User:Mario

Hi! I'm Mario! I save princesses.

Okay, you probably know that. After all, I'm the most famous video game character that has appeared in more games than any other video game character. Yeah, people call me a personalityless attention hog and all, but I can't help it. Nintendo just tells me, "You gotta be here and you got to act like this and that", so I have to do that. It's kind of weird for somebody to be spending time here in Nookipedia instead of someplace like MarioWiki, but I'm glad I can devote some of my time in helping this wiki. Yes, I know that MarioWiki is more active than here, but the great thing is that people will spend more time getting to know each other because there are less people to devote energy to.

But, I don't mind my fame and all. After all, it carried to the Animal Crossing world! Wow! I don't believe it! My hat, nose, 'stache, and enemies and stuff are valued items. Even one villager admires me a lot. I have to say, I'm flattered. Good work, guys!

My first Animal Crossing game I've ever played is actually, but I haven't played it much. I also played, but I don't remember much from it. In September 2013, however, I got and became addicted to it. I use the female character in New Leaf. Don't ask.

Oh, I don't have any school and all (pssst, it's called "Community College"), so far, so most of the time, I'll be here. If I'm not out there talking to Toads, wiping the windows with Wario, or bashing Bowser, I'll be here. I'm also on the Nookipedia Discord as username "LeftyGreenMario" and my ID is #1421, and I'm known as LeftyGreenMario in other parts of the 'net. If you do recognize the username, well, I'll be happy to know!

When roleplaying goes terribly wrong
Don't believe whatever is shown below because these are lies.


 * Real name: Emilie
 * Age: 25
 * Gender: female
 * Heritage: U.S.A.nian, but with a French mother and Chinese father.
 * Residence: Los Angeles county, California.
 * Favorite character: Mario
 * Hand preference: left
 * English linguistic capabilities: none
 * Religion: None (I'm atheist)
 * Interests: birds, drawings, video games
 * Attention span: limited

Wiki work
http://www.mariowiki.com/images/b/be/Mario_%2798.png Wheee! http://www.mariowiki.com/images/a/af/Mario_Mugshot_%2798.gif I do the following in the wiki:
 * Review edits
 * Correct grammar and improve writing whenever possible
 * Remove any "you"s
 * Respond to article talk page (recent questions)
 * Create needed articles
 * Ask questions
 * Maintain trivia sections
 * Take and upload screenshots pertaining to
 * Take crap from the Prima e-guide and put it here. don't worry, it's not plagiarism
 * Remove speculative information

And, thanks to super patroller powers after eating a Patroller Mushroom, I'm able to do the additional things below:
 * Protect pages
 * Mark edits are patrolled
 * Delete unnecessary pages
 * Correct grammar and writing style on protected pages

I was also given an administrator mushroom as a Christmas gift of 2013 holidays, so I'm now able to do these things.
 * Block users with bad faithed-edits.
 * Restore deleted pages.
 * Move stuff without leaving a redirect.

Finally, after hard work and dedication, I have received a gift-wrapped plumber's special tool, given to only one of the most trustworthy plumbers (and janitors) in the business: the bureaucrat mushroom! It has enabled me to do the following:
 * Hide offensive revisions
 * Give other people expanded toolboxes!
 * And other good things as I'm going to find out very soon!

http://www.mariowiki.com/images/3/3b/Mario_DonkeyKongGB.png My to-do list includes the more specific things I may do:
 * Create furniture series articles. Organized this effort by reviving and overhauling Project Furniture.
 * Add missing museum descriptions for bugs and fish from New Leaf.
 * Revamp featured articles.
 * Tweak userboxes (and perhaps create new ones?)
 * Improve help pages and even create some!
 * Hope this page won't descend into wiki html hell.

Wariot®♪'s residents
Baby Luigi (who is actually the mayor) and I share this town, so yeah, we have the same villagers and all. And yeah, that's our actual town name.

My review on Animal Crossing: New Leaf
Oh, look what's the latest Animal Crossing game! This is the first game I played extensively. All I have to say is that I hope I'm not missing out so much that I can't be productive on this wiki. Anyway, I've been playing this game daily since it's out, and I share two saves with my sibling, Baby Luigi. Don't ask me why Luigi doesn't want to play. I think he played it once and his player got stung by some bees. Heh. I also told my bro that there are Boos in this game, so he's never touching this game again!

Anyway, instead of giving a lengthy review and constructing a wall of text, I make a summary of what I think of New Leaf.

The ugly
The verdict? 8.5/10

It's a good game, but I think it needs an extra oomph to differentiate it between itself and other games. Sure, being a mayor and all is nice, but you need more control. When Isabelle wants you to take a break, you can't do anything, which I find absolute baloney. Isabelle, you aren't the town mayor; you're just a secretary. Get back to work.

Anyway, the game does introduce many new items and bugs and fish to catch. It even introduces deep-sea diving. Still, it does have flaws that are carried over from what shouldn't ever be there in the first place. Grass erosion, I'm looking at you. Why would some feature from the weakest game in the series return in New Leaf? That's realism taken to an extreme. What's next, you have to take a shower or go to the restroom? Grass erosion can be handled much better, period. End of minirant.

The game is a good game. If you have patience and you love to manage a town, look no further than Animal Crossing: New Leaf. It's a great game. Just remember to play it at least once per day so your flowers won't wilt or your friends don't move away.

Getting furniture models (including refurbished ones) from New Leaf
You might have seen renders of customized furniture by me on the wiki. There's not much available models uploaded online, with the Models Resource having only a really limited selection of furniture models, and even then, the uploaded Alpine Series lacks the essential alternate textures. You might wonder how to acquire them. I'll document it how I got the models just so someone can find it more useful in the future.

You will need some competent knowledge with 3D models and image manipulation, however.

The best way to acquire the files is to extract a file partition from a New Leaf ROM, but you can also try other means to get it. Illegal means.


 * I've used a modded CFW Luma 3DS created with this guide, and the program I used is GodMode9 to dump an encrypted ROM, a .3ds file, which is around 769MB.
 * DLC updates are dumped similarly through GodMode9, though it dumped an decrypted .cia file.
 * To extract the .3ds file and create a file partition, I used HackingToolkit9DS.
 * The DLC update I dumped is decrypted, however (which the latest version of HackingToolkit can't extract), so I used an older version of HackingToolkit9DS.
 * Once it's extracted, the game's content is in the "ExtractedRomFS" folder. Since the files are in a game format, I used EveryFileExplorer to open some of the files (furniture models come in .bcres), but Ohana3DSRebirth works too.
 * EveryFileExplorer is used to extract .dae files (3D models), and it automatically extracts the textures. It can also view the models, and for most models, it will display what textures should look like, so you can refer to it to see any alpha information to preserve, and so on.
 * Custom textures are located in Ftr\Remake\Texture
 * Any 3D program, including Blender (which is free) and Maya (has a free student version), can then be used to view the .dae files, provided there's an extension for Collada (most 3D programs do have it).

Complications
Issues with translating from models built for a video game in an entirely different engine to a 3D program have eaten into my time preparing files for the upload. It's probably why more models aren't uploaded. From my experience, it requires knowing two different programs, and 3D programs aren't exactly the easiest thing to learn if you're not familiar with them. I do wish for faster and more efficient methods, especially dealing with the UVs.


 * The size of the furniture may be wild depending on the 3D program you use. When you import, you should try to import at a reasonable unit size. In Maya, the model imported was HUGE, so I had to convert units to kilometers.
 * BIGGEST PROBLEM: UVs will probably not display properly, as Animal Crossing uses a system where any UV points outside the 0,1 range are supposed to be over a mirrored version of the original 0,1 range. This saves a lot on triangles and texture resolution, which is great when you're optimizing a video game to run smoothly, but most 3D programs, such as Maya (the program I use) will display UVs outside the 0,1 range as repeated rather than mirrored. This is an example of what a furniture looks like when you initially import it, and this is the UV layout. The uploaded models to Models Resource do have a separate file of altered UVs, by the way.
 * I cannot find an option to try to mirror images outside the 0,1 range, even when searching the web (and of course I don't even know what the option is nor do am I aware of a technical term for flipped images outside the 0,1 range) though I believe 3DS Max may have a mirror option. However, I have tried using 3DS Max's mirror option for the pinball machine, and the display still wasn't accurate. Due to this, I use the slice tool in Maya to slice the problematic UV shells in half. Using the Shift hotkey helps snap cutting points to centers of edges while Shift+Ctrl are good making 90 degree cuts. When I'm done, I go in the UV editor, select the offending faces (which should be cut in half), flip them, and then try to overlap them with the correct faces as best as I can. I also have to move vertices away from the range borders or else there's pixel bleeding due to texture filtering (it'll show up as a seam which doesn't look so pretty).
 * Maya's isolate select (hotkey: Ctrl,1) helped a lot for me, as there are quite a lot of overlapping faces. Also, models aren't in one piece; Maya can let you double-click to select each element and you'll notice there's a lot of overlapping vertices and such.
 * Once I'm done doing the tedious work of fixing UVs, I must deal with the alpha of the textures. Exported textures are semi-transparent. For some models, in Maya, I can simply open the hypershade window and remove the transparency wire and the model is ready for render. For models that have a clear alpha (think of the 2D frills on lamps), however, I tend to use an advanced image editor that can edit the alpha channel (transparency), GIMP. I make a selection of what alpha channel I don't want to paint over, then I invert selection, and then I disable editing on RGB channels. I use a white paint to then cover the alpha channel. Simply deleting the alpha channel, not advisable, will create a black or white background layered underneath your texture, which will screw up the colors. When I made my selection and painted white and then export, I also import the alternate textures (keeping the selection) and then paint over it too, export; rinse and repeat.
 * Maya has weird display problems with textures with alpha information. The material that's already in the .dae file, I remove the transparency. In hypershade, I then have to create another material with the same ambient color (H:0; S:0, V:0.2) and max diffuse (1.0), and then input a file, which would be the proper alphas. I then select portions of the model that need alpha (again, i.e. 2D frills of a lamp) and the apply the new material.
 * I set up a camera in Maya. I also enable the rendering gate (not required, but makes getting proportions correct easier). This is to make furniture have mostly consistent angles and distances. In the rendering settings, I choose Maya Hardware 2.0 rather than the default Arnold (which requires to set up lights and stuff; it's also a more realistic rendering system but it's not appropriate for the low-poly, low-texture Animal Crossing models), set a resolution of 780x780, then I export with "Color Managed Image - View Transform Embedded" or else the gamma of the image will be off.
 * Then I do a quick "crop to content" in GIMP, replace the file with a cropped version, and then it's ready for upload.
 * And of course I make the edits.

Fortunately, I've discovered that a rendering program I've been using, Marmoset Toolbag 3, has the option to set UV tiling to "mirror" rather than "repeat", making this process a lot faster, while the renders themselves should be a bit nicer. I do hope this means I can get more furniture images out in the future.