model and attempt rearranging the vertices manually, but that'd take a lot of trial and error because I couldn't find any other documentation online about the meshcache format. It seems the meshcache format was made specifically for Mine-Imator. So someone would have to look into the source code to see how a meshcache is constructed too.

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Its impressive for newbies as I am 

Edited Wednesday at 06:01 AM by berlin

[Pickyduck14 75]

Wow.