Soul Reaver to Blender Conversion Toolchain Preview II

This second, much more in-depth preview of the Soul Reaver to Blender conversion toolchain shows the progress we've made in the last four months, examples of how sharp the game areas look when raytraced, and explains how we'll be using it to showcase a massive amount of deleted Soul Reaver content later this year.
The first public version of this tool was released on 12 May, 2020: www.thelostwor...

[@ZANGETSU_95]

As long as single one of us stands, we are legion.

[@freddyfazbearstm3129]

Yes

[@Alejandro-nj2xw]

My heart speeds up a lot when I get notifications from this channel !!!

[@angelvillagon295]

Yess!!! You understand my feeling!!!

[@yeetuspogimus2023]

Irfan Alddin I actually played that demo as a kid, never got that alien feeling, only that I was in a tomb and had to solve the puzzles, and when I returned the hearts, the bodies were being sacrificed to the wall statue faces. So it was more of a short creepy/awesome adventure to me. That part of the game though is when all shit hits the fan and demons start spawning and fuckin’ everyone’s shit up.

[@yeetuspogimus2023]

Yeah I was wondering when the next video would be.

[@spacemonkey9257]

This my favorite game series I've spent years of my life sucking up every piece of lore and reading way too much fan fiction, man this makes me happy.

[@vitorsamuel1039]

I'm too study The series, I probaly am The only brazillian that like and know this perfect series and lore, sorry for my english, I don't speak so much

[@nohulse]

My favorite game of all time! I was obsessed when I was younger with using codes to unlock different reavers and abilities in the game, as well as using cheats and glitches to access secret unused dialogue hidden in the game files! Would love to see an updated and complete version of this game!!

[@ureshiiiiii]

This is insanely exciting to see!!

[@magnushammersmith121]

6:30 - 6:50 for me is my dream come true. I spent so much time imagining in my head as many rooms and chambers respectively to each other as I could and here I finally see it on the screen! Pure fascination and excitement.

[@ahmednagato135]

Me too

[@Samm0th]

I'm happy because we were too close to the release of alpha build! Keep going, drop everything, we are here. Even CoronaVirus can stop us now! (Seriously, take care everyone)

[@soulreaver1983]

☺👍

[@SignorTromboncino]

I cannot thank you guys enough for all the love you're putting into the game. There is no other game I can think about that received the same amount of love behind the scenes, you sirs are legends and deserve all the respect of this and the spectral world. Thank you once more!

[@majdyburaihi7187]

Our wishes has finally found the light. Thank you man. You are a legend.

[@iLoVeZephon]

You guys are doing (Elder?) God's work, and thank you so much for sharing that with us!

[@jordanwilliams1454]

I just want to say, as somebody that stumbled upon TLW when i was in high school (2005 or so) that i'm still so happy to see all of this still going on. I actually got the itch to pick back up SR1 on Dreamcast the other day, and got sucked back in to everything. Glad to see you're well, and that things are still going!

[@heretyk_1337]

Don`t do this to me... Don`t make me watch this... I need to sleep! And please don`t give me hope, that i will live to the day, when i`ll be able to explore those areas...

[@leedav84]

My congratulations and kudos to the folks involved with this. I am honestly staggered and excited with what's to come!

[@mortvia]

Man I'm sorry I missed this when you debuted it. Glad I'm watching it now before I dive into the other videos. This is truly incredible and you should be proud for developing this amazing tool.

[@fedupN]

Ok...2:30 onwards? YES. That was amazing.

[@SixStringOverdose]

Ben, I have no idea how u did this, but I cannot wrap my head around it to be honest. I thought the tools we had will be pretty much all we'll ever have for extracting LOK content but wow... this is already 5 levels skipped ahead :D can't wait!!! Btw, do you think we'll ever have a tool to extract the model animations for the characters? Cause honestly that's the only missing thing for us to start playing with SR1 remakes and delight our hearts with the LOK universe once more. Models and Textures are covered for the last 10-15 years, just the animations have been always missing. Thanks so much!!!

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

The animations are trickier than some of the other game data, but it's something AesirHod is looking into, and I will as well once some other things are taken care of.

[@angelvillagon295]

Im very excited for this!!! I cant wait for explore all areas in the game.

[@Alexander.Lockwood]

Oh man, I am so excited for this.

[@camdensmallwood]

Glad to see you're still at years later, Ben! I had sent you some emails some years back asking about technical documents, but since then I've gotten carried away with programming and reverse engineering Halo stuff. Still have all my games and patches backed up, will definitely mess with this when it comes out. Keep it up!

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

You're welcome to drop me a line if you like. A lot of emails never got to me because my hosting provider messed things up with my contact form :\.

[@TwistedChungus]

This is still absolutely amazing. And it's honestly incredible to be reminded just how *big* the Soul Reaver map was, especially for a game released in 1999 / 2000. If I remember correctly, the team implemented a brand new system of procedural loading to have it be seamless, right? Where the game loaded all the rooms directly connected to the one you are currently in, and loaded / unloaded new ones as you moved around? [Side note: I could just watch those pieces fall into place for hours. Quite possibly with the Tetris theme playing in the background.]

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

Exactly. Each of the pieces you see falling into place in this video is one of the individual units that are streamed in off the disc as the player moves through the game world. Later games based on the same engine (Defiance, Tomb Raider: Legend, and so forth) do the same thing, but their units/rooms are able to be much larger and more complex because there was so much more RAM available compared to the original PlayStation.

[@ziqm]

Im waiting the release more, than anything else! And, as one guy in comments said: "My heart speeds up a lot when I get notifications from this channel!"

[@GabrielOnuris]

This is an awesome work you're doing right here. Seriously, I can't put it into words. May the Balance bless you.

[@Alejandro-nj2xw]

This is crazy! Thank you very much for all these contributions to this wonderful video game! Every day I look at the website for news! I hope we can soon get closer to the original idea for this title and these great tools! My greatest respect and admiration for you, Ben! Greetings from Argentina!

[@DeadmaN-2112]

Nice. This was an absolutely amazing game with one of the best storylines, and voice acting ever IMO. The visual effects and map levels were nicely done for their time. The only downside was that controls in the early versions of the game were very frustrating at times. Although they did get a bit better by the time defiance was around. In-spite of the limitations in controls... It was one of those stories that you just had to see to its end, in order to fully appreciate it. I wish this game was completely redone and released with much better controls, graphics and fighting mechanics. Deadsun looked like it was pretty well done regarding the game mechanics. They should have just re-released the whole game in that engine. Would have been amazing.

[@VladSpatariu]

Just discovered your channel. Thanks for your work and injecting new series content for the fans!

[@natbatlightwood5288]

Ohh how exciting. I can't wait for more never thought i'd have any Legacy of Kain content to look forward to.

[@unitedglobalgaming2243]

I've been looking for a copy of Legacy of Kane Soul Reaver for my Dreamcast for several months.

[@stefangla6878]

I don't really understand much of what you say but enough to make me excited. Good luck with your work. :)

[@RippahRooJizah]

That Cathy at the end can Silence me any day, hehehehe.

[@thomasmorato5098]

Never though I would see you on a LoK vid.

[@RippahRooJizah]

@@thomasmorato5098 Yup. The lost worlds is kinda like Xenogears: A rope of robots to me: Love the games and every so often I check in to see updates. Except Lost Worlds.net actually updates.

[@bokinhsasuke]

This is so fucking cool man... I love it! Thanks to bring so much memories of this game, i'm a big fan of the series and this video brought to me a big nostalgia!!

[@opqrrg]

Very very amazing job!! Thank you for sharing that!!

[@sethaldarith6778]

Amazing content, Ben! Thank you and please keep it coming!

[@shoboreviews]

I'm so happy to see somebody so passionate about the Legacy of Kain Series :D Great job man !!!

[@nathansotl818]

That's an awesome job Can't wait todo explore an understand more how the soul reaver world works Thanks for keeping the passion for the Game

[@julioezequiel8935]

I'm so glad to see this !

[@silvek99]

Very impressive!

[@MaskedGuyCh]

This is good content, especially for fans of this game/series. You've just got a new subscriber. Looking forward to see more from this channel.

[@ChernabogNosgoth]

Amazing work!!!

[@xXRazielRebornXx]

OMG! Good job Rahab!

[@Glaiceana]

Absolutely incredible work!

[@MamboCat84]

This is SO COOL! I've often wondered how the whole map fits together.

[@artyomkennedy8894]

oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!!!!

[@K774]

Amazing stuff, i like how city 10 and 11 is in every version you showed it seemingly eluded deletion from any version of the game, i'm guessing mainly because of its naming which is probably also named so because of the segment/tile set it used to be part of, where i guess other stuff that was off to the side like the test rooms, movie rooms or fire glyph demo area were probably more aptly named so they knew to delete those parts later on because they knew they weren't part of any of main game area.

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

Thank you. Yes, that's my theory about city10/11 as well.

[@psychokiller8844]

Is this gonna be a new game like a remake of soul reaver 1??

[@kylepherson1951]

Great work, Ben. Looks awesome. Can't wait to see more!

[@BobMarleyChiti]

As long as single one of us stands ( We LOK fans ) we are legion.

[@GamerRoman]

Awesome stuff.

[@richardlllbuzas]

Beautiful work

[@NachozMan]

WOW I never knew something like this existed. SUBSCRIBED! I love content like this

[@CarlozPlay]

Hope can I play it again. Thank you for doin this. If you travel to Lima i ll give u a Chifa

[@YucchiNyan]

Amazing!

[@freddyfazbearstm3129]

This will be soooooo much helpful on my minecraft map! Thanks so much!

[@megamaverickhunterx]

I need! I...just need!

[@Revenant88x]

doing gods work

[@bluemonster9149]

Nice work/video and very interesting stuff about the 3D map in the spectral-/material-realm! ;)

[@Zoki4444]

Damn man, great job.

[@MU-oi1su]

Thanks for sharing this!

[@wallywarning8687]

I love it!

[@xell4701]

This is fantastic work, will you be doing stuff like this with the other games in the series. I’d love to see deleted content from SR2

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

It's something I'd like to do, yes.

[@Alucardko]

omg this is amazing. PD: what is the quest for melchiah?

[@ChernabogNosgoth]

www.thelostworlds.net/SR1/The_Quest_for_Melchiah.html

[@MCcreedLP]

Dude this is really cool 👍

[@e.featherfire1999]

It looks amazing, and a complicated work too, congratulations on that team effort. I wonder if you put every legacy of kain map, do they match up? or milenia of cataclysm has altered enough the land?

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

Thank you. I've compared the Blood Omen and Soul Reaver maps, and they're reasonably close in most places, but some things have been shifted around, no doubt due to the cataclysms :). The toolchain doesn't support Soul Reaver 2 or Defiance yet, but I'm curious how well those fit in for sure. The people that made the games cared a lot about consistency.

[@soulreaver1983]

Excellent video dude!☺👍

[@pixelslappa7948]

👍

[@rueceless7580]

Pretty sure Kings Field did the streaming its world thing first on the PS1? Still impressive what witchcraft the Soul Reaver team pulled to get that game looking so good on the PS1 though, love the channel!

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

Interesting! I'd never even heard of King's Field until now, but it seems as though you're right. I haven't found any details of how it works, but based on the look of that game, I assume it loads the game world in much larger pieces than Soul Reaver does.

[@rueceless7580]

@@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916 One of Fromsoft's first game series. They had big interconnected worlds and used a mix of slower movement speed and long connected hallways to mask their load times after you started the game. I remember soul reaver had some longer halls that I assume dd the same thing?

[@thiagopaulino5334]

Grande trabalho Ben, obrigado por compartilhar. Imagino que não deva ser fácil mas gostaria de pedir pra, que sempre que possível, que possa compartilhar essas informações em artigos no TLW porque alguns fãs, assim como eu, não dominam totalmente o inglês e artigos escritos são bem mais fácil de conseguirmos absorvermos toda a informação de suas descobertas e pesquisas. Obrigado e abraços aqui do Brasil.

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

Todo o novo conteúdo também estará em TLW. Eu estive tão ocupado trabalhando nisso que só tenho tempo para alguns vídeos, mas isso mudará ainda este ano :).

[@JD-jy7cg]

I Love This Channel!

[@angelvillagon295]

Please release this!!!!

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

It is released now: www.thelostworlds.net/Software/Soul_Reaver_to_Blender_Conversion_Toolchain.html

[@malek9494]

An incredible job. Like

[@KhydroDjent]

MOAR CONTENT

[@duchham]

My man

[@eck0wns]

Awesome stuff man

[@JamesCarmichael]

Good lord.

[@raziel2458]

To be honest, I always liked the lack of colour in Nosgoth; it makes the world more depressing, and it fits perfectly. But I got to admit that the colour effects of Vertex looks fine too.

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

I'm not adding anything that doesn't show up in the original game :).

[@thekinggamer488]

I always like dreamcast version of face kain and razial while ps2 look 3d and kinda weird and thanks for the hard work by the way do you have plans for dreamcast

[@ReversedFootage]

Damn this was only uploaded a month ago but it feels like it was longer than that. Any updates? Thank you for all your hard work for so many years!

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

Yes. I just released the first public version today. www.thelostworlds.net/Software/Soul_Reaver_to_Blender_Conversion_Toolchain.html

[@SecretLevel]

So good, thank you

[@Mordo-lg5fl]

Pregunta utilizaran los audios desechados? Ya que ahi varios tanto en ingles como en español

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

Estoy planeando incorporarlos, sí. No hablo español, por lo que la versión inicial solo estará en inglés, pero si otros fanáticos están interesados en traducir el contenido después de su publicación, creo que sería genial. Siempre me ha gustado ver a personas de todo el mundo interesadas en esta serie.

[@angelvillagon295]

Estaría genial que incorporaran los audios en español tambien!😱😱😱😱

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

@@angelvillagon295 Me encantaría verlo en todos los idiomas.

[@kevinchatmajo]

@@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916 It would be very cool to see the deleted material in spanish, I wonder how that would work, Thank you for all your work !

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

@@kevinchatmajo If the Spanish version of Soul Reaver (SLES-02026) has localized versions of the deleted dialogue, it should be pretty easy to swap in to videos and whatnot. I'd just need someone who understood Spanish better than I do to make sure I was using actual translated deleted dialogue instead of "Este es un cuadro de diálogo de marcador de posición que prueba el micrófono." or similar.

[@ahmednagato135]

❤❤❤❤

[@control8617]

I didn’t understand. Are you going to make demo videos or work build games?

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

All will be revealed in time :).

[@galrocktherock6494]

So are you trying to recreate the games? I'm not the most tech savvy person but i grew up with LOK i would love to see them come back!

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

That would be a fun project, but it's way more than I have time to do. Have a look at Soul Revenant (kzbin.info/www/bejne/mXnIhqmNrcpjeqs) for something like that.

[@urbanslaughter19866]

Ja dis cool.

[@nightfallalicorn4246]

This video doesn't have enough likes.

[@ewwwt]

I really hope there is a way to play the game in dreamcast graphics, but with the deleted material present. that would be awesome! :)

[@karlosrolero]

Wow, I don't know so much about Blender and coding, but this tool might assist on making a "remake" someday, or at least a "play park" to visit all areas, right?

[@panterascuro8419]

New soul reaver creation?

[@Damien_Bathory]

The only reason these series are dead is because square enix is not doing anything with them for us fans we refuse to let it die its kinda sad that they only want to work on tomb raider which at this point has been so milked that the last game for me felt like playing the first two games from both ps3 or ps4 to conclude im sure many fans would buy legacy of kain if they continue kain's story since the pillar of balance was restored theres material to continue it new vampires could be created but they just are not doing anything with it

[@dreamcastvgabox3640]

Is it gon be on dreamcast

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

I don't know. It would certainly be fantastic if it were. We have way less information about the Dreamcast version to work with, though.

[@Lyendith]

4:11 Is it possible to spot the Turel territory and the Undercity in those maps…?

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

For the most part, no. There is one deleted part of the Citadel that you can see in those world maps, which is city10 and city11. they were placed where city20 is in the final version of the game, and would have led to the Undercity. In the world maps in this video, it's the tunnel connected to a tower that you can see to the southwest of the actual world map. There are some screenshots of what it looks like in the game here: www.thelostworlds.net/SR1/The_Undercity_and_The_Temple.html. In the 1999-05-12, 1999-06-01, and 1999-06-10 prototype maps, the other areas you can see to the south of the world map in a few frames are the demo area (a slightly modified version of the Fire Glyph area), the push and test rooms (www.thelostworlds.net/SR1/The_Push_and_Test_Rooms.html), and, in the 1999-06-01/1999-06-10 prototypes only, the movie rooms (www.thelostworlds.net/SR1/Movie_Rooms.html). The toolchain can optionally place anything that's not linked to the main world map to the south of it in a grid pattern, which is what I had it do for those shots.

[@K774]

@@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916 so city 10 and 11 is still technically next to city 9, thought so because once i did go to city 10 and 11 and did some out of bounds exploring and i ended up i'm pretty sure in 9, it took me a bit to figure out and navigate with out its textures it but i found the wheel you turn to lower the water and the cut scene played took a while to find it though, this was a while back when i was very bored seeing if i could find anything, and since finding that i did come to the conclusion that 19 and 20 + mrlock 7&8 is what replaced 10 and 11 as the tunnel segments are almost identical with the open top and such, neat to find out i was right.

[@karolkarol9493]

wow ! first

[@julianbarrera6752]

Una pregunta: cuando liberaras mas información acerca de la versión alfa con el material eliminado?

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

Un poco más tarde este año.

[@Sentinal-VIII]

I wish i noe how i played LEGACY OF KAIN on the PSP emulator.

[@seanmorrison1579]

Does this mean this carry’s one from the other games or is it a remake of the old games and what if razieal and Kane excited coz I love this franchise

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

This is a tool for showing the game world from different versions of Soul Reaver.

[@seanmorrison1579]

Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds - Official aw awsome does this mean there is a new game in the works or

[@VladQuake]

Have you considered a Legacy of Kain VRchat world?

[@BobMarleyChiti]

Whoever voted thumbs down show yourself coward!. You must be sacrificed to restore the pillars.

[@SolidXHead]

No release date ?

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

"Later this year" is as specific as we're going to get. I know that's frustrating for some people, but it's the most accurate response we can give, since this is a fan project.

[@xxxtan806]

...

[@barricade8957]

Dude, get some cough drops. It sounds like you're gargling gravel.

[@wareforcoin5780]

That's just his voice. He sounds like that 100% of the time.

[@DistantTower]

This is awesome

[@nerosmith2578]

This looks amazing. If you can get it working in Blender with the Eevee render then it could be ported into UE4. Some textures could be updated, normal maps and dynamic lighting added. The game doesn't have that many character models so even redoing them or at least porting the ones from newer games would be reasonable. Replicating the gameplay well would take some effort but doable. I would love to help with Blender and UE4 if you are going that route. We could even add all the deleted content and the alternate ending!

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

If you haven't already, you may want to get in touch with the Soul Revenant (kzbin.info/www/bejne/mXnIhqmNrcpjeqs) team, because that's along the same lines as what they're doing, although they're also updating the terrain and object models as they go. IIRC, Raina used some of the same tools that I started with, but she assembled one version of the game world entirely by hand out of all those pieces. To get back to your original suggestion, though, the first preview was rendered with Eevee. I switched to Cycles for this one partly because I wanted actual raytracing, but also because with the way the toolchain currently handles materials, it's too much for Eevee even on my 3GB video card. I believe that can be optimized enough before the toolchain is released that it will all render in Eevee again, but even in a worst-case scenario, it will definitely render in Eevee if less than the entire world map is loaded in memory at once :).

[@nerosmith2578]

@@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916 Awesome, currently fixing my pc, but will get in touch with them asap, thank you for the info and video:)

[@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916]

The first public version is now available: www.thelostworlds.net/Software/Soul_Reaver_to_Blender_Conversion_Toolchain.html

[@nerosmith2578]

@@legacyofkainthelostworlds-4916 Thank you so much for posting that!