Facegen File Formats

[RabidGears]

I came across this page on the Facegen site years ago that details the formats of the files used by facegen (.TRI, .EGM, .EGT, etc.):

https://facegen.com/dl/sdk/doc/manual/fileformats.html

I've always assumed that it must have been known about by the community, but I've never seen any mention of it when I've been searching for stuff related to those formats. From poking around in the source of some of the import/export plugins for these formats it looks more like they were reverse engineering the files instead of going off the spec sheet. I'm probably wrong, but anyway, it can't hurt to draw attention to it for anyone who doesn't know about it.

[SkyLover]

I think the reason nobody talks about it is because the game stores facegen in its standard mesh and texture file types, so most modders haven't directly interacted with the facegen file types. Case in point, I've only ever seen .tri files when looking at custom body replacers with custom morphs.

[Sigurð Stormhand]

Nice find, though I'm not sure what we can do with it. EGM and TRI files become relevant if you're working with custom face parts or helmets etc. that deform.

[RabidGears]

16 hours ago, Sigurð Stormhand said:

Nice find, though I'm not sure what we can do with it. EGM and TRI files become relevant if you're working with custom face parts or helmets etc. that deform.

I'm not claiming that this is super useful to most modders. I was mainly thinking of anyone writing a plugin or other tool for them. The average modder doesn't need to know about the inner workings of these files. It's really only something that would interest a programmer.

 

On 10/21/2022 at 5:23 PM, SkyLover said:

Case in point, I've only ever seen .tri files when looking at custom body replacers with custom morphs.

.TRIs are used for anything to do with character heads that need to morph like faces, ears, noses, hair, beards, helmets, facial animations, etc.

I know that it's not very common for most mods to use those files, and writing tools/plugins is very a niche area of modding.