Hatching-a-plan on 25/10/2007 at 21:23
Ok, so I've downloaded blender and been dinking around with it. The first obvious question that I have is this: How do I tell what my object will look like once I import it into Thief3ED. In other words, whats the conversion between UU and BlenderUnits. If I make a goblet that is 100 blender units tall how tall is that in terms of UU, or are things auto scaled once they are imported into Thief3ED? I'm really quite new to the world of custom objects and meshes so go easy on me.
CrackedGear on 25/10/2007 at 21:46
found this:
"I just read in another forum someone posted a related message back in March. He said 1 Unreal Unit equals 1 Blender Unit. But to make things managable size-wise in Blender, he makes meshes 1/100th the size and when he is done resizes it 100 times larger before the export to ASE."
based on what i've seen using the mesh for garrett this is about right, but that makes garrett about 6 foot 3.
Hatching-a-plan on 25/10/2007 at 21:54
sounds good.
Ziemanskye on 26/10/2007 at 17:01
Well, Garrett ought to be 96-100 UU tall, so at 16UU = 1 foot, that'd be about right.
(96 players height is the normal for Unreal Engine, but the top of the model and where the eyes are can be a couple of units out, and it can depend a little on the natural ingame pose - Garrett does kind of hunch a bit in TDS)
Hatching-a-plan on 26/10/2007 at 22:29
Well, after much reading and then a quick pencil drawing on some graph paper. A bunch of restarts and more reading and more restarts, I finally have a custom object. Now I just need to know how to import it into Thief3Ed and give it the ability to move the way I want it to. If someone knows how to do that and is willing to post it here that would be great. Otherwise I'm off to read between the lines or other poorly written tutorials:tsktsk:
Hatching-a-plan on 27/10/2007 at 15:46
Wow, mapping for this game is horrendous. So even though I know how to use blender (to some extent) and can make what I want to (with some proficiency) my biggest problem now is getting stuff from Blender into Thief3Ed. I've done some searching on the wide web as well as fleshworks and haven't found a damn thing that gives me some idea on how to do this. Ulukai did write a tutorial on how do to it with 3dsmax, which is well and all but doesn't help those not using that program. Edit: I forgot to say this the first go around, cause I also found a custom script written in python to be used with Blender that allows you to export as a .ASE file. However, there is one thing missing from both the site I dl'ed it and the zip file that I dl'ed and that is instructions on what to do with the file. I did a search on my computer for my Blender file install path only to find out it doesn't seem to have one. Which is pretty odd. So even though I have the custom script I can't use it. I think that it wouldn't matter anyways cause I think the version of Blender that you can download doesn't allow custom scripts. I could be wrong on this, and if anyone knows how to use custom scripts in Blender any information on it would be great.
On top of that it seems from what I've read that you need to use the texture packs already within thief3ed to texture your objects. This just begs more questions: 1.) If you want to use the textures already provided for you in thief3ed (I'm talking about the ones they used to texture their static meshes with) how do you access them and change them into a format that Blender can use? 2.) If you used a custom texture how do you import it along with your object so that thief3 can apply the texture accordingly. 3.) What if I want to use the tools available within blender to create my own custom texture (this is what I did for my first custom object because it got me the look I wanted)?
As a side note I will be compiling the information I glean and making a tutorial on Blender and how to do all the things I've learned. That is if it can accomplish what I want it to. :nono:
Hatching-a-plan on 27/10/2007 at 19:05
I really need someone to change the title of this thread, change it to something like "Blender Tutorial In The Works" or something along those lines. Cause it seems like at this point thats all this really is.
Updates: After more digging I found the answer to my question and I can now export my stuff as a .ASE file.
Questions Remaining to be answered: What do I need to do to ensure that the textures I used to texture my object will show up in Thief3ed?
Answers so far: I realize that the textures need to be in thief3ed, however I need to figure out how I can export any custom textures I make WITHIN blender into some sort of workable file that I can then IMPORT into thief3ed. Either that or I need to create a custom texture outside of blender then import it then package it and import it along with my object into thief3ed.
nomad of the pacific on 27/10/2007 at 19:08
I sincerely hope you can find a way to import objects from Blender into T3! It would help the community enormously. Unfortunately, so far we can only import using 3ds Max version 5.1 which you cannot buy or legally download. :tsktsk:
As for the textures, you can add new ones as long as they are in .dds format and you import them using, you guessed it, 3ds Max 5.1. :p Or you can do that WITHOUT using 3ds Max :sly: by getting the generic matlib file that has been floating around here (I forgot who distributed it.) and renaming your texture to the name of one of the textures included in the matlib. As far as converting textures to and from .dds, may I suggest Gimp. It's free and very good! :D
Ziemanskye on 27/10/2007 at 19:35
Community mostly died (or at least defected to Darkmod) before we worked out the file formats the game uses. Consequently, there is no way of moving things from Blender, or Maya, or Milkshapes or pretty much anything that is not 3DS Max 5 or 3DS Max 5.1*: Autodesk changed the plugin format at version 6, so any later versions don't work with the custom bits you need to work with, though I guess if there's someway to make Blender take Max plugins you might have some hope...
As for the "empty" matlib, it was str8g8 made it, I think.
And there's a Nvidia tool available somewhere on their site that creates dds files, or a plugin also there which works with PaintShopPro and PhotoShop, or you could google up a useful little toy called DDSConverter.
(* - note: you can still work in other things if you prefer them, but to get it into the game, you still need to go through Max 5/5.1 as far as anyone knows)
