Topic: Blender to .mod scripts are there any working?

[marstone]

Okay, not alot to report right now.  I spent my weekend taking my spagetti code and making it nice, then working out the glitches from the conversion to a nicer layout.  So, not much farther along, but in a good place to add the materials (need to add a new structure yet for holding the meshes), and it will be set to load LOD's tho not sure how you display that.  Also for working with break models (I hope).

This week working on the textures yet.  Hope to have that done soon.

[Bonk]

Awesome marstone! This will help a lot. (and open up the blender game engine for experimentation with sfc models...)

[marstone]

You know it almost took me as long to organize the code, as it did to write it in the first place.  Guess this is a good lesson not to spaghetti code to start with, as you are just doubling your time if you want to make it nice later.  But it is just to much fun to program that way to start with.

[Bonk]

I know exactly what you mean.

[marstone]

Question. How many pieces can you use in a break mod?

[Rod ONeal]

I don't know of any limit, but generally I limit it to 5 to 7. More than that and it can cause excessive lag if a lot of sh*te gets blowed up at once.

[Kreeargh]

Question. How many pieces can you use in a break mod?

Look at some stock model brks in gmax ? I wish i could help on this but i get more crashes of my vista pc the more i mess with the .mod format. I am so sick of this crashing issue  with the mod format i am about to quit all together.

[marstone]

Don't have the textures added yet, but reworked it so it will load in what I would assume is the LOD's, maybe the break models pieces, have to check  on how that is done yet.

Python doesn't use c++ style pointers so took awhile to learn how to use the python references 

[Bonk]

I wish i could help on this but i get more crashes of my vista pc the more i mess with the .mod format. I am so sick of this crashing issue  with the mod format i am about to quit all together.

What application is crashing? The Taldren mod viewer? Gmax? Milkshape? Max?

I have found that Vista has destabilised with recent updates. I have had three unrelatable blue screens of death in the last three months. XP might have done it to me once a year.

[atheorhaven]

I think I remember hearing way back when about 10-15 being a practical limit.. but that may have been a hardware limit due to older SFC1 era hardware.  I usually will do a maximum of 10 parts in a _brk.mod

[Tus-XC]

afaik there is no limit in the 3ds max script, that is not to say there isn't a limit in sfc in which the game crashes...

[Kreeargh]

I wish i could help on this but i get more crashes of my vista pc the more i mess with the .mod format. I am so sick of this crashing issue  with the mod format i am about to quit all together.

What application is crashing? The Taldren mod viewer? Gmax? Milkshape? Max?

I have found that Vista has destabilised with recent updates. I have had three unrelatable blue screens of death in the last three months. XP might have done it to me once a year.

Its explorer itself and the Taldren viewer, when i export to desktop from gmax some , not all mod files instantly crash windows. If i export to a folder it wont crash untill i open that folder to view the mod file. The pirate crashed the pc when i exported it to a folder this time, but it wont auto crash it through 2 folders. But the version with lower poly warps is just fine it dont crash the pc. Its wierd. Not just my files either, some stock sfc models crash the pc,it crashes when i view the models folder in stock sfc2 and other user created models do it also. I posted a pic of the crashes in the Pdn pirate thread.

[Bonk]

Try disabling McAfee and see what happens.

I have a story about MCAfee for you. A roughly $20,000 4 business day loss to McAfee. The communications software with the gas chromatograph - mass spectrometer system I was using was experiencing random communications errors resulting in an inability to run any samples reliably. (It was Win98 on a Dell Optiplex G1 or something - I still dread the machine), Tech flown in power monitors installed the works. It was McAfee interfering with serial communications!!!! ARG! Un-effing-believable. I have been extremely wary of McAfee ever since.

Give it a whirl, if you're worried, just shutdown, disconnect your internet cable from the computer, then startup, disable McAfee, reboot, and see if the undesirable behaviour persists. It shouldn't take long to test. However, be careful in disabling McAfee, it often says it is disabled but is not. (at least I have observed that behaviour) - temporarily disable any services run in its name in addition to it's internal "disable" features (prior to stopping the services). A little extra info there to help make for a valid test.

Mind you, my Vista install just bluescreened while watching youtube not twenty minutes ago. I'm running Microsoft Security Essentials only for AV type stuff currently.

[marstone]

okay, seeing a problem that Blender might have doing SFC models (actually importing MOD's).  From what I have read is that a mesh can only reference 16 materials, as each texture is on one material.  Blender would not be able to load a stock FCA as it has 32 textures, thus would use 32 materials (of which a mesh can only hold 16), checking to see if I can link two textures to one material (say the illum map to the normal texure) that way a FCA could be loaded.   Any hints from Blender users.

[FoaS_XC]

i have never heard of a program limiting the number of material IDs... this is new

[marstone]

from the docs.

materials
The mesh's materials. Each mesh can reference up to 16 materials. Empty slots in the mesh's list are represented by None. Note: Object.colbits needs to be set correctly for each object in order for these materials to be used instead of the object's materials.

I have seen some code that is set to copy just 16 materials to the mesh material list. 

[Kreeargh]

Try disabling McAfee and see what happens.

I have a story about MCAfee for you. A roughly $20,000 4 business day loss to McAfee. The communications software with the gas chromatograph - mass spectrometer system I was using was experiencing random communications errors resulting in an inability to run any samples reliably. (It was Win98 on a Dell Optiplex G1 or something - I still dread the machine), Tech flown in power monitors installed the works. It was McAfee interfering with serial communications!!!! ARG! Un-effing-believable. I have been extremely wary of McAfee ever since.

Give it a whirl, if you're worried, just shutdown, disconnect your internet cable from the computer, then startup, disable McAfee, reboot, and see if the undesirable behaviour persists. It shouldn't take long to test. However, be careful in disabling McAfee, it often says it is disabled but is not. (at least I have observed that behaviour) - temporarily disable any services run in its name in addition to it's internal "disable" features (prior to stopping the services). A little extra info there to help make for a valid test.

Mind you, my Vista install just bluescreened while watching youtube not twenty minutes ago. I'm running Microsoft Security Essentials only for AV type stuff currently.

Hmm  I just noticed some things that makes me think retirement is best for me .  I am years behind in the pc world.

[Bonk]

The road to hell... when will I ever learn. 

* Bonk shakes head

Reading up on mats in blender there now marstone.

[Bonk]

Um yeah, it appears blender only supports 16 materials per mesh.    How did we not catch that?

However, my stock fca has 12 textures. (+12 illumination maps). I don't know if I've ever seen a model with more than 16. (a random sampling of models in my SFC installs (EAW and OP) does not show any with more than 13)

That limitiation is not good though.

I think material nodes may be the solution. I just added 18 materials to a mesh with nodes and have added 18 textures to one of those materials... I just haven't figured out how to assign bitmaps to them yet! I recall figuring out texturing in blender before, I totally forget now.

[Bonk]

Muddling through it again now. Materials and textures are two different things. As far as I can tell a material can have unlimited textures associated with it and by using nodes one can have unlimited materials. At least that is currently how I think it works. More than sufficient complexity to plaster any surface with myriads of information. I just need to demonstrate it / work it out - to see if I'm right.