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Blender DTS Exporter 0.93 Released

Name:	Joseph Greenawalt
Date Posted:	Dec 26, 2006
Rating:	5.0 out of 5
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Blog post

A new 0.93 version of the Blender DTS Exporter for Torque has now been released.
The new version requires Blender 2.42.

You can download the new release at the exporter project page: projects.blender.org/frs/?group_id=95
Be sure to check the Readme.html file included with the exporter if you are a new user, or if you run into problems.

Many thanks go out to everybody who helped out with this release. Contributions are listed below.

What's New for version 0.93

Added a Built-in triangle stripper "QADTriStripper" (Quick and Dirty Triangle Stripper)
VTK Triangle stripping is also tested and working now.
Changed mesh export code to allow multiple triangles all belonging to the same material group to be stored inside a single "Triangles" (triangle list) primitive. Previously the exporter was storing each tri in a separate primitive, resulting in tons of unneeded gl calls.
Added Vincent BILLET's storeCheck fix that allows larger shapes to be exported.
Changed the way collision meshes are exported. They are now packed into the first subshape along with everything else.
Added the ability to animate collision meshes. This is accomplished by setting a "Copy Location" constraint on the mesh, with an armature bone as a target. Make sure you are exporting the constraint target bone or it won't work. Don't be surprised if this doesn't work the way you want it to in Torque. The player can collide with an animated mesh, but an animated mesh will not collide with or push the player around. Play around with it in-game before getting too fancy with it; you'll see what I mean. Also, projectile collision with a mesh while it is animating is unreliable. It seems to work OK once the mesh has stopped moving though. Your millage may vary.
Changed the way mesh normals are calculated, as per Alberto Ganesh Barbati's suggestion.
Fixed an exporter crash when exporting a mesh object with no vertices.
Fixed a bug that would under some conditions cause duplicate objects to be exported.
Fixed a bug in appendVertex that was causing incorrect geometry to be exported.
Fixed a bug that caused animated rigid meshes to have incorrect offsets from their parent bones.
Fixed a small bug when writing exception tracebacks to the log that manifests when a full version of python is not available.
Other small fixes

Recent Blog Posts

List:	04/10/08 - Blender DTS Exporter 0.96 Released 09/11/07 - Blender Orange Guy Now available 08/10/07 - Blender DTS Exporter 0.95 Released 02/04/07 - Blender DTS Exporter 0.94 Released 12/26/06 - Blender DTS Exporter 0.93 Released 11/25/06 - Blender DTS Exporter version 0.92 released 02/15/06 - Blender Exporter User interface Overview, more to come. 05/21/05 - Plan for Joseph Greenawalt

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James Urquhart (Dec 26, 2006 at 00:14 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Nice work, Joseph! :)

Joseph Greenawalt (Dec 26, 2006 at 14:21 GMT)

Thanks James :-)

Gustavo Munoz (Dec 26, 2006 at 16:33 GMT)

An excellent christmas present, thank you very much Joseph, again ;)

Vashner (Dec 27, 2006 at 15:48 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Rich tools for poor folks :)

Joseph Greenawalt (Dec 27, 2006 at 16:25 GMT)

Quote:
Rich tools for poor folks

Heh, I like that :-)

Ben Garney (Dec 28, 2006 at 01:54 GMT)

Ah, cool updates. This should make the blender exporter a lot nicer to use. :)

(Are all these changes making it back into TGE CVS?)

Joseph Greenawalt (Dec 28, 2006 at 03:09 GMT)

@Ben:
It might be kind of neat to have a newer version included with TGE/TSE. It might not be worth the trouble though, considering blender's constant API refactoring and rapid release cycle (the next blender release should be in about a month). Unless I misunderstood the question?

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