How to make a vehicle in Blender.

[alex dude]

How to make a vehicle with Blender
I'd just like to clarify; This is not a modeling tutorial. This is how to get a simple cube with joints in-game with collision.
Step 1 - Get blender 2.49b with the DTS exporter, thanks to Demian and his General Blender help thread for these download links!
Download link (32 Bit)
Download link (64 Bit)

If you are using a newer version of blender to create your model;

It's much easier to create your model in this version of blender linked in this topic, it saves A LOT of time.

Step 2 - Organise your files for your Vehicle Add-On, use some folders.
This is what I use for creating add-ons, but you can have yours laid out however you want.


Step 3 - Creating your vehicle

Before we make anything, we need to create these things in your vehicle folder:
description.txt
In this text document, include;

Code: [Select]

Title: Tutorial Vehicle
Author: Your Name
Description: Test!

A Zip file called Vehicle_Test
We can drag our finished files into here before putting it into our Add-Ons to test.

Step 5 - NOW WE MAKE THINGS
Now, if you haven't already; download Blender at the top of the page.

Save it somewhere where you can access it, now run the Blender.exe file to open Blender.
You should start with this interface;


Zoom out, (scroll) and delete the light and camera, we won't need them.
(to delete them, right click one and press delete on your keyboard)

Hit 3 on your numpad, it'll rotate your camera to the direction we want to start modeling with.
Now right click the cube and hit S (this scales the cube if you didn't know)
Hit Y for scaling on the y axis, and press the number 8 on your keyboard.
Hit S again and type .5, this halfs the scale of the vehicle.
Hit 7 on your numpad, this moves the view to the top.
You'll notice your vehicle isn't very wide, hit S, now hit X for the x axis, type 4.

You can middle mouse click, or use the numpad to look at what the vehicle looks like so far, currently it should look like a rectangular cube, shown below;



Now we are going to add things called empties, these will tell torque what goes into what; this is what a normal hierarchy of empties looks like:

• Shape - Is a parent to Detail32 and Col.
• Detail32 - Is a child to Shape This includes the model of the vehicle.
• Col - Is a child to Detail32. This includes the vehicle's collision box.

Hit Shift + A and select Add > Empty
Press ALT+G to reset it's location to the center.
Hit G, then hit Z, and press 1 on your keyboard.
Press Shift+D to duplicate the empty, press G and press Z, type 1.
Hit Shift+D again, press G once more, and press Z, now type 1 again.

Press A to deselect everything.
Your Empties should look like this:



Naming the empties.
Right Click the top Empty, press F7
Under "Object and Links", it should say "OB:" and then some text, click it and type Shape

Right Click the middle Empty and press F7
Under "Object and Links", it should say "OB:" and then some text, click it and type Detail32

Finally, Right Click the bottom Empty, press F7
Under "Object and Links", it should say "OB:" and then some text, click it and type Col

Hit A to deselect everything.

Parenting the empties.

Right Click the middle empty, "Detail32"
Hold Shift and Right Click the top empty, "Shape" (if you accidentally select your model, just press CTRL+Z)
Now, press CTRL+P to parent Detail32 to Shape.

Now that Detail32 is parented to shape, let's parent Col to Detail32.

Right Click the bottom empty, "Col".
Hold Shift and Right Click the middle empty "Detail32"
Once again, press CTRL+P to parent Col to Detail32.

To check if these are correctly parented, select the top one and press G to move it around, if the other empties move directly under it, you should have parented them correctly, if you are unsure what is parented to what, select an object and press F7, where it says "Par:" will be where the object's parent is. Press CTRL+Z to put them back.

Parenting the model to Detail32
Right Click the rectangular cube, Hold Shift and Right Click the middle empty.
Now press CTRL+P, the model should now be a child to detail32. To check, select the model and press F7.
Under "Par:", It should say Detail32.

Collision Box
This thing is simple to do, however it can be the cause of many game crashes when attempting to spawn the vehicle if it is done wrong.
THE RULES OF COLLISION BOXES
IT MUST BE convex.
IT CANNOT face inward(concave)



Alright, let's get started.
Right Click the rectangular cube/model and CTRL+D to duplicate it.
Hit ALT+P and select clear parent, we want it to be the child of Col, not Detail32. (col is not visible but detail32 is)
Hit 3 on your numpad.
Hit S, type 1.05 to make it slightly bigger than the model.
Shift+Rightclick the bottom empty (Col) and CTRL+P to parent it to Col0.

Right Click the collision box to select it, hit F7
Make sure OB: is called Col0
Hit F9, make sure ME: is also called Col0.

Let's now move the collision box to a new layer, Hit M; a move to layer box should appear.
Select the second left box (highlighted in red here)

Now click OK.
The collision box may appear like it has vanished, it is just in a different layer.

Step 6 - JOINTS, AAH.

Joints/Armatures

These allow you to set where people can sit, and where wheels are placed on your model, I attempted to create a diagram with the default jeep to show you what I mean.


Joint names for vehicles, from the Big List of tutorials
Front left tire = hub0
Front right tire = hub1
Rear left tire = hub2
Rear right tire = hub3
Driver = mount0
Passengers = mount1, mount2, mount3; ect..

LET US BEGIN JOINTING.

Shift+A, select Armature.
ALT+G to center it's location.
Hit G to grab the armature, now hit Z to move it on the Z axis (up and down)
Type .5 to move it just above the model, this is where the driver will sit.

Your Armature should look like this:


Naming the Armature
Make sure the armature is selected, hit F9 to go into the editing tab.
Press TAB, at the bottom right you should see "Selected Bones"; where it says "BO:Bone", click it; and type mount0
Under "Link and Materials", click "AR:" at the bottom left and type mount0

You have now correctly named the driver seat for the vehicle!
Let's parent this joint to detail32.

Parenting the Armature
Press TAB to come out of edit mode and into object mode.

Make sure the armature is selected, if it is not; right click it.
Hold Shift and Right Click the middle Empty (Detail32)
Hit CTRL+P to parent the joint to detail32.

You can now add any other armatures you want, if you want wheels, simply rotate the joint facing away from the vehicle and name it hub0, hub1, hub2, ect..

But for this vehicle, we do not need any wheels.

Step 7 - Exporting your model

Blockland likes DTS models. It's the format used for vehicles and weapons alike.
Thankfully, our version of blender has the DTS exporter pre-installed!

At the top left, hit File > Export > Torque Shape DTS

Firstly, change the Min Pixel Size to 32, and select only the first layer, this is for detail32 so we don't want to include the collision box in this.
Now, above that there is an add button and a Visible Detail Level dropdown box.
Select the dropdown box and change it to Collision Detail Level, now click Add

In the collision-1 detail level, look to the right. Select the second layer, this is where the collision box is.

This is what mine looks like:

Go to the Shape Options tab.
Change triangle lists to triangle strips in geometry type, if you don't export using triangle strips, the model will not cast a shadow.

Now you can try to export! Make sure the file path goes to your vehicle folder!

Navigate to your vehicle folder, there will be an extra text document with the same name as the exported dts file.
You can delete this text document.

Step 8 - Scripting your vehicle

If you are inexperienced with torque, do not worry! I'm pretty stuff myself yet I somehow manage to make vehicles, I don't see why you can't!
You can use any text editing program to do this, even notepad. However I suggest getting a program called notepad++, It's a super fast text editor and it is great for editing torquescript.

We are going to use the code from the magic carpet add-on, which comes with Blockland.
Navigate to your Blockland > Add-Ons folder, and find the Vehicle_Magic_Carpet. Open it up with your zip editor of choice.

We need the "server.cs" and the "Vehicle_MagicCarpet.cs", extract these to your vehicle folder.
Open up the extracted server.cs file in your favorite text editor.

Code: [Select]

Replace exec("./vehicle_magiccarpet.cs");
with exec("./vehicle_Tutorial.cs"); and save the server.cs

Click the Vehicle_MagicCarpet.cs and Hit F2 to rename it.
Type Vehicle_Tutorial. (if you are on windows XP you may need to type Vehicle_Tutorial.cs)
Hit Enter to finish renaming it, hit Enter again to open the file.

We only need to replace a few words in the Magic_Carpet's script.

Code: [Select]

Replace FlyingVehicleData(MagicCarpetVehicle)
With FlyingVehicleData(TutorialVehicle)

Code: [Select]

Replace shapeFile   = "./carpet.dts";
With shapeFile   = "./tutorial.dts"; // make sure3 that the name of the .dts model is this.
Scroll down to line 114, change Magic Carpet to Tutorial Vehicle

That should be about it! Pop these files into your Vehicle_Tutorial zip folder.

• tutorial.dts
• Vehicle_Tutorial.cs
• Server.cs
• description.txt

Now just put the Vehicle_Tutorial.zip into your Blockland Add-ons folder and test it out!

This is what the finished version looks like:

This tutorial took quite a few hours to write and i'm really tired now, If you guys find problems in the tutorial, please let me know so I can fix it when I get back.

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[Barnabas]

Looks good so far, it seems to have all the necessary steps for getting a vehicle from Blender into Blockland.

[Demian]

I've literally never used a Col empty and my pumpkin vehicle collision works just fine.

If you don't export using triangle strips your model won't cast a shadow. (If you want to add a more detailed reason other than "it fixes errors".)

[alex dude]

I've literally never used a Col empty and my pumpkin vehicle collision works just fine.

If you don't export using triangle strips your model won't cast a shadow. (If you want to add a more detailed reason other than "it fixes errors".)

Ah, when exporting without triangle strips, It gave me an error which prevented me from exporting. I'll add it to the OP.

[Tophius]

Yeah I don't use empties anymore either. The exporter seems to do the job of setting up the hierarchy itself as long as you specify the detail levels, without any noticeable ill effect in game. I think that's a practice carried over from DarkStar's old tutorial, back when the older exporter was being used?

Nevertheless, nice work, very informative. It'd be nice if we could have a tutorial one day covering all aspects of the exporter relevant to the game.

[BluetoothBoy]

Ok, can someone link me to the newest exporter? It appears I still have the old one, because I still have to set up empties.

[Demian]

Ok, can someone link me to the newest exporter? It appears I still have the old one, because I still have to set up empties.

http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=238465.0

[TristanLuigi]

Is it possible to create the vehicle in Blender 2.6 then open it in 2.49 and export it? I absolutely despise 2.49's UI and I can never figure out where stuff is and how to use it.

[BluetoothBoy]

Is it possible to create the vehicle in Blender 2.6 then open it in 2.49 and export it? I absolutely despise 2.49's UI and I can never figure out where stuff is and how to use it.

Yes, but you'll need to save with legacy support, or just make sure every polygon has four sides or fewer (and don't expect animations to swap over properly, either).

[master king deaddude]

:O Also how I named it for vehicle parts?

[alex dude]

What do you mean for vehicle parts?

[master king deaddude]

For car parts like interior seat,lights.

[alex dude]

If you mean the object name, it shouldn't matter. The material name will assign the material's color though (black50.png = black50 in blender)

[heedicalking]

Ok, can someone link me to the newest exporter? It appears I still have the old one, because I still have to set up empties.

if you plan to make playertypes, keep the old one. my experience with the new one just auto adds the actions and screws them up using some weird marker things in action editor, making them playback completely wrong.

[Barnabas]

if you plan to make playertypes, keep the old one. my experience with the new one just auto adds the actions and screws them up using some weird marker things in action editor, making them playback completely wrong.

You can fix that with a little tinkering in the NLA editor.

First you set up the animations in the Action editor like you normally would. Add the markers manually. Each action needs two markers called "youractionname:start" and "youractionname:end". It is important to not have the area defined by the markers overlap.
Once you are done with that, open the NLA editor and start adding the animation strips by pressing Shift+A. Now the next thing you have to do is to move around the action strips (the pink lines) to the corresponding marker area. If you see some bits overlap, you can always move the markers around in this mode too.

If you did everything correctly all the animation sequences should show up in the exporter.

I'd have never figured this one out without the help of Tophius.