Prev/Next Blog
by date

Blender Exporter User interface Overview, more to come.

Name:	Joseph Greenawalt
Date Posted:	Feb 15, 2006
Rating:	4.9 out of 5
Public:	YES
Comments:	YES
RSS Feed:	or Subscribe with .
Profile Page:	View profile page for Joseph Greenawalt

Blog post

Blender DTS exporter animation code rewrite
I've spend the past few weeks working on a rewrite of animation code in the Blender DTS Exporter with the goal of allowing painless export of constraint based animations (read:IK support) using the new pose module that shipped with Blender 2.41. Most of that time can be best described as me beating my head up against various bugs in Blender. It's mostly working at this point, but still I've still got some hurdles to jump before it'll be ready for release. More on this later.

Blender DTS exporter User Interface Overview Documentation
Well, I needed a break from that for a bit, so I decided to write some documentation. I just completed the user interface overview, which can currently be found on TDN:
tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/DTS/Blender/Exporter_User_Interface_Overview

I'm also working on a complimentary series of mini-howtos covering the following topics:

How do I set up my model for export?
How do I set up an animated model for export?
How do I turn off double sided polygons?
How do I add a material to my Shape?
How do I export a material with a transparent or partially transparent texture?
How do I export a material with a reflectance map?
How do I export a material with a bump map?
How do I export a material with a detail map?
How do I create a parent/child relationship between objects in Blender?
How do I animate the visibility of my materials?
+ whatever else I can think of between now and then...

These documents (or reasonable facsimiles thereof) will eventually be rolled into a downloadable file and made available through the exporter project site.

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

Submit your own resources!

Charles B (Feb 15, 2006 at 16:03 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Joseph,

Thanks for all the good stuff!

Chris Labombard (Feb 15, 2006 at 16:21 GMT)

I decided not to use Blender because I couldnt figure out how to get the exporter to work at all. Are you goign to give a detailed and clear instruction on how to make it work in the first place ?

Terry (Feb 15, 2006 at 16:24 GMT)

Really good work, Joseph. I believe a lot of the motivation for people just getting started in the business is going to be easier content pipelines and good docs/tutorials. GG is really coming along well in this direction with all the contributions from the users and GG themselves (TDN is going to kick butt), and support like this for the third party market makes a lot of difference.

I would think a very large portion of the community that have moved into the video game field are like me, programmers with limited skills in content creation. This is where we struggle, and things like this really help in that area. And it's good to see GG constantly recognizing all the contributors here. Just in the year+ I've been around, I've really seen this community grow.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know your work is appreciated...

/Terry

Joseph Greenawalt (Feb 15, 2006 at 16:48 GMT)

Chris, can you go into more detail on exactly how it was not working?

Mike Bell (Feb 15, 2006 at 17:13 GMT) Resource Rating: 4

Chris, have a look at http://www.lowpolycoop.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8

lowpolycoop have a few really good blender tutorials, aimed specifically at using blender with Torque.

Jay Barnson (Feb 15, 2006 at 17:57 GMT)

Wow.

Joseph "takes a break" by writing docs. Dude, you rock. Thank you!

The exporter has been working great for me so far, but I haven't exported any animations yet.

Scott Hsu-Storaker (Feb 15, 2006 at 19:33 GMT)

To continue what Mike said, you are more than welcome to utilize and, if needed, update the tutorials from the co-op. Here's the link to the whole section:

http://www.lowpolycoop.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=9

It would be fantastic if they found a permanent home.

Scott

FruitBatInShades (Feb 15, 2006 at 21:27 GMT)

oooohhh, code, docs and tutorials......... yumm :)

James Urquhart (Feb 15, 2006 at 23:05 GMT)

Nice work, Joseph.

I know from experience that writing documentation can be boring and tedious, but keep up the good work! :)

Frogger (Feb 15, 2006 at 23:25 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Both you and James are the most helpful people I've met in this community. I'm glad that you both have dedicated so much time in getting this exporter to work efficiently with Torque, especially since the Blender is free, and many of the exporters for other programs aren't near as impressive, plus the fact that they often cost much more!

Keith Bores (Feb 16, 2006 at 02:53 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Joseph,

Thank you very much for making life easier for Blender Dudes and Dudettes! Whatever I can do to help email me.

The only thing I would like to see as a tutorial is how to setup LOD and setup a Torque skeleton (works with default DSQs and the Ragdoll Pack).
Edited on Feb 16, 2006 02:55 GMT

Vashner (Feb 16, 2006 at 09:58 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Dude wow. Hey how does that TSE materials work? Are we talking about the procedurals or custom shaders too? Thanks

Joseph Greenawalt (Feb 16, 2006 at 10:51 GMT)

@Randy:
It doesn't ;)
Right now the TSE material script option isn't doing anything with the shaders. Unless I've missed something, all it's doing is cycling through all the textures of your material and writing them all out as "baseTex" entries in the generated material script. I don't know much about TSE's material system so it may be a while before I can take an informed look at improving the support for it.
Edited on Feb 16, 2006 10:51 GMT

Vashner (Jan 18, 2007 at 05:09 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Just a note at the time I was shader noob. I realized you have to apply shaders as materials to the model textures.

You must be a member and be logged in to either append comments or rate this resource.