Using Blender to Create Jet 3D Resources

This project contains a number of utilities and scripts to export Blender 3D objects using the Blender Python API, and to format the exported data into Jet Indexed Mesh (*.IM) resource files.

Last Updated: 12/01/2001

Introduction

Auran's standard exporter works only with 3DS Max and Maya, which are fairly expensive tools, especially for hobbyists and niche game developers. Blender is a somewhat quirky but most interesting product which creates excellent models and, at the time of this writing, is free as a download.

Note: most of these utilities are written in Microsoft Visual C++ V6.0, and run only in the Windows environment. The Blender export script is written in Python, and should run on any version of Blender.

Current problems revolve around the facts that:

• Blender is a rapidly developing application which, at the time of this writing, has not provided access to all its internal data through its built-in Python interface. Therefore writing a true exporter is difficult.
  
  
• The Blender export script problem is complicated by the fact that the Python interface has been changing recently, and it's a bit difficult to predict the best way to get at the data that is available.
  
  
• Blender does not provide any Level of Detail (LOD) features that would be appropriate for a *.PM Progressive Mesh file. There may be generic algorithms we can use to work around this, but I do not know of any yet.
  
  
• This project cannot yet export Blender animation as I haven't gotten around to working with Jet's *.KIN animation files yet (someday, after textures, articulated meshes, and *.PM files, perhaps...).
  
  
• I'm only doing this as a hobby, so there are limited hours to spend on all this. That was one of the primary reasons to move development to SourceForge.net--to let others help in making all this work.

Note that the point of this project so far has been to experiment with these files to see what we can do. Therefore, these utilities are definitely not in a final polished form yet, and they often sacrifice elegance for expediency. We can fix them up where appropriate, of course, after they become useful.

Components

Initially, this project works with the following components:

• Blender Python export script.
  This script allows you to export the contents of your Blender files through the built-in Blender Python scripting facilities to a generic readable text file which we can manipulate as we see fit.
  
  
• Blender export file splitter application
  This utility splits the contents of the Blender export script into a series of individual export files representing individual 3D objects in your Jet environment. This allow you to use the same Blender components in multiple Jet objects with having to duplicate the components in Blender, and removes the requirement that you select just the objects you want to export for any given object.
  
  
• Blender file conversion application
  This utility reads a single export file created by the splitter and any workaround files needed to get the Blender data out of the Blender environment, and creates a properly formatted *.IM Indexed Mesh file to import the appropriate 3D object into the Jet environment. Note, if you can work with Visual C++ projects, you can modify this application to gather 3D modeling data from other sources than Blender, and adapt this project to other environments.
  
  
• The Example Project
  This page describes the example project used to develop the above utilities.

Note: I have not yet gotten the CVS system set up on SourceForge, but the source for all these components is available through downloadable zipped source files on this site's pages.