Yeah, I'm now fully convinced that it's excusively Adachi's Battle model that is rotated like this. No other battle model (Maragaret. Elizabeth, Naoto, Yosuke, Kanji etc) that I tested had this issue.
However, I did make a bit of progress!
So I decided to open both adachi's and maragaret's MDS in Notepad and comb through them to see if I could locate the difference between the models that was rotating adachi.
(I picked Margaret over Naoto because she'd be more similar to Adachi in structure as a fellow boss battle enemy.)
Turns out the culprit might just be a few of the "RotateZYX" values!
So I copy and pasted 4 of Margaret's RotateZYX Bone values over Adachi's, saved it, and used that .MDS to get a GMO.
Now when I try to add other character animations onto it?
Looking at Noesis, everything appears to be working. The model isn't rotating when it plays Naoto's animations.
Specifically these were the values, and this is what I did:
Change the RotateZYX values for 4 of Adachi's bones by opening up his .MDS file in a text editor.
Original rotation values that need to be changed:
Bone "adachi_root_Bone"
RotateZYX -0.000000 -0.000000 3.141593
Bone "rot_Bone"
RotateZYX 1.570796 -0.000000 -0.000000
Bone "body_Bone"
RotateZYX -0.000000 -0.000000 -0.000000
Bone "Bip01_Bone"
RotateZYX -1.570796 -0.000000 -1.570795
****Note: For "body_Bone" you may need to scroll down a bit to find the RotateZYX on this one, it's below like 200 rows of numbers. worst case use "ctrl+F" to search for it.
-Open up Maragaret's .MDS and copy, find the 4 Bones listed above, then copy and paste her specific Bone RotateZYX values over adachi's.
-Now they should look like this:
Bone "adachi_root_Bone"
RotateZYX 0.000000 0.000000 3.141593
Bone "rot_Bone"
RotateZYX 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
Bone "body_Bone"
RotateZYX 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
Bone "Bip01_Bone"
RotateZYX 0.000000 1.570795 0.000000
-Now save the .MDS and there we go. Adachi's little flipped problem is now fixed. He'll be perfectly compatible with other model's animations now.
(Technically I have no idea if ALL 4 of those NEED to be changed, but hell if I'm going to spend another minute on this but better safe than sorry!)
It only takes like 3 minutes to edit those 4 values in Adachi's .MDS file.
Now everything's fixed!
Or at least that's what I thought. Everything looked great in Noesis, BUT...
When it's in P3P there's one small problem:
When the model changes from an original adachi animation to an imported Naoto animation there's this brief second where the entire model lunges forward and rotates 90 degrees. Then it plays the imported animation normally. When the animation stops it again rotates 90 degrees briefly for a second, then returns to the original animation.
You can imagine how this looks when the model goes from standing idle to running, with that happening everytime.
-Quick clip showing this:
I was so close -it really seemed like I had it this time...
Did I miss changing one of the RotateZYX for the model parts? Or does it have more to do with some value under one of adachi's OG animations needing to be changed? This is clearly happening during some kind of 'inbetween/transistion' frame between animations...
Or maybe I just wasn't able to change ALL of the original rotation values fully...?
Either way, what I do think, is that while editing as many of the RotateZYX's I can find helps a bit, trying to rotate the model manually by editing a text file is probably a terrible substitute for just being able to open the model in a 3d editing program, flip it forward 90 degrees, and then export it back as a .GMO/.MDS file without screwing up the textures, animations, and bones...
Unfortunately, while I dabble with blender occasionally I've never been able to import, edit, and export a Persona character model back out without breaking it in some way
(actually made a post for help with exporting persona models from blender without breaking them like a year ago which sadly never really got resolved lol:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=858 )
SO, at this point I think I'm stuck until either:
1. Someone makes a guide on how to rotate a Persona 4 model 90 degrees and export it safely.
2. I just offer like 15$ to anyone that can rotate Adachi's battle model forward 90 degrees without breaking the bones/anims/textures. (seriously, why is only his battle model not of the same orientation as all the others??)...
(Actually, am I allowed to make an offer like that here?)
lol but yeah, that's about where I am.
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If anyone's interested, I'm going to include The PC adachi battle model I've tried rotating (the one showcased in my clip above), as well as the orignal un-edited one.
Naoto's and Maragaret's are also there:
https://ufile.io/f/9iqag
NOTE: if anyone decides to test the adachi.pac I provided, the animations are slightly out of order. I haven't bothered to re-order them with a tool yet because what's the point if I can't fix the model rotating like that first xD
The idle and running anims are in proper order though, and that's what I've been looking at when testing.
2xNOTE: I edited the title of the post because now we know this issue is not with P4G Converter but rather Adachi's batttle model/anims being rotated compared to all the others.