Torque Exporter Plug in for Blender
What's New for version 0.95
- Blender 2.44 and Python 2.5 compatibility.
- New GUI tab controls, rewrote GUI event handling code
- New "Materials" panel, material system rewrite. Features include:
- Additive and subtractive texture options
- Self Illuminating texture options
- Control of texture wrapping
- Support for scaling of detail maps
- Improved support of Environment mapping and reflectivity
- Reflectance Maps (partially supported in TGE)
- TGE "Bump" Maps (not supported in TGE)
- Improved control of mipmaping
- Users can now UV map multiple textures onto a single mesh
without assigning material indices
- Fixed refresh of output path when selecting a new destination
- Removed unused DTS version spinner from general panel
- Added a log error message when no shape marker is found
- Added a refresh button to the Armatures panel
- Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause the DTS file stream not to
close properly
- Fixed a crash bug when exporting collision meshes with zero
vertices
- Fixed exporter crash when exceeding max per-mesh dts triangle
count. Meshes that exceed the limit are now truncated and a
message is written to the log. Maximum triangle count is around
10,900.
- Reverted buggy optimizations to animation export code introduced
in version 0.94 that were resulting in mangled export of bones in some
cases, thanks go out to Scott Coursey for finding the problem.
- Fixed a problem with autobillboard detail levels that prevented
them from displaying when a collision or loscollision mesh is present,
thanks go out to Pho for finding and helping to diagnose the problem
- Fixed a bug in the ground transform export, thanks go out to
Duncan Gray for his help in finding and diagnosing the problem
- Added an option to the General tab to write the export log file
to the .dts output folder instead of the folder containing the .blend
file (on by default).
- Added the ability to have multiple materials that use the same
base texture. This is accomplished by adding
".IGNORE*" to the end of the blender image name (ex: "myTex.IGNORE01",
"myTex.png.IGNORE.001", etc.).
Just prior to export, the exporter will strip off the "IGNORE" portion
of the material name and anything after it. This allows for the
export
of multiple materials with the same (base texture) name, but different
properties. When generating a TSE (TGEA) material script for a
material containing "IGNORE", only the period delmited section starting
with "IGNORE" is stripped from the script material name. For
example,
"myTex.IGNORE.001" would generated a TGEA material called "myTex.001"
with a base texture of "myTex".
- Numerous bugfixes. Thanks go out to Duncan Gray, Adam
Wilson, and Pho. Additional thanks go out to James Urquhart for
writing the exporter in the first place and for suggestions in the user
interface thread. Thanks also go out to Todd "zaz" Koeckeritz and
Scott Coursey for suggestions and discussion in the user interface
thread. And to anyone else that I missed.
What's New for version 0.94
- Animation export code updated to work with the Blender 2.43 (is
still compatible with Blender 2.42 as well).
- Changed the bone grid control in the Armatures panel of the
exporter GUI into a scrollable list, and added wildcard matching to
turn bones on and off. Thanks go out to Todd Koeckeritz for
providing ideas and feedback for this.
- Added a new "Geometry Type" section to the general tab to replace
the old "triangle strip" section. New buttons allow the user to
choose between exporting single triangles, triangle lists, and triangle
strips. Defaults to single triangles.
- Better scrollbars in the exporter GUI, adjustments to the size of
the sequences list, changed coloring of sequence list items, and
general visual improvements all courtesy of Todd Koeckeritz.
- Fixed a problem with skinned meshes that caused a crash when
using a blender-exported dts in TGE as a static shape. Thanks go
out to Jari for finding and helping to diagnose the problem.
- Fixed erroneous collision mesh name console warning (must start
with "col") due to incorrect null mesh padding on visible detail level
objects. Thanks go out to Jari for finding the problem.
What's New for version 0.93
- Added a Built-in triangle stripper "QADTriStripper" (Quick
and Dirty Triangle Stripper)
- VTK Triangle stripping is also tested and working now.
- New Changed mesh export code to allow multiple triangles all
belonging to the same material group to be stored inside a single
"Triangles" (triangle list) primitive. Previously the exporter was
storing each tri in a separate primitive, resulting in tons of unneeded
gl calls.
- Added Vincent BILLET's storeCheck fix that allows larger shapes
to be exported.
- Changed the way collision meshes are exported. They are now
packed into the first subshape along with everything else.
- Added the ability to animate collision meshes. This is
accomplished by setting a "Copy Location" constraint on the mesh, with
an armature bone as a target. Make sure you are exporting the
constraint target bone or it won't work. Don't be surprised if
this doesn't work the way you want it to in Torque. The player
can collide with an animated mesh, but an animated mesh will not
collide with or push the player around. Play around with it
in-game before getting too fancy with it; you'll see what I mean.
Also, projectile collision with a mesh while it is animating is
unreliable. It seems to work OK once the mesh has stopped moving
though. Your millage may vary.
- Changed the way mesh normals are calculated, as per Alberto
Ganesh Barbati's suggestion.
- Fixed an exporter crash when exporting a mesh object with no
vertices.
- Fixed a bug that would under some conditions cause duplicate
objects to be exported.
- Fixed a bug in appendVertex that was causing incorrect geometry
to be exported.
- Fixed a bug that caused animated rigid meshes to have incorrect
offsets from their parent bones
- Fixed a small bug when writing exception tracebacks to the log
that manifests when a full version of python is not available
- Other small fixes
What's New for version 0.92
- Fixed broken animation export in Blender 2.42
- Added an updated version of Alberto Ganesh Barbati's set
smooth/set solid fix based on discussion in this thread:
http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=52384
- Bug fixes for ground frames
- The bounds mesh can now be animated by parenting it directly to a
bone. This allows much easier export of shapes with multiple
animations that must use ground frames.
- Added code to allow rigid mesh attachment to a node by parenting
a mesh directly to a blender bone. This performs better in TGE
and opengl in general if you don't need mesh deformations (for things
like machines, doors, vehicles, etc.)
- Fixed a bug that caused the exporter to crash under blender 2.42
when exporting an animation with a constraint influence channel.
- Added code that causes the exporter to dump the traceback to the
export log if an exception is thrown (courtesy of Alberto Ganesh
Barbati)
- Optimized hotspots in the exporter code for speed, export should
be somewhat faster now for a wide range of models.
- Fixed a crash bug when exporting a mesh with an empty material
slot.
- Other small fixes and enhancements
What's New for version 0.91
- Animation code rewritten. You can now create animations
using Inverse Kinematics (and other constraints) and export them
directly without needing to bake the actions first. It is highly
recommended that you use bones as your constraint targets rather than
empties. The constraint targets do not need to be exported.
- Bug fixes for detail maps and material properties.
- Fixed exporter crash when the action containing the reference
pose for a blend animation is deleted.
- The validity of the output path is now checked prior to
export. If the path is invalid (usually is for files that you
download from someone else), it is reset to the default path (the
folder containing your blend file).
- Fixed a bug that caused duplicate entries to be added to the
blend ref pose action pulldown when the sequence list was refreshed.
- Re-enabled GUI refresh while dragging, now you can see where you
are dragging the GUI to in real time.
- Fixed a bug that was causing newly added detail levels and
collision meshes not to show up in the export until Blender was
restarted.
- Collision meshes now ignore the double sided mesh flag, are
always single sided.
- Fixed an exporter crash that occured when the last Trigger for a
sequence was deleted.
- Fixed a bug that was causing trigger state values for exported
sequences to be incorrect.
- Other small fixes and enhancements.
What's New for version 0.90
- Blender 2.40 Compatibility, courtesy of Joseph Greenawalt, with
preliminary work done by Todd Koeckeritz.
- Level of Detail system rewrite, courtesy of James Urquhart.
Exported LODs work in the stock Torque Game Engine now without code
changes.
- Installer Scripts for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux, courtesy of
James Urquhart.
- Preliminary TSE material script support courtesy of James
Urquhart.
- Added the ability to choose output folder and file name for the
exported dts, courtesy of James Urquhart.
- Revamped GUI Courtesy of James Urquhart and Xen Amado, with
additional bug fixes by Joseph Greenawalt.
- Improved support for Blend animations by Joseph Greenawalt.
- Fixed armature transforms. Armatures can now be rotated,
scaled and translated in object mode without causing problems with the
exported dts. It is no longer necessary to apply size/rotation to your
armatures. Courtesy of Joseph Greenawalt.
- Fixed transforms on unparented bones. Animations of
unparented bones now work correctly without using the "dummy bone"
trick, courtesy of Joseph Greenawalt.
- Numerous other small fixes and enhancements.