Blender Export File Splitter

This application reads the export file created by the Blender Export Script, and splits it into separate export files as defined in a separate text file that links internal Blender objects with the specific Jet Indexed Mesh we want to create. This allows you to use a single Blender object in multiple Indexed Mesh files without any duplication in Blender, and relieves you of having to select specific, often difficult to touch components each time you want to update your exported information.

Last updated: 12/01/2001

Status

08/30/01: This application appears to be fairly stable, but I have not used it on many different configurations. It's at that point where it does what I want to do now very well, and it needs to have someone else find all the broken parts. This is a very simple utility, so it shouldn't have very many problems.

09/23/01: Expanded to ignore the lamp and camera objects the Blender exporter can now export.

Known Problems

• Creating the control file is a manual process as it uses information that is not in Blender. The format is easy to follow, and most models will be fairly stable once all the parts are present, but it's still a manual process. Changing the details of your models in Blender does not require any changes in the splitter control file.
  
  
• The name of the control file is not automatically set, but the utility does default to a standard file name. You can put entries for multiple Blender files into one control file, so this should not be a major problem.
  
  
• This program only has a visual interface, so it would be difficult to work into a batch script environment.

Files

I have not yet succeeded in setting up a full SourceForge project, but I do have a zip file containing the files for this portion of the project. You can download the FileSplitter.zip files here. Note: this is a WinZip file, not a UNIX zip format. It contains pretty much the whole development project, which will be most useful to other developers. See the Example Project for information on how this program fits in with the other parts of the project.

Usage

This program reads through the output of the Blender Export script, defaulting to the standard BlenderExport.txt file name, splitting the exported 3D objects between a set of files defined in a separate control file named BlenderExportSplitCtrl.txt. The split control file contains the names of all the individual Blender export files, each related to a single Jet Indexed Mesh resource input file. The control file also lists the exported 3D objects that go into each export file. The split control file name is fixed, so it is a good idea to use multiple directories to development multiple sets of unrelated objects.

Usually, each 3D object would go into a single export file, but you can in fact include the same object in multiple output files. For example, the same box, bush, rock, or whatever could go into multiple landscape objects. Any 3D object not listed in the split control file will not go into any of the individual export files. This is very useful if you want to ignore test objects, models under construction, etc. Any listed object not found in the incoming export file will also be ignored. This allows you to use one control file for multiple sub-sections of a large project. This utility started out as a workaround for a version of Blender where I didn't know how to identify which objects were selected. After using it for a while, I found that this rather thought-free and easily repeated procedure was easier then manually selecting what to export over and over, so I have left it the project.

To use this utility:

• Run the Blender Export script to create the BlenderExport.txt file containing all the 3D objects.
• Execute the Splitter program. I usually use a shortcut to run it from the development Debug directory where VC++ builds it, and point the starting directory to where I build all my Blender to Jet files. Multiple icons can point to multiple Jet file locations.
• Enter the file to split, or find it with the Browse button. Usually, the default file name will be correct.
• Push Split files to create the individual export files.
• Push Exit to exit the program.

Please let me know when you find bugs. I'm trying to get this out as soon as possible to share with everybody interested, so it has not been exhaustively test yet (read "mostly works").