Approved Implement Stadium model sprites

MeepBard

MeepBard

Pokémon Stadium models would be really REALLY cool to have on the sim to give some visual flair to RBY metagames, both as optional sprites for standard RBY matches over Yellow's and as default sprites for Stadium OU matches. I was informed by Ivy that all of Showdown's sprites are sourced directly from pkparaiso.com, meaning that the Stadium sprites would have to be ripped in-house.

Thankfully, Pokémon Stadium 2 happens to include a model viewer in its debug menu that the developers presumably forgot to scrub. And thanks to the overworked and exhausted boys at Nintendo EAD, even I, someone who's never had to go through the painstaking process of turning a video transparent and then into a gif, was able to work out how to transform the model into a sprite over the course of an afternoon. Check out this sick Mew sprite I was able to rip!
zfljDlW.gif
If this suggestion is approved, I can get right to work on ripping the remaining original 150 Pokémon + 151 back sprites, as well as write a quick guide for anyone wanting to help out (the more hands, the better when it comes to ripping 301 sprites!). It'd be really cool to see on PS, and I wouldn't mind helping out as much as I can with the process. Thanks!:luvdisc:
 
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seadra final.gif

I figured out a way to do this myself with MeepBard's help, so I guess I'm collaborating on this hellscape now! Only here, I'm, doing Stadium Zero's...because I can. Besides, the more the merrier, right? As you'll see, there is a very faint purple outline on this. That's because chroma keying things out is a nightmare and I have a life. Seeing 301 more sprites like this Seadra to do has given me a fight or flight response...out of the editor. So, most of these may have very slight outlines, but they are only noticeable when the image is large.

I intend to do all 151 in front and back sprite angles and submit them for use on the index of sprites.

Fair warning: it's not easy and requires stuff like...rendering MOVs with Vegas + QuickTime to chroma key out stuff. If you're experienced in editing videos you may have done this before to save file space with overlays. When screen recording, at least with Stadium Zero, you need to convert the Pokedex screen thing to a chroma underlay, like so:
1654617712833.png

You need a specific graphics plugin on your emulator for this to work, but it's really useful!

Now if someone wants to do this with me, I have some instructions on the stupid setup I made to do this, which probably has an easier method;
Alright so what you'll need are;
  • A high-quality way to screen record Stadium Zero
    • Project 64 + OBS is what I use. You'll need the former.
  • GLideN64 Public Release 4.0
    • Place the Zilmar-specs stuff in your Plugins folder, on its own.
  • A legally obtained copy of Stadium Zero that you have dumped on your PC
  • A legally obtained Japanese RGBY Copy that you have completed and dumped on your PC
  • The last version of QuickTime installed. Yes, that QuickTime.
  • Video editing software
    • I used Vegas Pro 17!
    • No, Movie Maker won't work.
  • MS Paint or similar.
  • ezgif.com not blocked on your PC
  • Something to keep the window topmost like DeskPins for easier recording (Optional)
This will walk you through doing this for the first time; you can skip most of these steps when you actually get rolling.

Alright so, let's sort out Stadium Zero first. You can skip all of these once you're done;
  1. Open Project 64 and enable your GLideN64 4.0 Plugin.
  2. Set up the Transfer Pak; if it doesn't come up set Raw Data.
    • It says it can't handle it, but it's lying.
    • You need to load a completed save file to load the entire dex. Use something like PKHeX or Pikasav to set that up.
  3. Open Stadium Zero
  4. If you don't see a Game Boy placed as you enter the game, you have done the Transfer Pak wrong. Check your settings.
  5. Go to the Pokedex ("Zukan", middle to the left of the menu) and select a Pokemon
  6. Go to Graphics settings, then navigate to Texture Enhancement. We are going to make a Texture Pack!
  7. Set to Use Texture Pack, and tick dump/edit textures.
  8. Note the location where the textures are going and such, you may need to set the folders up. If it's in Program Files, consider changing the location so you don't need to run as Administrator every time, I made that mistake.
  9. Press Apply and Ok, then press D.
  10. The screen should flash black for a moment. Go check the dump folder.
  11. Copy the dumped textures into the area for texture use. You may want to copy the folder itself, it seems to like it when it's in a folder called "POKEMON STADIUM".
  12. Open MS Paint, choose a really bright colour (magenta seems effective, "magic pink" as we call it).
  13. Open one of the non-Pokemon textures - these are the little bars that drop out - erase everything on it, then fill with the funny colour.
  14. Repeat for all of them. Takes like 3 minutes, I promise it's not that bad.
  15. Go back to your emulator and press R. It should flash black and you'll see the textures up and running if you did it right. If you didn't, check your file paths and fiddle around until it works. Remember to back up your texture work.
  16. If it looks like the image above, you've done all you need to do on the ROM side. Congratulations, you now know the hell of a texture pack developer.

Now onto the recording side of things, you'll do 6-7 every time unless you record other things like I do;
  1. Before you do anything, check if your emulator is set to not pause when the window is inactive. Good? Good.
    • If you use a single monitor setup or otherwise like efficiency, consider installing DeskPins or something to keep the emulator as the topmost window. Set it when it's running, though, but in my experience, it sometimes crashed for some reason.
  2. Set up a scene on OBS
  3. Set sound to not record so the file size stays small
  4. Window Capture your Project 64 window
  5. Alt+Drag the sides so it's just the Pokedex window for the Pokemon in Magenta.
  6. To further compress file size, resize your output to the Project 64 window you've now cropped. This helps later.
  7. Start recording and use the directional buttons to set the model in a way that looks like modern gen sprites facing diagonally down from the front, or diagonally away from behind. Keep it there until it starts rotating again, that's normally when the animation has ended.
  8. Stop recording!

Now onto the editing side of things, I used Vegas Pro so I will narrate from that POV, you don't need to repeat much of this;
  1. Open Vegas Pro 17
  2. Go to Preferences and enable the QuickTime Plugin via Deprecated Features
  3. Open the video you recorded in OBS. Look in a moment of shame, just like any editor does with their work.
  4. Find a reasonable loop point, it can be a bit off as ezgif lets you fiddle with frames later. For what it's worth, I am a bit liberal with this, just in case I mess up.
  5. Trim it down accordingly!
  6. Go to Video FX, search for Chroma Key, and then apply it to the video. You'll want to use the colour picker to get that MS Paint swag you splashed over the footage. It should have black behind it now!
  7. Go to Render as...
  8. Scroll down to QuickTime 7.
  9. On QuickTime 7, choose 3 Mbps video. Do NOT click Render yet or you will get the crustiest thing ever. We need to customize it.
  10. Click Customize Template and do the following;
    1. Set FPS to 59.67 or whatever it was, it's the highest one anyway.
    2. Video format to animation!
    3. Compressed depth to 32bp Colour!
    4. Give it a snazzy name that you can remember, then favourite it, cus you'll be using this a lot!
  11. Now Render it in a location where you can find it.

Onto ezgif!
  1. Go onto ezgif.com
  2. Video to GIF
  3. Slap that MOV there with the might of zeus. Marvel at your handiwork, the shame is gone, you have gone far past fatherless behaviour at this point.
  4. Go to Make a GIF!
  5. Scratch your head for a moment as you realise there is a lot of deadspace
  6. Realise you can go to Crop, check autocrop, then make the GIF look nice.
  7. Smile because you just made what I did up there :)
  8. Download it, and LARP in a Showdown suggestion thread like I did
  9. Never look at this again

"PvK what about the glitchmons you were coding? I-I-I want them..."
914050638525112320.webp

Like this little project, it'll be something I do in short bursts when I have nothing else to do!

If anyone wants to help me on this feel free to DM me. It's not as hard as it looks and now that I actually have the textures saved I think I can just hand someone the pack I use and they're away? We'll see!
 
May said:
View attachment 429191
I figured out a way to do this myself with MeepBard's help, so I guess I'm collaborating on this hellscape now! Only here, I'm, doing Stadium Zero's...because I can. Besides, the more the merrier, right? As you'll see, there is a very faint purple outline on this. That's because chroma keying things out is a nightmare and I have a life. Seeing 301 more sprites like this Seadra to do has given me a fight or flight response...out of the editor. So, most of these may have very slight outlines, but they are only noticeable when the image is large.

I intend to do all 151 in front and back sprite angles and submit them for use on the index of sprites.

Fair warning: it's not easy and requires stuff like...rendering MOVs with Vegas + QuickTime to chroma key out stuff. If you're experienced in editing videos you may have done this before to save file space with overlays. When screen recording, at least with Stadium Zero, you need to convert the Pokedex screen thing to a chroma underlay, like so:
View attachment 429192
You need a specific graphics plugin on your emulator for this to work, but it's really useful!

Now if someone wants to do this with me, I have some instructions on the stupid setup I made to do this, which probably has an easier method;
Alright so what you'll need are;
  • A high-quality way to screen record Stadium Zero
    • Project 64 + OBS is what I use. You'll need the former.
  • GLideN64 Public Release 4.0
    • Place the Zilmar-specs stuff in your Plugins folder, on its own.
  • A legally obtained copy of Stadium Zero that you have dumped on your PC
  • A legally obtained Japanese RGBY Copy that you have completed and dumped on your PC
  • The last version of QuickTime installed. Yes, that QuickTime.
  • Video editing software
    • I used Vegas Pro 17!
    • No, Movie Maker won't work.
  • MS Paint or similar.
  • ezgif.com not blocked on your PC
  • Something to keep the window topmost like DeskPins for easier recording (Optional)
This will walk you through doing this for the first time; you can skip most of these steps when you actually get rolling.

Alright so, let's sort out Stadium Zero first. You can skip all of these once you're done;
  1. Open Project 64 and enable your GLideN64 4.0 Plugin.
  2. Set up the Transfer Pak; if it doesn't come up set Raw Data.
    • It says it can't handle it, but it's lying.
    • You need to load a completed save file to load the entire dex. Use something like PKHeX or Pikasav to set that up.
  3. Open Stadium Zero
  4. If you don't see a Game Boy placed as you enter the game, you have done the Transfer Pak wrong. Check your settings.
  5. Go to the Pokedex ("Zukan", middle to the left of the menu) and select a Pokemon
  6. Go to Graphics settings, then navigate to Texture Enhancement. We are going to make a Texture Pack!
  7. Set to Use Texture Pack, and tick dump/edit textures.
  8. Note the location where the textures are going and such, you may need to set the folders up. If it's in Program Files, consider changing the location so you don't need to run as Administrator every time, I made that mistake.
  9. Press Apply and Ok, then press D.
  10. The screen should flash black for a moment. Go check the dump folder.
  11. Copy the dumped textures into the area for texture use. You may want to copy the folder itself, it seems to like it when it's in a folder called "POKEMON STADIUM".
  12. Open MS Paint, choose a really bright colour (magenta seems effective, "magic pink" as we call it).
  13. Open one of the non-Pokemon textures - these are the little bars that drop out - erase everything on it, then fill with the funny colour.
  14. Repeat for all of them. Takes like 3 minutes, I promise it's not that bad.
  15. Go back to your emulator and press R. It should flash black and you'll see the textures up and running if you did it right. If you didn't, check your file paths and fiddle around until it works. Remember to back up your texture work.
  16. If it looks like the image above, you've done all you need to do on the ROM side. Congratulations, you now know the hell of a texture pack developer.

Now onto the recording side of things, you'll do 6-7 every time unless you record other things like I do;
  1. Before you do anything, check if your emulator is set to not pause when the window is inactive. Good? Good.
    • If you use a single monitor setup or otherwise like efficiency, consider installing DeskPins or something to keep the emulator as the topmost window. Set it when it's running, though, but in my experience, it sometimes crashed for some reason.
  2. Set up a scene on OBS
  3. Set sound to not record so the file size stays small
  4. Window Capture your Project 64 window
  5. Alt+Drag the sides so it's just the Pokedex window for the Pokemon in Magenta.
  6. To further compress file size, resize your output to the Project 64 window you've now cropped. This helps later.
  7. Start recording and use the directional buttons to set the model in a way that looks like modern gen sprites facing diagonally down from the front, or diagonally away from behind. Keep it there until it starts rotating again, that's normally when the animation has ended.
  8. Stop recording!

Now onto the editing side of things, I used Vegas Pro so I will narrate from that POV, you don't need to repeat much of this;
  1. Open Vegas Pro 17
  2. Go to Preferences and enable the QuickTime Plugin via Deprecated Features
  3. Open the video you recorded in OBS. Look in a moment of shame, just like any editor does with their work.
  4. Find a reasonable loop point, it can be a bit off as ezgif lets you fiddle with frames later. For what it's worth, I am a bit liberal with this, just in case I mess up.
  5. Trim it down accordingly!
  6. Go to Video FX, search for Chroma Key, and then apply it to the video. You'll want to use the colour picker to get that MS Paint swag you splashed over the footage. It should have black behind it now!
  7. Go to Render as...
  8. Scroll down to QuickTime 7.
  9. On QuickTime 7, choose 3 Mbps video. Do NOT click Render yet or you will get the crustiest thing ever. We need to customize it.
  10. Click Customize Template and do the following;
    1. Set FPS to 59.67 or whatever it was, it's the highest one anyway.
    2. Video format to animation!
    3. Compressed depth to 32bp Colour!
    4. Give it a snazzy name that you can remember, then favourite it, cus you'll be using this a lot!
  11. Now Render it in a location where you can find it.

Onto ezgif!
  1. Go onto ezgif.com
  2. Video to GIF
  3. Slap that MOV there with the might of zeus. Marvel at your handiwork, the shame is gone, you have gone far past fatherless behaviour at this point.
  4. Go to Make a GIF!
  5. Scratch your head for a moment as you realise there is a lot of deadspace
  6. Realise you can go to Crop, check autocrop, then make the GIF look nice.
  7. Smile because you just made what I did up there :)
  8. Download it, and LARP in a Showdown suggestion thread like I did
  9. Never look at this again

"PvK what about the glitchmons you were coding? I-I-I want them..."
914050638525112320.webp

Like this little project, it'll be something I do in short bursts when I have nothing else to do!

If anyone wants to help me on this feel free to DM me. It's not as hard as it looks and now that I actually have the textures saved I think I can just hand someone the pack I use and they're away? We'll see!
Click to expand...

Really good writeup! The painful process May endured here is almost identical to the process of ripping sprites from Stadium 2 except the only texture you need to hide is the Pokémon's icon which as far as I know cannot be hidden in-game and requires you to blank it out with a 40x40 transparent sprite sharing the same filename as the icon (an example of said icon is visible in the screencap below, courtesy of TCRF) and I export my gifs by using Photoshop to add them frame by frame all on seperate layers, then exporting as a gif. Also, you don't need to connect a GB game to rip sprites from Stadium 2 - you just need a patch to enable Debug Mode.

PokemonStadium2CharizardAni10.gif


A little easier than Stadium Zero on one hand considering the background is already made easy to chroma key out and you don't need a 100%ed save of the GB game, but also a little harder in a way because every Pokémon has an icon so you'll have to blank every single one out individually. Glad I could help make the process a little less painful for you! Very excited to see all of Stadium Zero's unique sprites finished up.

And here, take some more front sprites I finished up of the original 151! I haven't posted these here yet but RBYcord got to see Tauros finished up early. Won't post an update every single time I complete one as to not derail the thread but I might pop in to drop more significant batches every now and then.
pikachu-stadium.gif
tauros-stadium.gif

And one Ampharos for my avatar, since I'm biased. No shame.
ampharos-stadium.gif
Glad to have another collaborator on this silly project. I think this is 100% feasible and if anyone else wants to contribute, let me know and I can try to help the best that I can!
 
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The only reason we wouldn't want more sprites is because more sprites means more time for Showdown to load as it processes models. The average gif for a Pokemon in modern generations is like 100KB; we only have a little more than a hundred sprites over 200KB. A lot of the gifs posted in this thread are pretty large by comparison. If they can be appropriately scaled down both in actual dimensions (to match typical Showdown sprites) and in file size (compression, etc.), then I think this would be a cool addition. Tentatively approving assuming that can be done.
 
DaWoblefet said:
The only reason we wouldn't want more sprites is because more sprites means more time for Showdown to load as it processes models. The average gif for a Pokemon in modern generations is like 100KB; we only have a little more than a hundred sprites over 200KB. A lot of the gifs posted in this thread are pretty large by comparison. If they can be appropriately scaled down both in actual dimensions (to match typical Showdown sprites) and in file size (compression, etc.), then I think this would be a cool addition. Tentatively approving assuming that can be done.
Click to expand...
This seems at least doable. Mine have been recorded directly off the game itself, in its original resolution.

With some lossy compression, the lowest I see with the sprite as-is is 1.4 MB, like Nidoking here.
nidoking.gif


So with him in hand, I went ahead with compressing via ezgif because I'm a dumbarse who isn't good with programs, downsizing to 35% (131x137px) and compressing at L50. It came out at 332 KB. By this point you start to see the quality go down, such is the life of lossy.
nidoking-35perc.gif


Not sure how much more I could compress these as I'm not exactly a tech wizard, but something tells me this is doable. Let me know what you think. Maybe there's a better way to do this? Maybe PS would be fine handling them? I could hook it up to a Tampermonkey script for testing, perhaps?

You could probably nuke some frames off these as I'm not actually optimising that aspect very well either.
EDIT: It doesn't seem like there actually are any on this one at least; the animations are very long and last around 2 seconds at a low point.

If all is well I'd prolly go through the Pokemon that are NC98-legal first, given that's what the game basically exists for, and if that works out I could do all 151.
 
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DaWoblefet said:
The only reason we wouldn't want more sprites is because more sprites means more time for Showdown to load as it processes models. The average gif for a Pokemon in modern generations is like 100KB; we only have a little more than a hundred sprites over 200KB. A lot of the gifs posted in this thread are pretty large by comparison. If they can be appropriately scaled down both in actual dimensions (to match typical Showdown sprites) and in file size (compression, etc.), then I think this would be a cool addition. Tentatively approving assuming that can be done.
Click to expand...

This is totally doable! Here's a smaller (100x100) Mew for example, rounding off at 97KB. Obviously some detail is lost when resizing, but I think this still looks pretty good.
8acYu6y.gif
 
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I don't know if you are still online or not, but I was wondering if you could make Persian's Pokemon stadium model sprite gif because I really like that one , but in other generations, they just made Persian just stand in trainer battles, but could now let him just lay down like his stadium version. So I was asking if you want to make it. You don't have to, I'm just asking.
 

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Hey! It's been a crazy year, but for those curious: I'm not dead, nor is this little pet project! Far from it in fact, as a few exciting developments have happened that I'm finally able to share!

I was contacted by a lovely person by the name of pikavees, who is the webmaster of an incredible Generation 1 and 2 fansite named Blue Moon Falls that I had already been a fan of for quite some time! She came across my post and asked if I'd want to join a volunteer project with the same goal of ripping the sprites from Stadium, which I happily accepted. She provided much better methods of ripping them compared to the shoddy work I had been doing myself which worked fine enough for small Showdown sprites but looked... well, less-than-perfect at full size :P

After a year's worth of work, her project's finally reached completion, and all front sprites from Stadium 2 are available in gorgeous, high quality! You can download them here, along with full credits of the many volunteers who worked very hard to make this resource a reality. Here's one of the few that I worked on:

121.gif
So, what now? Well, before any of this can go live on Showdown, these images will have to be compressed - this isn't too big of a problem since these can be edited in batch with the same settings to ensure scale / palettes remain consistent. The real issue is that backsprites for these Pokémon were not part of the original project's goal but are very necessary for implementation on Showdown, so it's something I will have to work on on my own time. Not sure how long that will take, but we're very close to this being possible to implement!

Thank you to everyone for your continuous support since this thread went up, with special thanks to Plague von Karma for being interested in this project from the very beginning and getting me in contact with pikavees in the first place! I hope you'll all continue to cheer me on!

KingFoxyYt said:
I was wondering if you could make Persian's Pokemon stadium model sprite gif because I really like that one , but in other generations, they just made Persian just stand in trainer battles, but could now let him just lay down like his stadium version. So I was asking if you want to make it.
Click to expand...

It wasn't me who made it (pikavees did a large majority of the sprites, including persian) but here is the cat for you :)
53.gif
 
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KingFoxyYt said:
I don't know if you are still online or not, but I was wondering if you could make Persian's Pokemon stadium model sprite gif because I really like that one , but in other generations, they just made Persian just stand in trainer battles, but could now let him just lay down like his stadium version. So I was asking if you want to make it. You don't have to, I'm just asking.






I've been diving into the world of stadium model sprites recently, and I wanted to share some insights and resources with you all. I stumbled upon this fantastic guide on Movavi's learning portal about free video cutting tools (check it out here https://www.movavi.com/learning-portal/free-video-cutter.html). When it comes to implementing stadium model sprites, precision is key. I recommend exploring various sprite sizes and resolutions to ensure a seamless integration into your project. Additionally, organizing spritesheets efficiently can significantly enhance performance. Feel free to share your experiences and any tips you might have on optimizing stadium model sprites. Let's collaborate and make our projects visually stunning!
Click to expand...
Thanks for the information!
 
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MeepBard said:
Hey! It's been a crazy year, but for those curious: I'm not dead, nor is this little pet project! Far from it in fact, as a few exciting developments have happened that I'm finally able to share!

I was contacted by a lovely person by the name of pikavees, who is the webmaster of an incredible Generation 1 and 2 fansite named Blue Moon Falls that I had already been a fan of for quite some time! She came across my post and asked if I'd want to join a volunteer project with the same goal of ripping the sprites from Stadium, which I happily accepted. She provided much better methods of ripping them compared to the shoddy work I had been doing myself which worked fine enough for small Showdown sprites but looked... well, less-than-perfect at full size :P

After a year's worth of work, her project's finally reached completion, and all front sprites from Stadium 2 are available in gorgeous, high quality! You can download them here, along with full credits of the many volunteers who worked very hard to make this resource a reality. Here's one of the few that I worked on:

So, what now? Well, before any of this can go live on Showdown, these images will have to be compressed - this isn't too big of a problem since these can be edited in batch with the same settings to ensure scale / palettes remain consistent. The real issue is that backsprites for these Pokémon were not part of the original project's goal but are very necessary for implementation on Showdown, so it's something I will have to work on on my own time. Not sure how long that will take, but we're very close to this being possible to implement!

Thank you to everyone for your continuous support since this thread went up, with special thanks to Plague von Karma for being interested in this project from the very beginning and getting me in contact with pikavees in the first place! I hope you'll all continue to cheer me on!



It wasn't me who made it (pikavees did a large majority of the sprites, including persian) but here is the cat for you :)
Click to expand...
Thx
 
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