Normals reversed when mounting weapon?
by Teck Lee Tan · in Artist Corner · 01/19/2005 (8:25 pm) · 4 replies
Encountered an odd little problem tonight as I was messing with TSTPro and the Blender exporter. I modelled a Mossberg 590 stubby in Wings3D, exported to Blender, created the necessary empties, and exported to DTS. Now, viewing the model with torque.exe -mod show and loading the DTS in TSTPro both work fine, and the model shows up in all its untextured glory. Mounting the weapon, on the other hand (origin->mount0) causes the weapon to show up with all its normals flipped. I can't for the life of me figure out why this might be happening. I tried flipping the normals in Blender, which, unsurprisingly, only caused the reverse to happen.
Note that the default crossbow mounts without a problem.
edit:
Wait, that's odd. I saved the blender file (to upload, in case there was a setting I was missing), and re-exported to DTS, and now it shows up fine when mounted. Prior to this I hadn't saved the blender file (imported from Wings3D and left open). Could that have caused the problem (though I can't imagine why)?
Note that the default crossbow mounts without a problem.
edit:
Wait, that's odd. I saved the blender file (to upload, in case there was a setting I was missing), and re-exported to DTS, and now it shows up fine when mounted. Prior to this I hadn't saved the blender file (imported from Wings3D and left open). Could that have caused the problem (though I can't imagine why)?
#2
TSTPro gives me a chance to catch the problem before it shows up in a game. 8-)
01/21/2005 (3:36 pm)
I'm not sure what causes it, but sometimes I see funny behavior from models created in MilkShape if I run the DTS exporter before I save the MS3D file. For some reason, doing Export before Save sometimes screws up the skeleton, the mesh, and/or the animation, while doing Save before Export rarely if ever causes the problem. It sounds like Blender exhibits the same behavior.TSTPro gives me a chance to catch the problem before it shows up in a game. 8-)
#3
And David, I just want to congratulate you on the fantastic work you've done with the Show Tool. I'll likely pony up for the full version sometime this weekend. :)
01/21/2005 (4:01 pm)
So it looks like the export-before-save thing isn't solely confined to myself, or indeed to Blender. Odd little quibble, no?And David, I just want to congratulate you on the fantastic work you've done with the Show Tool. I'll likely pony up for the full version sometime this weekend. :)
#4
01/21/2005 (7:34 pm)
GameSpace suffers horrible skeleton extractions when saving BEFORE exporting the DTS setup, then reopening the file....very odd and unnerving behavior. I'll now have to look at the products of each more closely...thanks, I'd noticed very odd skeleton node location with an export, but when this same GameSpace file was exported to Milkshape, it's all hunky-dory....! Now, that's odd, :(. 
Associate David Wyand
Gnometech Inc.
I'd agree with your assessment that I'm not sure what saving in Blender would do, although I've never used Blender myself. I'm glad you got it working.
- LightWave Dave