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Newcomers DBPro Corner / Blender model incompatablility

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aldoro101
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Posted: 3rd Jul 2014 22:56
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I'm having trouble importing and texturing Blender models (in the directX and .3DS formats). They appear to be inside-out and when I texture them with any sort of jpeg or bitmap, the model is only textured with one color. It's hard to describe, so you'd have to try it out to see what I mean. Is there any workaround for this issue or is Blender just completely incompatible with DBPro?

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Derek Darkly
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Posted: 4th Jul 2014 08:52
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I think Blender 2.49 (or thereabouts) had the last reliable Direct X exporter. Pretty sure there are 3rd party plugins that work for newer versions.

I don't think .3DS will load in DBPro, even though the help file says it can. I've attached a pretty decent .3DS to .X converter for you to try. (Not my app)

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TheComet
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Posted: 4th Jul 2014 13:11
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3ds loads fine in DBP. If you want to convert 3ds to X, DBP has a built in command called 3ds2x (I think).

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Rudolpho
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Posted: 4th Jul 2014 17:55
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Quote: " They appear to be inside-out and when I texture them with any sort of jpeg or bitmap, the model is only textured with one color. It's hard to describe, so you'd have to try it out to see what I mean."

Sounds like inversed normals and texture coordinates not being exported. Possibly the faces are in counter clockwise order instead of clockwise as a cause to the inside-out effect. As stated above, your exporter is probably at fault here.

Quote: "3ds loads fine in DBP. If you want to convert 3ds to X, DBP has a built in command called 3ds2x (I think)."

That command is only available in DBC, not DBP. Also I wouldn't say it "loads fine"; usually the loading time for 3DS meshes is ridiculous. Also I believe there might have been a change to the 3DS format in latter years that breaks DBPro's importer because trying to load some 3ds files most definately causes crashes.


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The Tall Man
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Posted: 4th Jul 2014 22:17 Edited at: 4th Jul 2014 22:28
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Well sometimes loading a single .3ds file would take 30-40 minutes. Best to save as a .dbo for later. Then it'll load again quickly.

I fixed the .3ds importer in the source code so it loads quickly. If someone would like to get the latest source code from the repository and compile DarkBasicPro with it, the fix should be there. I was working with DarkGDK, so I never tested it on DarkBasicPro, but they share the same source code. Here are download and build instructions. It (DarkBasicPro) does build, I just don't use DarkBasic, so I never tested the functionality of it. But again, since it shares the same source code as DarkGDK and it does work there, it should work for DarkBasicPro.

https://code.google.com/p/darkbasicpro/wiki/DownloadAndBuild

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Posted: 5th Jul 2014 18:34
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I used Blender 2.59 for all the modelling in Purple Complex and never had any problems exporting .x models, fully animated and textured, and loading them into DBPro.

Like Rudolpho say, you've probably got the normal pointing in the wrong direction. You can see the direction of the normal in blender by going into edit mode and selecting to display normal. You can then flip them if you need to.

As for the textures, it's possible you haven't unwrapped the model correctly.

Is there something you can upload so we can have a look?

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aldoro101
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Posted: 5th Jul 2014 21:56
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To clear any confusion, when I load any standard sort of model (such as Suzanne the Monkey in the standard objects section of Blender) it appears inside-out in DBPro. The current version of Blender I am using is 2.70a. As for a demonstration as to what is happening specifically... You would just have to download it and see what I mean. I activated the .x converters in the properties menu of Blender but the models appear inside-out no matter how I export them (be they .3DS or .X models).
This also happens when I open a .X or .3DS Blender model in the free downloadable 3D Object Viewer (that seems to have also been written in DBPro). I also had trouble with this in older versions a few years ago, but I can't remember which version I used specifically. I'd say it was a configuration error, but at the same time I had this problem on multiple computers in general.

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RonsWare
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Posted: 6th Jul 2014 15:32
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Maybe this helps a little.
We use Blender also and export the .X format.

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=209727&b=1

Cheers Ron.

Programming is learning
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RonsWare
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Posted: 6th Jul 2014 21:03
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@aldoro101

Maybe a stupid question

Do you Unwrap your model before Exporting to .X

We also set the Coordinates option from Generated to
UV on the right panel

We use version 2.69 of Blender
We have no problem at all with exporting to .X
We save (F3) the UV-Map to the same folder as the .X file.

Blender is a great Editor we like to use.

Hoop this helps.
Always glad to help

Cheers Ron.

Programming is learning
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Chris Tate
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Posted: 7th Jul 2014 22:17 Edited at: 7th Jul 2014 22:18
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I would advise not using Blender 2.70; I have found a number of problems with exporting to Direct X using this version. RonsWare is using 2.69, I am using 2.68 and can export sucessfully. You can install more than one version of Blender on the same machine, and use the older version for exporting.

As for the object being inside out, I can only imagine the normals are facing the wrong way in Blender. Use the flip normals tool and output the result. Inversed normals sometimes occur when one scales an object in negative force without realizing the effect.

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RonsWare
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Posted: 8th Aug 2014 14:33
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@aldoro101
Hi
Today we have tested Direct X 2.70 Blender Exporter.

[img]null[/img]

We have made a few objects, and indeed are the normals facing in the wrong direction.
We have then used the normal direction flip option on the right panel.



But unfortunately the problem is after this just partly solved.
Front view:



Top view:



As you can see the object seems to have holes.
The script file is not working at all

We are think the same as Chris use a slightly older version of blender.
2.69 works fine for us.
We made the same models over again with version 2.69 and no problem at all.

Note:
If you will try it your self.
Don't forget to select all faces in edit mode of the model before flipping the normals

Maybe we wil make a tutorial how to export Direct X models
with Blender 2.69
If anyone is interested.

Cheers Ron.

Programming is learning
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RonsWare
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Posted: 8th Aug 2014 14:58
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Almost forgotten
This is how the model must look like well exported.

Front view:



Top view:



This model is exportered with Blender 2.69

Cheers Ron.

Programming is learning
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chafari
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Posted: 8th Aug 2014 21:19
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Quote: "To clear any confusion, when I load any standard sort of model (such as Suzanne the Monkey in the standard objects section of Blender) it appears inside-out"



Last version 2.70 and 2.71 has this strange issue, but we can help it in many ways.

We could help it from Dbpro just using "set object cull my_obj,0 .
If you have 2.70 or 2.71 make a test with the monkey. Select object , go to Object mode/Edit mode ...press A to select all
then go to Mesh/Normals/Flip normals and export.

If you have version 2.69 and you prefer to use 2.71, just copy the whole folder from 2.69/scripts/addons/io_scene_x .

Enjoy it !

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RonsWare
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Posted: 8th Aug 2014 22:51
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@Chafari
Great , we did it thanks to you.
We used 2.71 the latest version and it was succesfully.
Copied the PY folder io_scene_x as you advised
Flipt the normals and it works
The model is exported correctly

A quick question if it is okay
Did you made any progress with exporting animated Direct x files ?
We are also very interested in animating our models.

Thanks again Great Friend

Cheers Ron.

Programming is learning
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chafari
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Posted: 8th Aug 2014 23:11
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@RonsWare

For the animated objects, I use Blender 2.49 (the best), as all new version just export static objects. Blender it ok to make all our scenary , and we can use even last version, but if we want to animate, we can download old version 2.49 and animate there. It works great !


Cheers.

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RonsWare
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Posted: 8th Aug 2014 23:22
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@Chafari
Start downloading version 2.49 for the animated models.
We create our scenary with 2.69 and now 2.71 using texture painting in Blender and Gimp to finish the textures.

We will try blender 2.49 for the animations.
Thanks for the usefull information.

Cheers Ron.

Programming is learning
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chafari
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Posted: 8th Aug 2014 23:34
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RonsWare. You are welcome !

This thread could help you at start.

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=209097&b=1

Cheers.

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RonsWare
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Posted: 9th Aug 2014 00:31
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@Chafari
This is a very usefull, i am also working on the rigging and skinning
of a low poly model.
I see you have made the armature differently.
The part of the pelvis
I will study your work.
i will keep de TGC community up to date with our progress

Great work my friend
How is your health these days ?

cheers Ron.

Programming is learning
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chafari
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Posted: 9th Aug 2014 06:20
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Quote: "How is your health these days ?"


I'm on the mend, at home with my family, a bit boring but OK . Thanks

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Ortu
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Posted: 20th Sep 2014 07:19 Edited at: 20th Sep 2014 07:19
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Quote: "For the animated objects, I use Blender 2.49 (the best), as all new version just export static objects. Blender it ok to make all our scenary , and we can use even last version, but if we want to animate, we can download old version 2.49 and animate there. It works great !
"


This is not correct. Here are the animation export settings in 2.69 and these work without issue:



*However* I personally prefer 2.66 for exporting animation as this was the last version to support the option 'export keyframes only' The export from 2.69 exports data for every single frame and creates files which are easily 3x - 4x or more the size of the same object exported from 2.66.

DBpro will interpolate frames automatically on its own given just the keyframe data so there is no actual difference between the full frames / keyframes only files other than filesize and load times.

2.66 and 2.69 seem to be fully compatible with each other and I commonly share a single .blend file between them without issue. Thus I do most of my work in 2.69 but do my exports from 2.66

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chafari
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Posted: 20th Sep 2014 12:06
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Quote: "This is not correct. Here are the animation export settings in 2.69 and these work without issue:"


I have to confess I had not seen some of the directx settings . That is why I always used the old Blender 2.49 to export my objects, being so tedious loading in 2.49 the new blend's because not compatibility . From now on, I will work every thing in new Blender 2.71 . thank you very much for your input, clarifying some configuration errors .

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Ortu
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Posted: 20th Sep 2014 18:23
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glad to help! now 2.49 is the last one that worked easily with sparky's collision. 2.5+ added an additional root frame transformation which causes the collidable data used by the plugin to be rotated differently than the actual visual appearance of the object rendered. this is fixable in 2.6x but requires some modification of the python export script. I will attach a copy when I get back home, but I highly recommend installing it to a new copy of the blender directory because it seems to have caused strange crash issues when running other scripts like adding a mesh to the scene. some issue in the way the modified script gets loaded perhaps, but the export works well enough. so I do work on the clean base copy and and use this modified copy for collision mesh exports only

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chafari
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Posted: 20th Sep 2014 18:39 Edited at: 20th Sep 2014 19:21
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Quote: "this is fixable in 2.6x but requires some modification of the python export script"


I didn't know that, as I only use to export rigged objects. I have done some little games in Blender, but I found it a bit slow, and exes are to big because we need part of phyton.


Edit Just tested now, and collision are not detected unless we flip normals , then it works correctly .

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Ortu
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Posted: 21st Sep 2014 00:09
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Interesting, I will have to try that, as it would be a lot simpler.

From what I could tell testing things out in game, it seemed that the collision data was rotated by 90 degrees on at least two axis. That is to say, more than just colliding with the wrong side of a face, I would collide with invisible things in empty space or pass completely through something visible without colliding at all.

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aldoro101
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Posted: 27th Oct 2014 07:51
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I gave up. This is too far beyond my ability to comprehend information.

Follow this thread if you know about Maya LT:
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=212464&b=7

If the people at Blender wanted me to use their product, it wouldn't be this hard to use it. It looks cool, but the fact still remains that this problem exists, persists, and thus makes it too benign to be used.
Sorry, but Blender should be a lot simpler and way more compatible than it is. I know not everything is supposed to be easy as pie, but 3D modeling is the one thing that should be because it's so complicated to begin with. If it miraculously becomes easy, simple, and bug-free (no compatibility issues) then I will use it again.
Thank you for your suggestions, but I don't think it is possible for me to use it in its current state.

Man everybody got aids n' $h1t.
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