blender and irrlicht

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 11:54 am

Hi. I usually use Blender and, with the new version (2.41), there are a lot of formats to save your meshes. What's the better? I mean, what format can I use to get most of the things I can do with Blender?
Besides, I've been working and what I get in Irrlicht is not what I do in Blender. I started with a simple cube and after saving it in a .x file, I get only "something" (not a cube at all) and I don't know where is the problem. I've tried some other things, as sphere and I don't get what I expect.

As you can see I like development, but I need at least some simple meshes to start.
Thanks.

dhenton9000 · Post by **dhenton9000** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:24 pm

if you seach the forums for blender, you'll find a BIG discussion about how the new 2.41 release didn't support .X export from blender. I've had a lot of success with .X from blender to irrlicht for 2.37a and an export script from Jox.

you can see my samples at http://s-fonline.com/webhosting/dhenton9000

The built in .x in 2.41 is rumored to work (so far I've had no luck), but the word seems to be to run the .x result through mview to clean it up.

HTH

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 2:53 pm

Thanks for your answer, and congratulations for your models. The dragon is much more than I think I'll ever get.
But, what about other formats? I'm not specially interested in the .x format. I only need one format to get in Irrlicht what I do in Blender. Any one. The reason is "no model, no game". I need a link between Blender and Irrlicht.
About the forum, I've read everything of the latter discussion about formats, but no one has the same problem that I have or I can't find the right thread.
Thanks again.

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 6:53 pm

dhenton, yet no luck?

Sorry if I forgot to check some thread...

have a lot of work lately

cant check forums much

you yet no luck with the x exporter?

I did, succesfully, just baking the anim to get my complex constraints (driven by empties) working in the export and not producing weirdness...

What do you refer then... ?

here it works...latest ben's, blender 2.41...

Now.

I hope to remember to check back here, lol, am a disaster.

elander · Post by **elander** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 7:08 pm

The latest version of the .x exporter and importer can be found here:

http://www.omariben.too.it/

Nick_Japan · Post by **Nick_Japan** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 2:42 am

Here are the formats I've been using between Blender and Irrlicht:

1) Static model, single texture: I just use the .obj exporter - useful early on when you just need test nodes that you know will work.

2) Static model, multiple textures: I've been using the .oct exporter from Murphy's mesh tools - if you search the forums there is some info and some links to get hold of them. Blender's .oct files can contain multiple meshes with different textures on them. The only early gotcha is that the exporter by default has a scale of 100 in it. If you open up the python script you can see it near the top - just change it to 1 so it lines up with other formats. Of course the other big plus is that you can use this format with FSRad to add lightmaps too.

3) Animated model, single texture: This x exporter for blender, which I haven't quite managed to get working properly yet, and is the last missing link in my workflow. There are a couple of things Vermeer's mentioned here and a new version which I haven't tried yet, but it's certainly the most promising way of getting something animated out of Blender and into Irrlicht. I'll report back if I managed to crack it!

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 8:30 am

Nick japan, and all :

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... 1003#71003

1) Kudos. OBJ is very actively supported by cambo.JMS plugins are very good too. OBJ is a great format for statics.

2) One more gotcha, the only thing that I see as bad of oct (I helped murphy a lot with the testings

) No smoothed normals. That is, you didn't notice any weirder thing as usually people do buildings with plain, straight wall. Load an spher in oct format, or a curved arc, or an spehric ceiling...You will seen the cuts.
BUT...What i don't get is...In other engines , comercial ones I worked for...You could easily just set smoothing normals, at any time, by code...Why can't this be done in irrlicht? If that is possible, is the only important low down of oct, and murphy made a great, great blender plugin which together with the oct viewer, is the closer one can get for a back and force wysiwyg.... the results give by fsrad this way inlight and shadows with ambience feel, are of vey hi quality. I can ensure. FSRAD, well handled, will allow automatic uv mapping, with no quirks, and no knowledge of the complex way of mapping for lightmaps, which is not very easy even for expert 3d artists.

3) With latest Blender 2.41 and Ben's latest, provided you first to nothing apply a ctrl+a to the mesh AND armature selected, and then, before starting animating create an action so that your animation will be contained it it, so that, no matter how much constraints and weird things you add, once you BAKE it, it all gets exported, and mview loads it with no problems I have solidly tested it to ensure while ben was to release it.

Very important, check this thread for this:

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... 1003#71003

but the steps must be read carefully.

Electron · Post by **Electron** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 12:43 pm

Irrlicht (iirc) doesn't compute smoothed normals. Functionality for it could be added fairly easily

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 6:51 pm

wow...

doesn't it?

I didn't know...

Lol, and me bugging murphy to add them...

Well, they really should be added.

Unless you refer to..not smoothing normals...but smoothgroups.. at least...All curved surfaces are seen in flat shading??
Lol, that happens when one(me) is just an artist mor einterested in middleware tools than other thing... XD

plasmatic · Post by **plasmatic** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 7:09 pm

How exactly do you bake textures in blender?

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 8:30 pm

Never did the try, but in my knowledge :

-an old vertex colors way. Force the material store the light as vertex colouring.
Hard pain in the... And not sure if any good really for real time 3d games..

- Texture to uv python script included in every blender build now. I guess is something also about vetrex colors. vertex colors issue is somewhere there must be huge subdivide to get th eradiosity think.I personally don't like that way, but would be long to explain.

-Macouno's raybaker. Who knows, it maybe is trusting in same principle, but anyway, is the one I see as more promising . Dig the python and plugins forums at elysiun, in a recent , very recent date, thread been updated. I'd use that if I werr to bake lighting into UV CHANNEL 1 , you don't have two uv channels yet in blender, though something I heared in the road of that...well.
Anyway, this way should work great with Mirphy's MIM tools. I'd just use raybaker to bake some ambient occlusion, well prepared and cared illumination, and bake to a texture applied in uv channel1.Unsure if it also made the UVs automatically for lightmap; most surely, but if not, surely can use cambo's archicad or something called so: actually an automatic unwrapper and packer, apropiate for this purpose.
Then, I'd export as OBJ with that bitmap applied to uv typical channel 1. And also do another export of the mesh as previously was, with it's texture (what you allways understand as the texture) This two objs , with their two mtl files, and they're two TGAs (or whatever the format) in same folder (very good habit) exported, are what you need to feed the OBJ2MIM ms dos command line tool of Murphy. It takes both OBJs, both mtls, both tetxures and builds a multiUV, lightmapped scene in that xml kind of for mat, perfectly ready to be loaded in irrlicht. It works perfectly I tested too many times.

I have not done any of this as I don't need it. Not only not usually into level editing other than by work, but also as I have Gile[s] purchased that exports me the 2 OBJs and stuff simply perfectly for mim tools.

B.lackhead · Post by **B.lackhead** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 8:47 pm

Blender is a very very good prog for most purposes.But with texturebaking it almost sucks. Braybaker works, but is -proof-of-concept- slow. For texture baking you might prolly be better off using some commercial soft like Max and Final Render. Most likely, with one of the next releases of Blender the Braybaker will be coded in Cpp giving us a useable speed. After this little step Blender will be more useful in ALL respects for Irrlicht users than the commercial competitors. As 3D software is not quite what we call intuitively evident, I find it ultimately helpful to have very good users forums like the ones for Blender.

Actually, I started modelling with Max and Milkshape (Max-like handling), but have access to Max only at work. Thats why I tried Blender and ended up using Blender for almost everything except the above mentioned.

Just my 2 rupees.

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 3:39 pm

I also acces max at work but..(and I'm proficient with it, and many other comercial and free packages)

After this little step Blender will be more useful in ALL respects for Irrlicht

I don't agree with that.

Autodesk alone has thousands of employees behind,working full day, full time, pressured by bosses all time. And I am afraid, there are loads of things that max can do which can't blender, besides several of the hi tech latest ones, are not even near the same feature in Max.

I'd agree already with most mid cost tools out there, while many years ago, I wouldn't have said it.

That said, I'm of the opinion Blender is the best free animator out there (but, my 2 euros, not the best modeler. Wings3d is there

)

Murphy · Post by **Murphy** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 4:44 am

vermeer wrote:2) One more gotcha, the only thing that I see as bad of oct (I helped murphy a lot with the testings ) No smoothed normals. That is, you didn't notice any weirder thing as usually people do buildings with plain, straight wall. Load an spher in oct format, or a curved arc, or an spehric ceiling...You will seen the cuts.
BUT...What i don't get is...In other engines , comercial ones I worked for...You could easily just set smoothing normals, at any time, by code...Why can't this be done in irrlicht? If that is possible, is the only important low down of oct, and murphy made a great, great blender plugin which together with the oct viewer, is the closer one can get for a back and force wysiwyg....

Right. Last time I worked with Irrlicht, it didn't have automatic vertex normal calculation. BUT, one of the last things I was working on was vertex normal calculation for OBJ2MIM, which would have let you add them (OCT2OBJ -> OBJ2MIM -> Irrlicht). If I can ever get back to this stuff, it'll show up.

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:25 pm

but...irlicht has smoothing normals(VN at obj), hasn't it?

Anyway, i am way more interested in your new lightmapper