irrb 0.4 (Blender Exporter)

[pc0de]

yup, that's one of my specialties - looking/sounding like I know what I'm talking about.

[afecelis]

pc0de, your pipeline works fantastically/amazingly, superbly, no-word-to-describe-it greatly!!!!

I tried the level I created for deled's 2008 summer compo:
http://files.wildspad.com/afecelis/dele ... l_shot.jpg

And using deled's great obj exporter I was able to get my scene into blender without loosing any of the material info:

then, and after a long export process of all the objects, Iwalktest loaded it perfectly:



Then I loaded the scene in Irredit without any problems:


Now I'm darn happy but I got some questions/observations:

1. I normally use Gandaldf's b3d exporter to export my stuff from Blender and load it in Irrlicht. However, the b3d file loads in irredit as a single mesh whereas your exporter created 769 irrmeshes. What would be the advantage of one over the other? I kinda understand the suggestion done before of being able to export everything as a single mesh.
2. Materials must have their bitmap texture info set in an absolute path. If I change it in blender to be relative to the .blend's folder (by using // in the texture panel) I get errors of missing textures on the export process.
This is a pain, specially when you move your project to another computer. If the new computer has a different folder structure, all the texturing info gets lost. Can it be fixed to use relative paths too? (check screenies plz)
Full path:(no problem on export)

Relative path:(export problems, meshes without bitmap info):

3.When exporting with "binary" enabled, the resulting .irr file won't load in irredit. (dunno if it's a bug, or binary files are not to be loaded in irredit).
4. In simple scenes, some elements (like the floor) disappear when moving the camera: (small video)
http://files.wildspad.com/afecelis/irrl ... rb_err.zip
Maybe not an Irrb issue since the same thing happens when loading the scene in irredit.
5. Final question: things in irredit measure half the size of the original mesh in blender. Is the conversion process reducing the scale of things?
Also, in your tutorials you scale things up and down, is there need to "CTRL+A" to apply scale and rotation to the obdata? I mean,in order to get a 1:1 mesh size?

mmmm, no more obeservations! Just congratulations and a big "thank you" for your efforts. Looking forward to this project.

Can't wait to try the lightmapping tutorial!

regards,

Alvaro

[pc0de]

That's some nice work there afecelis - well done and thanks for the feedback.

1. ...as a single mesh whereas your exporter created 769 irrmeshes. What would be the advantage of one over the other? I kinda understand the suggestion done before of being able to export everything as a single mesh.

64k vertex limit (I believe Irrlicht now supports 32 bit indices), better performance related to frustum culling and dynamic lighting (if you use it). There are smarter people here that can give a better answer... I'll definitely be adding an option that allows you to control this.

2. ...I get errors of missing textures on the export process.

This is a bug on the list to fix.

3. When exporting with "binary" enabled...

The binary .irrbmesh file format is my own home brewed format. So unless irrEdit compiles it in, it won't recognize it. I wasn't going to push it as an extension until after I've had a go at animation. You can still use it today in your own Irrlicht application by following these instructions: Binary Mesh Format.

4. In simple scenes, some elements (like the floor) disappear...

Try setting the near plane of the Camera to .01 (In Blender: Camera -> Clipping -> Start). Also have a look at the bounding box of the floor to be sure it's what you'd expect (IWalkTest - F2 -> Toggle Debug, F5 -> Cycle Debug Data). If neither of those suggestions help, then I'd like to have a peek at the .blend file visible in the video you uploaded.

5. ...is there need to "CTRL+A" to apply scale and rotation to the obdata...

Not if the mesh is being loaded through the scene file (.irr) - which is where irrb saves the Blender scale and rotation info for each mesh. The .irrmesh file doesn't contain scale or rotation data so if you load the mesh directly into your app, you would need to either CTRL+A (apply) in Blender before exporting or, scale/rotate in your code after loading.

[afecelis]

whoa! nice info!

Thanks a bunch pc0de!
I'll try your suggestions out, and some other different stuff and let you know how things go.

Once more, thanks a lot for such a wonderful exporter, and please keep us updated with the project.

cheers,

Alvaro

PD. Thanks for the kind words about my work. Mercior is also using it as testbed for his RPG "sundren" (the night version I lightmapped in deled). He's using Irrlicht as graphic engine. You can watch a video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=440Okj_Yp9w

[m3ltd0wn]

very nice afecelis !!

i had the same problem with the textures, and finally i've edited all 170 meshes manually to use the textures i want

[GameDude]

This is cool, it looks like it will come in handy too

[afecelis]

Thanks m3ltd0wn
whoa! that must've taken quite some time!
Let's hope pc0de can fix the paths issue on next releases, or it will be fixing the paths for 769 meshes...one by one!!!!

regards,

Alvaro

[afecelis]

@pc0de: I'm giving your exporter a try in linux, but when trying to run "iwalktest" I get the following error:

Code: Select all

./iwalktest: error while loading shared libraries: libIrrKlang.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

In your tutorials you mention that even though Irrklang sound nodes are not yet supported, Irrklang must be installed. I got a copy of the latest 1.1.2c unzipped in my home account, it includes the .so libraries. I copied libIrrKlang.so to /usr/local/lib, but I still get the same error. I also tried placing it by the iwalktest executable (by the windows dlls) and it didn't work either.
Is there still a missing variable to be set for Irrklang? Or where should we copy this library to?

thanks in advance for any help.

regards,
Alvaro

ps. Iwalktest needs to have the "allow executing file as program" checkbox marked in its permissions in order to run properly, otherwise you'll get a "permission denied" message.

[pc0de]

@pc0de: I'm giving your exporter a try in linux...

Looks like you may be the 2nd person to have tested it on Linux...

If you copied libIrrKlang.so to /usr/local/lib then you need to be sure that directory is part of your shared library search path. Depending on your distribution - you may be able to add "/usr/local/lib" to /etc/ld.so.conf and then run ldconfig.

After you work that problem out, you're going to have another: I just noticed that I linked to the OIS shared library instead of the static one.

For irrb 0.3 I'm going to use a null sound driver and the static OIS library (also fix the iwalktest execute permission). Let me know if you can't wait til then, and I'll see what I can do about getting you libOIS-1.1.0.so.

[afecelis]

Great! Looking forward to testing 0.3 ASAP
Meanwhile, I'll try to fix my library issue.

I'm totally interested in trying out your exporter in Linux. With blender as modeling tool, and Irrlicht as 3d engine, your exporter would make me completely free!

regards, and thanks for looking into it.

Alvaro.

pd. I was reading a bit deeper the material documentation and there sure are lots of interesting things going on there!

ps. I posted this Irrklang error at its forums:
http://www.ambiera.at/forum/Blah.pl?m-1 ... /s-0/#num2

Will I be having problems on 64 bits when trying to use its libraries for Irrb?

[pc0de]

Will I be having problems on 64 bits when trying to use its libraries for Irrb?

Good question, I'll have to research building a 64 bit version of iwalktest as well as the possibility of running the 32 bit version under 64 bit Ubuntu. A cursory search shows a little promise for the latter option for an older version of Ubuntu.

Thanks again for your help with testing.

[Quillraven]

hi,

i got a problem with irrb plugin:

screenshots say more than 1000 words so:







i try to export a terrain (grid 100x100 with scale 20), 2 stencil buffers and 3 textures.

this one here:



what does that error try to tell me?

and btw on the irrb page there is a mistake imo

"The current version is 0.3. It may be downloaded from here:

irrb-0.2.zip "

shouldn't it be called irrb-0.3.zip?


edit:
i'm using vista ultimate 64bit

[pc0de]

Thanks for the good info Quillraven. I think this is related to the 64k index limit. Any chance that I can get a hold of your .blend file so I can test against it? If so, please "pack" your textures so they are also included inside of the .blend file.

Regarding ""The current version is 0.3. It may be..." - Sorry about that, I'm in the process of updating the wiki for 0.3 and did a search & replace on 0.2... I'll correct it until 0.3 is officially ready to go. Thanks.

[vermeer]

receive my kudos. A project like this sounds really great

I have been hoping this'd appear at some point ...

[Quillraven]

k here is the dl-link:

http://www.file-upload.net/download-132 ... n.rar.html

hope u can dl from that page.

@64k index limit:
i think i have 67723 or sthg like that. but i think that afecelis must have more with his medieval town?