Spurred by Keyla asking about motions, I figured we need more exporters for Blender.
http://whoopdedo.org/lgtoolkit-blender.zip
- Import/Export E files directly (no 3ds conversion)
- ImageMagick included for reading and writing GIF textures.
- Convert to and from BVH
One thing to keep in mind when animating is that you can't change the length of bones, and can only change the offset of the root bone. (Actually, that might not be true. The MI would seem to accept multiple offset components, but I've never seen a model that used it.) So after importing you should go through and lock the scale and offset boxes. It also helps to anchor the limbs so the head of each bone is connected to the adjoining tail. BVH doesn't do this automatically, so when you export the unconnected bones it dumps everything with location/rotation. Just don't anchor to torsos or things get weird.
I'll keep working on adding direct import/export. There's some minor inconsistencies with the quaternions I need to get straight.
By the way, if anyone has a Kinect, I saw someone made a mocap rig that writes BVH files.
Now this is good news!
I've been longing for a such exporter for quite some time now, I did contact Shadowspawn about it months ago too without any go, as he also were working on a similar one.
I'll download it ASAP to try it out and give some feedback if necessary.
Now why wasn't I told about this?
It's nice to see an alternative solution to my "stick man direction" problem with the motion editor. I'll have to take a look at this and see what I can do.
I tried many times installing the E-Plugin in different ways. It seems it doesn't works for me. Really want to know how to install it on WinXP-32 systems? Already read all informations in "Readme.txt". Blender-Version 2.59 already includes "Python 3.2", but "Python 3.2" is also installed seperately. Every time I get this warning message: event has invalid window!. I don't know if it is necessary to set a "pythonpath" or how it would be set correctly. There are only some few informations about Python-Version like 2.2 up to 2.6, but no one for 3.2. So I tried and tried for nothing. Admin; set "pythonpath" to key "C:\Python32;C\Python32\Lib;...etc". It seems to be impossible...No more ideas? Really want to getting start it.
Last edited by brush; 9th Dec 2011 at 05:42.
Brush,
Looking Glass Toolkit for Blender 2.5
1. Install Python 3.2.
http://python.org/download/
2. Install Blender 2.5.
http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/
3. Install the E plugin.
Copy "io_scene_e" to your Blender addons directory.
I have XP Pro 32-bit on my old comp and it works for me. I install first Phyton 3.2 and change the path installation to C:\Program Files\ and after that I installed Blender 2.61. Then, I copy E plugin in the path of Blender addons directory.
I hope this will help you.
After new installation of Python3.2 and Blender2.61 the Blender console displays: "found bundled python: C:\*\Blender2.61\2.61\python". That means for me Blender doesn't notice the main Python32. So it can only uses its own one.
Later, after installing the E-Plugin both menus (Import/Export) show "e-file (.e)", but the console get the warning-message: "event has invalid window!". After restarting Blender the E-plugin is autom. deactivated. What's about setting a "PYTHONPATH" to declare Phython32 as a public variable?
OT: There is also an addon called "DarkExporter" by Elenir. but temporary there is a problem caused by BlenderAPI. So I tried Blender2.59 at least.
http://www.bytehold.com/index.php/my...porter-problem
Last edited by brush; 2nd Jan 2012 at 21:14.
I wanted to make a pose (rather than a proper animation), but even so I found the motion editor too hard to work with, so I looked into this.
I couldn't get the Python scripts to run in Blender so I installed Python separately and ran them from the command prompt.
After a bit of trial and error, I found that the bvh import settings need to be Y forward and Z up, otherwise the exported motion is contorted.
Those aren't the default settings, but the bvh import script can be edited. Open up [blender folder]\[version number]\scripts\addons\io_anim_bvh\__init__.py
On line 121 change default='-Z' to default='Y'
Then, on line 133 change default='Y' to default='Z'
I'm working on a motion importer for 3dsmax and I'm having a hard time getting the right bone orientation. All the motions I load make no sense, as bones get randomly twisted. When I adjust the settings to work OKish for the legs, than the arms get contorted even more...
Could somebody who managed to import and export correctly some motions using the above script, do a screengrab of the bone structure with the axis orientation of each bone indicated?
Also I'm not sure if the rotation inheritance should be on for every bone in the skeleton or just for some of them? Or maybe for none of them..?
If anybody could answer these questions that would be a huge help. Thanks!
Would anyone be interested in a direct static model .bin import/export addon? I'm writing one now (https://sourceforge.net/projects/blenderbitsbobs/files/), and I tried advertising it at darkfate.org, only to find that not a soul gives a toss over there.
Maybe someone at TTLG cares?
Any tool that simplifies the process is welcome, but a while ago I wrote a program that uses the existing tools, but automates the process of finding the best bin file (user's obj folder, ep.crf or original crfs) and then finding the best textures using the same rules. And for Blender those textures have to be converted because it doesn't support gif.
Thanks. I'll make a dedicated post when the tool is feature-complete.Originally Posted by R Soul
Bump!
I've been updating this for Blender 2.8 and it seems to be going well. I've tested it on an AI mesh and an object with multiple parts, with a mixture of texture and RGB materials.
Most material properties are handled with custom properties. I'd have preferred to have used Blender material properties but there's some awkward inconsistency between what's allowed in Thief and what available in Blender. The only decent match is the texture/RGB colour.
Using custom properties allows everything else to be kept in one place. The only drawbacks are that the user has to know the correct names and permitted ranges of values.
The other thing is texture conversion.
Importing: Blender doesn't support .gif or .pcx, but the inbuilt function for loading images has a semi-automatic way of handling unsupported formats. It can detect when an image is unsupported but the the programmer has to specify a function to run if such an image is found. The existing code for this addon already has a working function. I've also modified the image search code to look for .dds, then .png etc, the same as NewDark. It allows allows .jpg in case someone has that format in their bin to e workflow.
The original version of this addon had a checkbox options for converting images during import/export but I've removed them because there's no reason for them. Blender cannot load a dummy texture (but it can make a blank placeholder but there's nothing to be gained from that), and NewDark disregards texture extensions so it doesn't matter what ends up in the .bin file.
Next things:
* Axles are imported as two vertices only, with no line. It would look better with a line.
* It would be nice to integrate BSP in to this so we have a 1 click export. Blender can already called command line programs (this is how the Dark Exporter works, using N3ds2e and BSP)
- It should also be possible to use bintoe to do things the other way, but the process of getting the right textures will be more tricky. And I already have a program for doing all that: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=141601 (I could do with modifying that to ignore the 3ds conversion)
Some opinions required.
It's now at the state where calls BSP and generates a .bin file. That bit has been more or less copied from the Dark Exporter, and I'll be doing the same with the ability to copy the file and delete the temporary ones. I've also allowed for up to 5 game directories - the thinking being that the user may have several FMs in progress (or a main one, and other for testing things).
Here's a screenshot of the current export options:
http://catmanofiowa.com/RSoul/img/tooltip.jpg
Is that a good balance between flexibility and complexity?
The other required opinion is on whether or not the name is good. So far I'm calling it the Blender NewDark Toolkit. It has a github page here
Edit: The BSP feature is working. It also copies to your game dir with an option to delete the temp files. Textures are also copied, and there's an option to choose how to handle replacing files (do or do not) or not to copy anything. The latter option would be useful if you're only using original textures (or EP textures) which don't need to be in txt16.
https://github.com/RSoul82/Blender-NewDark-Toolkit
(Clone or Download button - Download as zip)
Last edited by R Soul; 6th Jul 2019 at 19:49.
I don't know enough yet to comment but I'm posting for 1, to bump it so people see new message again, and 2 to thank you for your work; it will come in handy when I'm ready to tackle this part.
I think a combobox would be the best option, as it gives ability to add new paths and select them from a dropdown menu with variable number of items. Paths would be presumably stored in some kind of a user prefs file.
Setting an arbitrary number of paths only clutters the dialog and always poses a question - why not 6? or why not 8? Or maybe 3 is what 90% of people would need etc... There's never a right answer.
Advice appreciated. I've now implemented a drop down:
http://catmanofiowa.com/RSoul/img/dropdown.jpg
The config file text is like this:
"game_dirs": "C:\\Games\\Thief2\\FMs\\BGTest;c:\\something else;c:\\you get the idea",
(there are other items too, in the JSON format)
Looking good to me!
The addon's been ready for a while now, so I've made a readme to go with the rest of the files on github:
https://github.com/RSoul82/Blender-NewDark-Toolkit
I'm also making a new version of DEOCI with a nicer name, which also has the option to convert .bin files to .e rather than .3ds (.3ds conversion still there). I initially planned to just modify DEOCI but it was easier to start again (the assumption that a .3ds file would always be the target led so some things being difficult to change).
Last edited by R Soul; 27th Jul 2019 at 11:33.
I've just uploaded an update: AI meshes are now supported. It uses MeshBld.
There was already a texture copy option (always, only if not present, and never). None of those options are suitable if the object has a mixture of new and stock textures, so I've added a new feature:
If a material has a custom property called 'NoCopy', its texture will never be copied, regardless of the general texture copy option.
Thanks for your continued work on this, Robin! Maybe some day I will learn Blender so I can use it.
As with any program with more than one feature, the trick is to start small and focus on the procedure for generating output. Once you know how to make a .bin file, you can then free up your brain for more interesting things. For Dark Engine objects there are many things in Blender's interface that you can ignore.
Anyway,
I've updated the addon to fix a bug with the texture loading when importing objects (it was only working when 'texture search' was enabled)
Update:
Fixed bug: Illuminated materials were being set with the wrong variable, causing an error.
https://github.com/RSoul82/Blender-NewDark-Toolkit
Testing usually reveals most bugs, but putting things into practice also reveals things.
Update
Fixed bug for AI meshes that would interfere with multiple materials being assigned to a mesh.
Fixed bug with ILLUM being allowed in materials in the .e file, which causes an error with Meshbld which doesn't support that.
Update 2:
I've modified the script to call MeshUp to convert the mesh to v2, which allows transparency and illumination, but not via usual material properties. Instead we have to run MatTweak (another of Shadowspawn's tools) but the difficulty here is that it uses the console to ask for user input, one material at a time. Blender does have a console which the user can interact with, but by default it's turned off. The user can toggle it but I don't think it's good practice to rely on the user remembering to check that. I think I'll have it run MeshUp and then if any materials have transp or illum, use the status bar to tell the player to use MatTweak. I'd prefer it to be as 'one click' as possible but I suppose AI meshes with those material props are rare enough for it not to be a major problem.
Any opinions on the matter?
Bump.
I saw a bug where vertex coords with very small values would be incorrectly interpreted.
e.g 0.000002 would be written to the temporary .e file as 2e-6, which BSP would interpret as 2.
Files:
https://github.com/RSoul82/Blender-NewDark-Toolkit
The easiest way to update is as follows:
From the above link, go to Clone or Download, choose Zip.
In Blender, go to Edit > Preferences > Addons > Install and choose the downloaded zip as if it were a new addon. Existing files will be overwritten, and the config file will not be changed.
Once done, the downloaded zip files is no longer needed.
Last edited by R Soul; 29th Dec 2019 at 09:42.
I haven't upgraded to Blender 2.8 and currently use 2.79.
Will the updated NewDark Toolkit work with 2.79?
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