Rigged Wiki:News/Spring 2024 Aesthetics

Love the past, play the future.

Welcome back to PES16 and the world of Pre-Fox aesthetics.
Some things might be missing here and there (rip uvscroll for now), but this system allows a much greater degree of freedom compared to having to stuff everything inside a single boot fmdl. You'll probably appreciate it with time.

Things like the new aesthetics converter and compiler ended up going pretty much down to the wire, but everything is set up properly now.
Keep in mind you can still submit model fixes and aes-related savefixes until (ideally) the day before the cup starts.

Now, let's get to the point.

News for managers

New team IDs and DLC

A new database has been created, both to make space for new teams and to give us some headroom in case the mods suddenly decide to make a few more boards. This is a new unified database which will be used for every PES version from now on.
Most of the team's IDs have changed because of the shift in the list, so make sure (as previously announced) to build your team's export using the new save and test it on the latest DLC, both of which you can grab from the PES16 page, in the Final DLC section.

New FPC system and save editor

The FPC system has also been standardized with the settings used in Fox PES versions (PES18+). The main difference is in the GK's sleeves, so most players will still work fine or require very quick fixes.
To accomodate for the above, a new save editor has been made, which you can download from the Tools page.

This new save editor will set the proper FPC settings, but it's currently got a little bug on the "Team > Set FPC" button:
It doesn't set Long sleeves on all players, it always toggles between Long and Short instead, on everyone except on the currently selected player. So feel free to use that button but double-check the sleeves afterwards, they need to be set to Long to hide them.

News for manager and aesthics makers

New aesthetics converter

An extremely useful automatic converter has been made, which will convert all your fmdl models to the new pre-fox format.
You can read all about it from the Aesthetics Converter page, but please make sure to grab the fixed export for /yourteam/ from this or this page before using it.
Please read it carefully if you run into any issues. Keep in mind you'll also need the latest compiler to test the results on PES.

News for aesthetics makers

New Blender plugin and starter pack

A brand new blender plugin for .model files has been made. It's much more stable than the old plugin and allows to add new meshes to the model file at will. This means there's no more need to use multiple .model files in the face folder, but you can still do it for modularity purposes. The plugin also allows changing the Material name used by each mesh, which should be then listed on the .mtl file.
You can grab it by downloading the new blender Starter Pack, from the Tools page.

New aesthetics compiler

The aesthetics compiler has been overhauled with a complete rewrite in Python. It now runs natively on Linux systems, and it's extremely faster (you could say, three times faster).
Since it's a completely new program, it's been called "4cc aet compiler Red" to differentiate it from the old one.
It also offers support for the new format of face folders without a face xml (xml-less). Whenever a face folder is found without an xml, it will automatically generate an xml with the contents of the folder. More details on this in the next section.
You can grab it from the Tools page.

New "xml-less" face folder format

The new aesthetics compiler supports an improved form of Pre-Fox aesthetics exports, in which face folders do not need an error-prone face.xml file. Instead, face folders only need to contain .model and .mtl files, and the compiler will generate a face.xml file on the fly. It deduces which .models go with which .mtls, and what model "type" to use for each model, based on the filenames of those files.

The way this works is fairly simple:

• The model filename is taken without the oral_ and _win32 parts if present. Those are not needed anymore, by the way.
• If the model file has a name that starts with one of the following types, it will be assigned to it as type.
  • "face_neck"
  • "handL"
  • "handR"
  • "gloveL"
  • "gloveR"
  • "uniform"
  • If none match, the generic type "parts" is assigned.
    For example: "face_neck" will be assigned to "face_neck_luigi.model" and "parts" will be assigned to "sanic.model".
• Now the compiler checks what mtl files are in the folder.
• If the model file has a name that starts with any of the mtl filenames, it will be assigned to it.
  If none match, the generic file "materials.mtl" is assigned.
  For example: "mario.mtl" will be assigned to "mario_face.model" and "mario_hat.model", "materials.mtl" will be assigned to "toad_face.model" if there's no "toad.mtl" or "toad_face.mtl" in the same folder.
• Lastly, if the face folder contains a diff file with data about the EEEE, it will be used to write the "dif" block of the xml.
  The supported diff files are the following:
  • "face_diff.bin", which you can get from face folders in Fox format.
  • "face_diff.xml", a new type of file which you can create by simply grabbing the face xml and deleting everything except the "dif" block.
    This makes it easy to convert a regular face folder to the xml-less format, but you should only do this for models which really need a custom diff (ie the EEEE placed properly instead of just hidden).
    For the usual FBMs which only need the EEEE to be hidden, you can skip having any kind of face_diff in the folder, and the generated xml will simply have a default "dif" block with a hidden EEEE.

New Shadeless shader

The latest Spring 24 Qualifiers DLC contains a new shader called "Shadeless".
It's like the default Constant and Overlay shaders, but with none of their drawbacks (Constant is blurry on closeups and Overlay has a nuclear glow on some daytime settings). We recommend using it on all of your anime-style and cartoon-style models.

New game rips sheet link

A new link has been added to the model sources on the Blender Tutorials page, probably useful for anyone looking to convert videogame assets.
This sheet contains a ton of links for the rips of many popular games, in addition to extraction guides and useful software (check the tabs at the bottom).