[Blender] New DTS plugin

[Shift Kitty]

2. That cube is from starting a new blender project. You have to manually delete that if you want to import anything.

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[Shizza04]

1. Why is there a weird Blob in the middle of the vehicle? obviously doesn't show up in game collision mesh.
2. Why is there an unseen in game cube at the base? thats the default blender cube, delete it when you wanna import something
3. Why is everything made of triangles? like, everything is Triangular thats how dts's are exported
4. How am I supposed to use any of this to make a vehicle I am so confused replace the main jeep model and move the empties until you're satisfied
5. Why is the Front Ortho showing the back of the vehicle? is it supposed to be that way? because the front view shows the vehicle facing the front
6. what's with the weird Invisible bounding box? iunno, it's required tho

answers in bold

[BLockyBuildingBro]

answers in bold

Alright, following instructions and the answers, I end up with this:


WITH Collision Mesh


WITHOUT Collision Mesh

it all looks ok until I found THIS inside of the model:



What are these? what are they for?

[Conan]

1) blob is the collision mesh of the vehicle
2) i think thats just your default blender setup, when you start a new file a cube is auto generated. you probably forgot to delete it.
3) cause dts doesnt support anything more than quads, the safest is to triangulate everything. ports exporter will auto triangulate for export any ngons iirc.
4) look at the empties and use outliner to hide/show certain parts of the model. you'll see theres 4 wheel hubs and other nodes like mount0-6. use these to figure out how to format your model
5) doesnt really matter, just make sure your vehicle points forward along the +y axis, eg the front of your model should be facing the +y direction. dont forget to apply rotation.
6) the bounds/cube thing is the bounds of the DTS. dont worry about this as its automatically generated

edit: forget i didnt notice there was another page. to figure out what those arrows are (empties) look at the outliner and the names in the outliner, and answer #4 in this post

[Trogtor]

1. thats the collision box
2. thats the default cube that shows when you start up blender.
3. because theres no such thing as a 'square' in 3d rendering, programs like blender emulate it so model making is easier. everything in 3d is made up of triangles
4. you dont need to
5. front orthographic view faces forward, your vehicle is facing forward, if you are behind the vehicle facing forward, you would see the back of the vehicle.
6. that just gets automatically created whenever you export something, you dont have to make that

edit: lmao forget i did too

[BLockyBuildingBro]

OK what the forget does this mean



I can no longer export my vehicle, because when I do, this pops up, and the vehicle doesn't get exported

[Cowboy Dude]

Apply scale location and rotation with ctrl-a on all the meshes

if the meshes are under separate empties that don't start at the origin, make sure the origin of the mesh object is the same location as the empty it is directly parented to

That did it thanks.

[Yin Yang]

I'm sure this has been asked already
but wtf do i do with all these random unrecognized files?

Can someone just quote that reply

[Conan]

first download the github page as a zip (click clone or download green button and select download as zip
then

blender > file > user preferences > addons
click "install from file" button at bottom
navigate to folder where you downloaded and saved "io-scene-dts-0.2.0"
select that, then go to Add-Ons > input/output > enable the dts exporter/importer

and restart blender

[BLockyBuildingBro]

OK what the forget does this mean



I can no longer export my vehicle, because when I do, this pops up, and the vehicle doesn't get exported

Alright so I managed to fix this issue. I think it had something to do with the "skeleton" not being recognized.
Good news: I managed to get it in game


Bad news: What the forget is going on with the left side?

If you can't see it that well, look closely on the picture where the vehicle isn't colored blue

It appears as though the entire top of one side is completely invisible, but it's there in game, as when I F7 F8 into it, I can see it, but only from the inside. How do I fix this? it appears as though they're a darker color in Blender so it's probably an issue there

[Conan]

inverted normal. to check the direction of normals go into edit mode > n side panel > near the bottom theres options to display edge, vertex, and face normals. select faces you need to flip and go to t side panel > uv/shading tab > flip normals

optionally if your model is clean you can select all > recalculate normals and hope for the best

[BLockyBuildingBro]

inverted normal. to check the direction of normals go into edit mode > n side panel > near the bottom theres options to display edge, vertex, and face normals. select faces you need to flip and go to t side panel > uv/shading tab > flip normals

optionally if your model is clean you can select all > recalculate normals and hope for the best

Hot stuff it works. now only 3 Problems remain.



Problem 1. How do I make the wheels invisible?
Problem 2. I'm trying to move the wheels (known as "hubs" in the weird skeleton) but it won't save. I export the wheels as normal but nothing

Problem 2.5. this ties into problem 2, as  it involves the skeleton. same problem

problem 3. How do I save the colors?
I'm honestly seeing if I can make the MAIN color up to the player, such as the jeep or any vehicle with custom colors, however, I'd like the:
Black on the front "vents"
Yellow on the exhaust in the back and the front.
and White, for the stripe down the middle.

Thanks, everyone

[Conan]

make sure to export the textures in the export options at the bottom left. include these alongside the dts when putting in the addon folder.

to change the hub and mount locations, delete the keyframes in the dts, then move to a new location. you will need to access the dope sheet to see the keyframes. also delete the reference marker (the triangle in the timeline/dope sheet with the name reference above it)

to hide the wheels you need to change the wheel datablocks the vehicle uses to custom ones, and give them no shape.

[BLockyBuildingBro]

im not at a computer right now, but here are some more fleshed out steps

in the export options window at the bottom left (after selecting “export dts”) is a bunch of options. one of these is generate blank materials. right underneath is a drop down menu that by default says none. this is the “auto generate textures” option, set it to all (if missing) and 16x16 texture pngs should be generated after export in the same folder as the dts.

put these textures as well as the dts in the addon zip/folder you’re using. the textures should be in the same directory as the dts.


as for the empties resetting its position: at the bottom left or top left of every blender window is a little icon in a drop up/down menu. for example, the one in the 3d view looks like a cube and its at the bottom left of the panel, all the way to the left of the options along the bottom bar. if you click this (or any other panel’s) you’ll see a bunch of different options show up. one of these is the dope sheet: its a panel to let you view animation keyframes and individually select/modify their location along the timeline.

usually i change the timeline panel (at the bottom of the default blender layout) to dope sheet. you’ll probably also see the reference marker i mentioned in both views.

select the keyframes and delete them. also delete the marker. these are impacting your export (if they exist) as they hold location/rotation/scale data of all the empties you imported, and so moving the empties to new locations/rotations is being overridden by the location/rotation data in the keyframes








i would greatly appreciate it if you quoted this in the dts topic as it may help someone else in the future

[Sideswipe]

is it possible to have a face on a model only render on one side? for example a window that is opaque on one side but not the other