[DONE] Grimrock Model Tookit

[Tomm]

@juppstein: Why do you need more than one mesh in an obj? I always collapse mine into one.

Found a way to make a sky! but it won't work for full outdoor maps, more like small sections of map.. threw together a very quick sky(awkward gradient)
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/23699866/log/outdoor_test.jpg

It's just a giant half-sphere with blendMode material property set to translucent.

[Juppstein]

Umm, okay...now you have me looking stupid

The problem I have is a floor tile with another few elements on it (a shaft going down and a ladder plus wall fittings). When I export that thing from Blender as an obj file and import it to the GMT I am not able to see those separate elements of the tile, thus I am not able to assign separate textures to them. I have that stupid feeling that I am missing an important bit here

[JohnWordsworth]

Erm, an OBJ file will only ever import into a single Model Node, but it should be possible to import an OBJ file with multiple 'mesh segments'. It does this by reading the object 'groups' in the OBJ file. I don't know how robust this is yet though I'm afraid - I've not tested it with many models, so it might be very picky on the input file format.

Just as an example, Phitt sent me his floor.OBJ for me to test some problems with the normals, but when I import that OBJ and click on the 'Data' tab I see under 'Model Nodes' (after clicking on the 'MainObject node') 2 Node Segments in the right hand side. Each has it's own Material assigned to them.

As with all alpha testing software though, don't assume it's you - it could be the app playing tricks too, so if you've tried all of the logical options in Blender and still can't get it to import - feel free to send some things over to me and I'll see if I can make sense of what's happening. After just a few models going through guided by me, we should have a pretty solid list of guidance for other people using the toolkit.

@Tomm: Loving the sky by the way! That's awesome!

[Juppstein]

Here would be the .obj, .model and the .blen file

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7vjm5p0sv6s3u ... er_v01.zip

And thanks again for your outstanding work. Back in 2002 when Neverwinter Nights came out there was a guy named Zaddix that did create a model viewer with some rudimentary functions to edit mesh properties and so on. It looked simple and a bit archaic but that single tool kickstarted the whole custom content wave of the coming years. All it took was a single guy with the determination to create a tool to help others and a few bright minds to build upon it. And that was a time when creating custom content wasn't so well suported as it is today. I hope the GMT will play the same role for Grimrock as Zaddix' Model Viewer did for NWN. You're doing great work here mate.

[Komag]

Found a way to make a sky! but it won't work for full outdoor maps, more like small sections of map.. threw together a very quick sky(awkward gradient)
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/23699866/log/outdoor_test.jpg

It's just a giant half-sphere with blendMode material property set to translucent.

I like it so far, that can be useful here and there!

[Tomm]

@Juppstein:
This is how I would approach it:

I see your ladder is made of 5 meshes, collapse them into one and re-do the UV's so they'll fit into one single texture. Do the same for the shaft(assign second texture/material) and be careful, because right now you have some UVs overlapping going on(which is not a problem when you're overlapping 2 same pieces so they'll share the same texture space). Third texture/material should be assigned to the floor.

Now collapse these 3 meshes into one and you should end up having 3 UV texture spaces, 1 for ladder, 1 for shaft, 1 for floor.

But I dont know if an obj file can contain 3 textures.. if not, then I would make them all individual pieces and put them together in editor.

hope it's not too confusing since I'm terrible at explaining stuff.


@Komag: Yeah I plan to use it in my dungeon so let's see how it turns out!

[Juppstein]

Hey Tomm, thanks for the feedback. I really think the issue is that the editor at this moment is not able to handle more than one texture when it comes to importing something from an obj file. Although I'll take your advice and optimize the ladder so that it ends up as one object; the UV overlapping is by intention.

[Phitt]

Tried to export my other tileset and this time two of the four basic models I exported won't even show up - even though I used exactly the same export settings. They show up in the toolkit, but not in the editor or in game. Also got the strange mesh distortions like in the first tileset, but this time they disappeared during the same sessions, all I did was adding a torch to the wall. Strange, really strange.

EDIT: Exported the ceiling to 3ds, imported into Blender, exported as obj from there. No luck, doesn't show up in game or in the editor.

@Juppstein:
This is how I would approach it:

I see your ladder is made of 5 meshes, collapse them into one and re-do the UV's so they'll fit into one single texture.

Grimrock has lots of meshes with more than just one material, so I wouldn't do that as you would have a weird, huge texture. I did it myself already, all you need to do to get multiple materials in one mesh is that you do not collapse the mesh into a single one. Maybe there are even settings in the object export dialog to do this with a collapsed mesh.

[JohnWordsworth]

No massive updates this evening, I'm afraid I won't get to look at the problem imports until tomorrow now. Tomorrow I hope to look at issues from @Isaac (SlimDX issues), @Phitt (crazy normals and sometimes random mesh rendering) and @Juppstein (multiple mesh segments from an OBJ file).

@Juppstein: Thanks for the blender files, your patience and your support and kind words. It started off that I just wanted to retexture a model and has grown from there - but it's so inspiring seeing everyone's screenshots appearing with custom models and skins!

Mini-release this evening (0.1.0.11) adds Wireframe Mode, optional 'backface culling' for debug purposes and rendering of multiple textures on a single node (one mesh) through mesh segments. The goromorg and ogre for instance now preview properly in the GMT...



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[JohnWordsworth]

@Phitt: Forgot to mention, what was really weird... If I load the Dungeon Editor with your test Dungeon, it all loads ok. However, if I load another dungeon and then load yours, the meshes are all rendering weird. I should be able to crack this tomorrow .