Homebrew Help with Katamari Damacy models...?

[Choon555]

Hello!
I'm trying to make a simple Katamari-like game/engine in C for the 3DS (That's why I'm posting here),
and I've been trying to find 3D model rips of the PS2/PSP titles to actually make it look like something.
The thing is, there aren't any online and I couldn't find any way to rip them from the PSP title, which is the only one I have.
So I went ahead, dumped it, ran it in JPCSP and exported a scene in .obj with everything showing, however (pardon my most likely cringy 3D vocabulary) every face is independent, there are no common vertices to multiple faces which makes the whole thing unusable as is.
So my questions are:
-Any ideas on how to merge all those vertices?
-Is this the place to ask such things? (Sorry if it isn't)
-Is it legal to share an "exported scene" model online? And how about an individual model "cut out" from that model?

EDIT: Figured out the vertices part, turns out Blender has a "Remove doubles" tool.

Again, sorry if this is the wrong place for this, and thanks for reading!
(P.S.: Also my English may not be really good, it's not my mother language. So sorry about that too.)

 

[0x40]

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure sharing any game assets like that would be illegal. You'd have to make your own models or use free ones if you want to distribute that homebrew without breaking some copyright law.

 

[Roomsaver]

Hello!
I'm trying to make a simple Katamari-like game/engine in C for the 3DS (That's why I'm posting here),
and I've been trying to find 3D model rips of the PS2/PSP titles to actually make it look like something.
The thing is, there aren't any online and I couldn't find any way to rip them from the PSP title, which is the only one I have.
So I went ahead, dumped it, ran it in JPCSP and exported a scene in .obj with everything showing, however (pardon my most likely cringy 3D vocabulary) every face is independent, there are no common vertices to multiple faces which makes the whole thing unusable as is.
So my questions are:
-Any ideas on how to merge all those vertices?
-Is this the place to ask such things? (Sorry if it isn't)
-Is it legal to share an "exported scene" model online? And how about an individual model "cut out" from that model?

Again, sorry if this is the wrong place for this, and thanks for reading!
(P.S.: Also my English may not be really good, it's not my mother language. So sorry about that too.)

Could you not try to, like, weave them together in 3ds max or Blender?

 

[Choon555]

Could you not try to, like, weave them together in 3ds max or Blender?

Well I tried using blender, but I can't figure out how I could do it, since basically every vertices I would want to merge are at the exact same coordinates...

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure sharing any game assets like that would be illegal. You'd have to make your own models or use free ones if you want to distribute that homebrew without breaking some copyright law.

Well the thing is those models aren't quite game assets, are they? Considering they're basically "snapshots" of game assets from an actual frame of the game, that got me wondering to what extent game assets are still game assets.

 

[0x40]

Well the thing is those models aren't quite game assets, are they? Considering they're basically "snapshots" of game assets from an actual frame of the game, that got me wondering to what extent game assets are still game assets.

Not sure where exactly the line is drawn from just being a dereritive work covered by fair use to being copyright infringement, but I'm pretty sure you'd have to actually make your own versions of the assets to be able to use them in your game.