Preview of the next Blender exporter

The place for artists, modellers, level designers et al to discuss their approaches for creating content for OGRE.
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reimpell
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Post by reimpell »

saluk wrote:What I was refering to was an option to be able to export to seperate material files based on what objects I'm exporting.
Yes, such an option should be available. It's on my todo list. However, my favourite solution is still having a database connection for the materials.
saluk wrote:Another issue I have is not being able to combine vertex coloring with uv textures.
Thank you reporting this issue. I had the false impression that this was already fixed.

It seems that Blender's materials system is going to change significantly with Blender 2.43. Therefore, I will probably have to recode large parts of the material export anyway. Unfortunately, I'm extremely short on spare time, at least until July next year, so any help is very welcome. The design goals are simple:
  • pluggable
  • the exported material should look as close as possible to the material displayed in Blender
  • do not reproduce functionality of Blender in the exporter
  • no additional conventions on Blender objects (e.g. naming conventions) in the default plug
  • no workarounds for BPy, patch BPy itself instead
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Feature Request!

Post by irrdev »

Feature Request!
Great Exporter... but there is a feature missing! I really miss how I could scale the mesh in the "old" exporter. Now I either have to scale in Blender(messy because the mesh gets so large that it isn't even visible at times!) or scale in code(slow for testing purposes and costly since I have to Normalise the Normals!). I don't think this would be a hard feature to add back in. It would be greatly appreciated. :wink:
Last edited by irrdev on Thu Dec 28, 2006 7:38 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by dede »

Recently I've tried to use this exporter and some problems occured. Model alone exports nicely, something goes wrong while exporting model + armature and action. I'm pretty newbie in skeletal animation, so propably I just made something wrong...
.
Here's command line output:
Compiled with Python version 2.4.
Checking for installed Python... got it!
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Modelowanie\Blender\.blender\scripts\BlenderExport\ogrepkg\gui.py", line 1928, in _buttonHandler
self.buttonEventDict[event].execute()
File "<string>", line 1722, in execute
File "<string>", line 1272, in export
File "C:\Modelowanie\Blender\.blender\scripts\BlenderExport\ogrepkg\meshexport
.py", line 857, in export
self.armatureExporter.export(dir, parentTransform, convertXML)
File "C:\Modelowanie\Blender\.blender\scripts\BlenderExport\ogrepkg\armatureex
port.py", line 438, in export
self._convertBoneHierarchy()
File "C:\Modelowanie\Blender\.blender\scripts\BlenderExport\ogrepkg\armatureex
port.py", line 524, in _convertBoneHierarchy
children.extend(bBone.children)
TypeError: iteration over non-sequence


Any help?
reimpell
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Post by reimpell »

dede wrote:ogrepkg\armatureexport.py", line 524, in _convertBoneHierarchy
children.extend(bBone.children)
TypeError: iteration over non-sequence
This code skips bones with the "deform" button disabled. I can't reproduce your problem using Blender 2.42 and the latest exporter.
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Post by Borundin »

First of all, thanks for this exporter!
Im planning to move over from AC3D to Blender and I wouldnt have come far without this tool.

Anyway Ive had some problems with the name of the generated mesh file. It seems that if I make a grid mesh, then rename the object to something it will still be exported as grid.mesh. I cant find any way to control the name of the mesh which is annoying. Is there any way to solve this?

Screenshot of log:
Image


Tried to solve this by changing one line in meshexport.py but Im unsure if this will cause other problems.
Can you see any problems with this patch?

Code: Select all

  833 	def __init__(self, bObject):
  834 		"""
  835 		"""
  836 		# mesh
  837 		self.bObject = bObject
  838 		self.name = self.bObject.getName() #  <----- instead of .getData(True)
Image : Image
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Post by jacmoe »

It's been too long since I had the time to do any Blendering, but I have a foggy notion of objects and meshes (instances) - check that you've changed the name of the object, and not the mesh. :wink:
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Post by Borundin »

Hmm, yes might be that. But as you can see in the screenshot the exporter itself says that the object is called "MovingPlatform" :cry:
Image : Image
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Post by reimpell »

Borundin wrote:Screenshot of log
This screenshot shows you that the object (OB) named "MovingPlatform" is processed. In Blender notation, this object has mesh obdata (ME) named "Grid" linked to it. So this mesh obdata is exported as OGRE entity with the same name. This is exactly how it is supposed to be. Of course, you can change the mesh name to whatever you like it to be in Blender.
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Post by Borundin »

Ahh thanks alot for clearing that up!
I really need to get to know Blender better :wink:
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Post by drummingpariah »

I have a rather serious problem with exporting my material/texture. I am unsure of where the problem lies, I'm under Windows XP, running both Blender2.42a and 2.43 (just released today). I have the most recent exporter (1.3, I believe). http://mail.google.com/mail/?realattid= ... 674cc8a7cd
*Sorry I can't get this link to work, I need some hosting space somewhere.*

This is the model I am working on, extremely simple, with a very simple texture.
I have the following settings upon export:
VcolLight = on
Texture = BlueDenim (the image I have)
Map Input = UV (and it is mapped across the model.
Map To = COL, Mix, white.

Copy Textures is on
OgreXMLConvert is on

After this, I have to run the .mesh.xml -> .mesh converter, correct?

This is a showstopping problem, we have Ogre up and running properly, a Blender and gimp suite up and running, and are finally incorporating our full game engine and event manager, but cannot load models in because they all render as being textureless and black.
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Post by reimpell »

drummingpariah wrote:I have the following settings upon export:
VcolLight = on
Texture = BlueDenim (the image I have)
Map Input = UV (and it is mapped across the model.
Map To = COL, Mix, white.
The material exporter may got confused by enabling unsupported material options. Please refer to the manual in the ogrehelp subfolder for your options. Please also check the exported .material and .mesh files to see what your exact problem is.
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Post by drummingpariah »

I'm going through the manual (which was suprisingly hard to find, as well as the actual export script), but it doesn't specifically say what is supported and unsupported for materials. I'm fairly competent in Blender, and decent in Python, but this exporter's a pretty big file. I also didn't realize that the .xml converter required that you have the converter installed and configured to be run, that could be a very useful addon for the next release. speaking of the next release, why not give it a version number? that would clear up a lot of the questions that come up. I'm going to see if i can add in the ifNoXML check to let the end user know if their XML converter is not being found, is there a good way to send it to you to have it included?

Also, the ancient version of this export script is included in ubuntu 6.10, it'd be nice to see it included in the Blender-tools package they offer. I'll get back on when I have new news, and specific XML that differs from the working model I have (robot) and the all-black one that I have(uber_lowpoly_char).
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Post by reimpell »

drummingpariah wrote:I'm going through the manual (which was suprisingly hard to find, as well as the actual export script), but it doesn't specifically say what is supported and unsupported for materials.
Well, I thought
Exporter manual wrote:Blender's material settings that affect the exported OGRE material are marked green.
along with some coloured screenshots of Blender's button panel would be clear at the first glance. Do you have any idea how to improve that? To find the manual, simply press the button "Help". Can you think of a more intuitive way?
drummingpariah wrote:why not give it a version number?
The exporter is part of OGRE. The current stable release is 1.2.5..
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Post by drummingpariah »

reimpell wrote:
drummingpariah wrote:I'm going through the manual (which was suprisingly hard to find, as well as the actual export script), but it doesn't specifically say what is supported and unsupported for materials.
Well, I thought
Exporter manual wrote:Blender's material settings that affect the exported OGRE material are marked green.
along with some coloured screenshots of Blender's button panel would be clear at the first glance. Do you have any idea how to improve that? To find the manual, simply press the button "Help". Can you think of a more intuitive way?
drummingpariah wrote:why not give it a version number?
The exporter is part of OGRE. The current stable release is 1.2.5..
Well, I ....


feel like quite an idiot now. I really did read through the manual, I've gone through what seems like every possible combination of buttons and modifications but still have no love in Ogre. As I've said previously, I do have a robot loading perfectly but textures do not show up still. It renders perfectly through blender, but not in the Blender Game Engine. I read that Blender Game Engine materials export directly to Ogre, so that could be it. I'm going to spend some time banging on that, trying to get a single working config. I guess that's all I'm looking for, is a default config that'll work to modify from.
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Post by CaseyB »

I had a similar problem and it turned out that I needed to press the "Tex Face" button.
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Post by reimpell »

drummingpariah wrote:I've gone through what seems like every possible combination of buttons and modifications but still have no love in Ogre.
Indeed, the plethora of material options along with the different notions of material (rendering, game engine) does not make things easy to start with. I would be very happy if someone could donate good (video) tutorials. However, I don't even have time to add the export of multiple texture coordinates right now. :cry:
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Post by drummingpariah »

reimpell wrote:Indeed, the plethora of material options along with the different notions of material (rendering, game engine) does not make things easy to start with. I would be very happy if someone could donate good (video) tutorials. However, I don't even have time to add the export of multiple texture coordinates right now. :cry:
I'm on it, because I love taking whatever part I can get. You can focus on maintaining your ultra-important exporter (at least to my project, it's ultra-important) and I'm going to dig into blender with more depth, find out exactly what the problem is here. I assume that if the materials/uvmapped textures do not show up in the Blender game engine, they probably won't show up after importing into Ogre or the MeshViewer program I have (which is essentially just Ogre). I'd like to see the Wiki populated a little better with this, possibly putting up the most recent Readme/Tutorial and any video tutorials available. Also, a screenshot of the settings (for each Blender + export windows) of a working exportable model.
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Post by hike1 »

I have a rather serious problem with exporting my material/texture
You can read my Blender tuts at http://terrymorgan.net/download.htm

search 'blender modeling', I don't have anything fancy
in materials, but they do show up in Dungeon Hack.
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Post by drummingpariah »

wow, you have quite a good collection of resources on that site. I'm bookmarking it now.
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Post by jacmoe »

drummingpariah wrote:wow, you have quite a good collection of resources on that site. I'm bookmarking it now.
I second that! :wink:

Actually, I find hike1's Blender section the best there is.
The finest collection of tutorials, HOWTOs and practical this-is-how-it's-done Blender/OGRE material, ever. :)

And I've looked all over the net..
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Post by hike1 »

I've looked at a lot of Blender animation tutorials, they seem mostly to be for rendered movies, not real time characters, the best one
I've found is the BSOD one with the little guy with the big eyes.

BSOD was always 'Blue Screen of Death' from the Windows NT days, just figured out
it was Blender summer of dox..


Also, here's one from 2001, which has '3ds max biped' type reusable animations.
http://www.meloware.com/blender/

Before I try to make Ogre meshes out of these,
what doesn't work? I heard that IK doesn't work in Ogre, you have to 'bake' the animations, etc. Is this correct, is there more, or have there been any changes included in the new exporter?
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Post by drummingpariah »

I did not need to "bake" my animations. If it's required, I think the exporter automatically does it. My simple run animation worked fine in-game.
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Post by JustinWalsh »

I just wanted to chime in that on mac OS X downloading the official 2.5 python and running the installer will painlessly upgrade your stock distribution of python, without any hacks or tricks.

Just checked out the preview release combined with python 2.5, blender 2.43, and Eihort RC2 Mac XMLConverter... Worked like a charm.
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Post by hike1 »

I'm trying to make a simple game character, I used the BSOD 'animate a character'
skeleton, no luck, turned it back to a straight skeleton,
she looks hosed, can anyone
help?

http://terrymorgan.net/betty.zip

213K

Using 242a, this exporter doesn't work in 243, that is, it
makes a .mesh/skel, but ceguimeshviewer won't load it.
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Post by ahkun »

Hi, I've got quite used to the older blender exporter, 'cos the friend that taught me spent more time on it than the new exporter, so excuse me if I seem a bit biased, as I ask for a few older features back.

I really liked the fact that in older blender exporter, it's possible to export multiple meshes while all pointing to the same armature (with "World Coordinates" button pressed), that's quite useful for exporting a character + his equipment. But the new exporter outputs a set of skeleton file for each mesh, even though in this case they are all the same. I have to edit each mesh.xml to make them point to the same skeleton file.

Also, why not bring back the option of "not" pose sampling animations without IK, 'cos blending localised animation with full-body animations is useful in real-time, plus it makes the output files of IK-less actions smaller.

I sometimes get a repetitive message
"vertex at index ### is not part of passed group...
vertex at index ### is not part of passed group...
vertex at index ### is not part of passed group..." when the exporter is writing to the mesh.xml file. It works out fine in ogre, but it just takes a long time to export a higher polygon count mesh. What am I doing wrong?
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