| W3D Blender [message #467704] |
Tue, 22 May 2012 12:08  |
yesfish
Messages: 16
Registered: May 2012
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I'm making a W3D blender suite that should enable Blender to become a legit way to author renegade content. This addon is planned to both import and export w3d files as well as render the materials in a way that's similar to the game engine.
Get "Revision A" import preview, and first code release!
https://github.com/huwpascoe/w3d_blender
canyon
glacier_flying
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[Updated on: Sun, 03 June 2012 07:10] Report message to a moderator |
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| Re: W3D Blender [message #467722 is a reply to message #467704] |
Tue, 22 May 2012 15:23  |
yesfish
Messages: 16
Registered: May 2012
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Both blender and max are annoying in different ways IMO. I'm doing this because it's fun. Maybe I'll make a 3dsmax9+ kit in future if it works out. : p
Progress tonight: Materials can have multiple textures. Material vertices don't blend - so they're actually per face, duplicating vertices at borders.
Looked into the duplicate materials. They seem to be perfect duplicates. My favourite test subject, the airstrip, has: concrete, tarmac, cement, lightmap, concrete, tarmac, cement, lightmap.
What's still not clear is why. I thought, maybe it duplicated for every shader, but then you have other models which have varying numbers of material pieces...perhaps it could even be RenX weirdness?
Something interesting though. Ignoring the duplicates, materials don't overlap... except for the lightmap, which blankets everything. Lightmaps could well be a special feature that they've just shoved in there, if that turns out to be the case then it can be treated as such.
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| Re: W3D Blender [message #467725 is a reply to message #467705] |
Tue, 22 May 2012 15:39 |
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Gen_Blacky
Messages: 3250
Registered: September 2006
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General (3 Stars) |
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| Omar007 wrote on Tue, 22 May 2012 12:33 |
I can't really help you here but I just have to say that that is really awesome!
I hope you get this working 
Now someone please help this guy 
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^
very cool yesfish I hope you see this project through. Do it for the lulz.
[Updated on: Tue, 22 May 2012 15:40] Report message to a moderator |
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| Re: W3D Blender [message #467743 is a reply to message #467717] |
Tue, 22 May 2012 17:14 |
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Mad Ivan
Messages: 513
Registered: February 2003
Location: United Kingdom
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Good luck with with this yesfish and keep us updated! I think jonwil and Saberhawk are the best people to talk with, when it comes to W3D 
| Aircraftkiller wrote on Tue, 22 May 2012 14:22 |
What benefits would Blender have over a pirated copy of 3DS Max 8? Blender's interface has always been annoying.
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IIRC, 3DS Max 8 uses MaxScript *only* for scripting. Blender and newer versions of Max (and Maya) support Python, which (apart from being a very lovely language and by what I can tell what yesfish is writing the W3D suite in) is widely used and easy to learn, so people making W3D content would have access to a pretty big database of free scripts (and could make some of their own, tbh).
I personally haven't tried Blender yet, and I'm not sure how it's features will interact with the W3D stuff, but depending on how yesfish pulls it off you could make use of the built-in game engine (which, I've been told, is the feature that makes it stick out, when compared to other modeling packages).
My LinkedIn profile
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| Re: W3D Blender [message #467750 is a reply to message #467704] |
Tue, 22 May 2012 20:49 |
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Mauler
Messages: 448
Registered: May 2003
Location: Alberta, Canada
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Cool stuff man! I would be very interested in a newer version of W3D tools for recent versions of Max. Keep up the good work
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| Re: W3D Blender [message #467850 is a reply to message #467704] |
Wed, 23 May 2012 19:04 |
yesfish
Messages: 16
Registered: May 2012
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Latest update.
99% sure the duplicate VERTEX_MATERIALS are an exporter quirk and can be ignored.
Here's the theory: Mesh is broken into triangle patches by duplicating vertices. Each patch gets its own custom layering.
every patch:
every pass:
vertex material link
shader link
texture link
uv map
All those links there are mix and match, you get a large sandwich of information. Which is great, if you're a game engine.
So I think the best way to get anything meaningful is to treat each uniquely layered patch as a separate material, on export, re-combine and sandwich everything. It seems this is how RenX works.
Will post further updates when I have something new to show. Probably by early next week.
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| Re: W3D Blender [message #468142 is a reply to message #467704] |
Tue, 29 May 2012 02:35 |
yesfish
Messages: 16
Registered: May 2012
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Seems that I lied, no images this time. It turned out to be a little more difficult and also life suddenly got busy but since last time I've managed to create a function that transforms all those layers into materials.
There are three rendering options which are simultaneously present to support different quality modes. Vertex Lit, multi-pass, multi-texture. Anyone know which is considered the 'best'? My instincts say multi-pass as it matches directly with RenX material editor. But multi-texture looks like it was added after multi-pass. Multi-texture is also a little weird, it could be an issue.
Plan of development from here:
processed materials to blender materials
uvmaps and vertex colors to blender
clean up code and make it a module
release first source preview
Second version should have object hierarchy, w3d exporting and hopefully some full GLSL previews of those w3d materials.
From there it's lights, all those other nodes and attributes and the final boss: vertex weights and animation.
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| Re: W3D Blender [message #468167 is a reply to message #467704] |
Tue, 29 May 2012 15:21 |
yesfish
Messages: 16
Registered: May 2012
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My documentation is this source code by Jonathan Wilson:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rentools/files/w3dview/
After studying the source for a few hours, I'd got 3D models loaded. Then I started on the materials and 2 weeks later, same place, lol. Figuring out Blender has taken the majority of the time of course as this gleaming open source API has worse documentation than a dead proprietary format.
Github is the hip place to be so yeah that's probably the best place.
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| Re: W3D Blender [message #468262 is a reply to message #467704] |
Fri, 01 June 2012 09:47 |
yesfish
Messages: 16
Registered: May 2012
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First preview will be ready next week I think.
See original post for latest screens.
Now samples passes into materials, UVMaps, vertex color maps, vertex alpha maps (not sure what to do with them so set white = transparent, black = opaque. might swap them in future), optionally ignore lightmaps, sorts hidden / VIS objects into layers and is a proper addon.
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| Re: W3D Blender [message #468291 is a reply to message #467704] |
Sat, 02 June 2012 01:57 |
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Distrbd21
Messages: 743
Registered: September 2008
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What does it matter if he is, adding more stuff to the game that is so old???
Live Your Life Not Some one Else's.| Sharing Is Caring
Cookie Jar<glome> Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?!
<content> glome stole the cookie from the cookie jar!
<glome> Who me?!
<content> Yes you!
<glome> Couldn't be!
<content> Then WHO?!!
<glome> Woody stole the cookie from the cookie jar!
*** glome has been kicked by DrWoody (fuck you i didn't touch the motherfucking cookie, bitch
Suicide<TB> I was depressed last night so I called the Suicide Life Line.
<TB> I reached a call center in Pakistan.
<TB> I told them I was suicidal.
<TB> They got all excited and asked if I could drive a truck
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| Re: W3D Blender [message #468317 is a reply to message #468142] |
Sat, 02 June 2012 20:10 |
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saberhawk
Messages: 1068
Registered: January 2006
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General (1 Star) |
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| yesfish wrote on Tue, 29 May 2012 02:35 |
There are three rendering options which are simultaneously present to support different quality modes. Vertex Lit, multi-pass, multi-texture. Anyone know which is considered the 'best'? My instincts say multi-pass as it matches directly with RenX material editor. But multi-texture looks like it was added after multi-pass. Multi-texture is also a little weird, it could be an issue.
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They are actually lighting modes and not exported from RenX. The WW workflow was to export something from "RenX" and bring it into a lightmapping tool (which wasn't released), calculate the lighting for the level and transform the bare material/shader/etc chunks into copies configured for each lighting type.
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| Re: W3D Blender [message #468803 is a reply to message #467704] |
Sat, 09 June 2012 11:06 |
yesfish
Messages: 16
Registered: May 2012
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Aha! So the HLOD is basically some magical botched resource puller. Mix that with aggregates and that's the complete picture...
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| Re: W3D Blender [message #469721 is a reply to message #467704] |
Sun, 24 June 2012 13:58 |
yesfish
Messages: 16
Registered: May 2012
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Stuck.
Importing, fine. Still need to do the object attributes and some material shader values. But you get a complete picture of the scene.
Exporting, even though wdump reveals a structure that's as standard as any mesh and even though you can then reimport the exported mesh into blender and it works FINE, open it in w3dviewer and watch the materials disappear.
And I'm sick of Blender's shitty API. Features you'd expect are missing, features that are there are hidden or undocumented or don't work the way they should. e.g. BMESH the new n-gons structure has a whole neat set of polygon splicing features, but can't even triangulate a mesh. And I'm going to have to add all this missing functionality myself if I want to finish this thing - but at this point I'm sick of the whole attempt. Getting Blender to work has been far worse than trying to get my head round W3D.
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