I'm wondering if anyone knows of the location to find the Chao Garden models in either Sonic Adventure/DX or Sonic Adventure 2/Battle. I'm mostly looking for the models of the Chao themselves, as I've found the gardens. Also, if the locations are known, they follow the same 3D model format as the rest of the in-game models, correct? Thanks in advance for any help or insight.
The only complete Chao models I've ever been able to find are in the Steam version of Sonic Adventure 2 (Battle), in Data_DLL.dll. The splitDLL program in SA Tools will extract the models for you, if you use the batch file included in the SA2PC folder. The models will be extracted to .sa2mdl files in Data_DLLAL_RootObject, which SAMDL can open and export to other model formats.
Thank you for the info. I was able to rip each model to OBJ format, and am in the process of writing a simple program to view a Chao at any stage of evolution. I got the morphing to work properly with vertices, so I'm just hoping textures go just as smoothly.
Sorry if this isn't the right place for this, but I noticed something when writing the viewer... This is a Neutral-Normal Chao that is about half-way through gradual evolution. The one eye seems to glitch when the Neutral-Normal chao's second evolution is run, swim, or power. This might appear in game too, on the PC version of SA2. In other news, texturing is a huge pain for this... so I might release it as just a solid color (like how monotone eggs appear). What do you guys think? It can still show the shape changes.
Interesting concept. Though, is it the program or the actual Chao that's like that? The PC version had some issues with Chao, especially the shiny ones iirc. Could someone explain why that happens? How does Sonic Team break something so majestic :|