Blender, direct x, RF2 and its file formats...

[MakerOfGames]

Hey, has anyone tried the blender to direct x converter? It is avaiable at http://development.mindfloaters.de/Dire ... d.8.0.html If this works then blender will be compatable with RF2. Irrlicht(and thus RF2) is/will be natively compatable with .x and many other formats.
(Following text copied directly from irrlicht website)
Currently supported mesh file formats:

3D Studio meshes (.3ds)
Alias Wavefront Maya (.obj)
Cartography shop 4 (.csm)
COLLADA (.xml, .dae)
DeleD (.dmf)
FSRad oct (.oct)
Microsoft DirectX (.x)
Milkshape (.ms3d)
My3DTools 3 (.my3D)
Pulsar LMTools (.lmts)
Quake 3 levels (.bsp)
Quake 2 models (.md2)
In addition, there are exporters for popular 3D packages (Blender, 3DSMax, Gile[s], ..) included in the SDK.

Of course, this shouldnt be counted on as working until we see how it interacts with RF2. I know trueGene is supposed to work for trueSpace but I havent gotten that to work yet. Just throwing out an idea.

The reason I am posting on this is because I cant get trueSpace 3.2 to do enough of what I want and I want to find an easy to use modeler that can do the cool advanced effects that are more up to date than 1997(tS 3.2 release year). From the looks of blender(havent downloaded yet) it seems like it can do most of what the new trueSpace, gameSpace, Maya, 3DS Max can.

Any comment on this thought about blender is welcome.

Oh yeah and if anyone needs a link to the irrlecht website to find out more about it here it is:http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/

[MakerOfGames]

To save you from reading a really long post and myself the hassel of editing my last one, Ill post again.

The reason I am looking at Blender and its possible compatibility with RF2 is because I know I will not be anywhere near ready in the immediate future to get models ready to plug into a test level. I am thinking very long term. So I am not implying in any way of a near future release of RF2 or of any timeframe for the release for RF2. Take your time AndyCR, and keep up the good work.

[AndyCR]

Blender will be the preferred modeling program for RF2. .X will, if there are no license issues (don't think there are), be the preferred format for RF2 animated meshes. RF2 will support all formats that Irrlicht does natively, unless I strip some little-used formats out to increase the engine's speed (saw that it worked wonders on the forum). The exception is .bsp and .md2, which it will not support because they are id formats.

[klocktower]

Greetings,

I think what you guys are doing here with Reality Factory is so awesome. I have been using it to prototype levels and characters of my own for a few months now. I am a professional game designer and I have a high interest of making indie games of my own. Without access to a team and a big budget Reality Factory is the perfect choice for me.

I have my own Maya seat and since I am fluent in that program I would love to be able to use it more for content creation (characters, levels, objects...). I haven't seen any threads here about Maya exporters, does anyone know of any that are available?

I find it likely that there will be a growing audience of experienced developers like myself who know how to make games and have access to high-end tools and want to use Reality Factory because it is so accessible. So thanks again for the work you are doing, I am a huge supporter!

[Coty]

Hey, has anyone tried the blender to direct x converter?

I can't remember. I may try later... I seem to remember not being able to load huge poly worlds into Blender using DirectX, but not sure.

Any comment on this thought about blender is welcome.

The biggest hangup I have with Blender is that it doesn't support lightmaps. I played with it last Winter along with several others, and I really liked it. You can use FSRad to add lightmaps though.

Deled is a pretty good level editor too. It supports lightmaps and has a Irrlicht plugin that lets you walk around in the maps. It's more simple, doesn't have all the bells and whistles as Blender, but the real time lightmapper is a big plus.

FSRad puts all the light data into one 'oct' file, which is nice, and has a Python plugin for Blender.

Another free lightmapper you may can use with Blender is 'Light Map Maker' from Windsoft.


Both of the above programs, Blender or Deled, would be nice world editors for RF2. If someone can't get the hang of Blender, Deled would be perfect for them.

Getic is working on an exporter for Irrlicht too, but that may be a while. He has a fairly nice world editor that uses a custom BSP that would be legal. If someone MUST have BSP convex shapes and can't use a modeler, they might could use that in the future.

DeleD _ Simple with Lightmapper and exporter.
Blender _ more complex, more options, no lightmapper.
Getic _ A 'legal' Quake style BSP world editor, no exporter for Irrlicht yet.

I would have a hard time deciding between Blender and Deled. On a scale of 1 -10, I give them both a 9.

[Coty]

Greetings,

I think what you guys are doing here with Reality Factory is so awesome. I have been using it to prototype levels and characters of my own for a few months now. I am a professional game designer and I have a high interest of making indie games of my own. Without access to a team and a big budget Reality Factory is the perfect choice for me.

I have my own Maya seat and since I am fluent in that program I would love to be able to use it more for content creation (characters, levels, objects...). I haven't seen any threads here about Maya exporters, does anyone know of any that are available?

I find it likely that there will be a growing audience of experienced developers like myself who know how to make games and have access to high-end tools and want to use Reality Factory because it is so accessible. So thanks again for the work you are doing, I am a huge supporter!

Reality Factory1 (this one) only has 2 programs with exporters that import models to it's custom 'act' format, 3DSM and Milkshape. People here use 3dsm mostly. They use a 'list text' feature of Gmax I think. Milkshape doesn't support weighted vertices.

RF2, the one they are working on for the future, supports many formats. Level mesh can be almost any format. I see Directx and Collada listed for Models with skeletons.

[MakerOfGames]

Havent read what others have posted recently here, but I post to say that blender 2.41(the latest version?) has a built in python exporting system. I have used the direct x and the .cob export feature and it exports the models properly(meaning I was able to import them back into blender fine.). The only issue I have is with rotation. When a .blend file is turned to a .cob(or other file I assume) and opened in another program the x y z rotation is not the same as it was in blender. This causes headaches untill someone can figure out the x y z rotations to apply to all models to get them to look right.(maybe I'll do that now.[going to find rotations for .cobs])

[Coty]

I only played with Blender a couple of days total. What I noticed most was that it didn't import the bones from a directx model file with a skeleton. Maybe this has changed. It doesn't seem to be very 'bone' friendly. I found it OK for creating worlds though. I think Deled would be better, but you don't have the source for that. Personally, I think I would use DeleD for worlds and Fragmotion for Models. That's just me though. Fragmotion can export to DirectX too. I didn't experiment with Blender enough to really give it a score. I was looking for a free (non bsp) world builder at the time. I hate working with convex shapes (squares). Blender was cool with it's grid snap and texture mapping. But it didn't have lightmapping, or saving the lightmap in textures. I think 'real-time' lighting would slow the computer down too much.

I believe Blender was using the Z-up axis . The grid would be running along the y plane. I seem to remember a function to change the axis in Blender, but I don't know where it is now.

[Coty]

Here would be a great lightmapper for Blender. It's the WindsSoft Light Map Maker I was talking about.

I still can't find the option to change the Blender orientation axis. Maybe I was thinking about another program. I sure thought I changed it in Blender though.

Good Luck