Final BLENDER to B3D exporter!

Hi all!
A friend of mine have written a B3D exporter for blender!
It is very useful and it support animated and static mesh with UV mapping...
here's the link
http://gandaldf.altervista.org/b3dexporter.htm
try it and email him ( for your opinion!
bye & Thanks!

Nice one! Thanks!
Anyone using Blender here? Come on!

Hi,

I've tested it on a full walk animated armature and mesh. It nearly works perfectly! Except the arms are all screwed up :(

I'll e-mail the author with my blend file and see if the problem can be fixed. I opened the faulty .b3d file in Ultimate Unwrap and it displayed it the same as Blitz (arms all screwed up) but I could see the underlying armature was correct. The blend file is OK as I use it to export as directX into Fragmotion for conversion to .b3d.

So, a big thanks for all the work and if you can get the problem I've seen sorted out it'll be happy days for Blender/Blitz users.

Great news. Thanks!

ardee, it seems the animation problem has already been fixed in 1.01

some nice fixes there, I was trying forever to get them bugs fixed, and basically gave up. it looks cleaner too

I've got to test this new code out.

Hi Luke,

I contacted Diego and he beleives he's fixed the problem based on my .blend but he doesn't seem to have added the updated python script (version 1.01) to the download yet as I just re-downloaded the zip file again and it still has the original script dated 11/06/07. I've written an e-mail pointing this out. Can't wait to try out the new v1.01

Big thanks to everybody involved in the creation of this script.

Just got another email from Diego, he's checked the file and says it has been updated. I had to force a refresh on the page to clear my cache and get the new updated file.

I've just exported a rigged character and it works! Fantastic. I'll carry out more tests over the next few days and feedback to Diego anything I find. I suggest all Blender users do the same.

Thanks, I will check it out!

Woohoo!

new versione 1.02!!!

diego has fixed a bug for color exporter!!

May i suggest adding this to out toolkit?

HURRAY!! i love it :D

don't say "FINAL" ... animations doesnt work. please tell me what you have done that the zombie will walk, please!

excuse my bad english.

Hi bruZard,

Animations work perfectly, my tests have now moved onto quite complex (for game models) armatures and animations and the results from Diego's exporter are fantastic.

The included sample zombie.blend has a very basic armature and animation. If you're having difficulty in understanding that simple file then I would suggest you really need to learn the basics of Blender animation with armatures first. Try the links below.

Blender Wiki
Blender Artists forums

bruZard:

could you post the mesh your having trouble with? and remember you need to type the name of the animation you want to export

but yeah I doubt it's final. there still are somethings to do, like an extra uv channel for lightmapping.

by the way, anyone tested complex static meshes, I had them working pretty well before, but I broke some of the support when adding animations, just wondering if Diego has fixed that.

now it works! thanks for the exporter!!

Im getting:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<string>", line 48, in <module>
ImportError: No module named os

On my windows machine. Works fine on linux. Anyone got any ideas?

Hi Dan,

If you're running Blender 2.44 then you need to install Python 2.5 as Blender moved to the latest release of Python with it's last release. The script probably needs functions which are only available in the full Python package rather than the cut down version that ships with Blender.

ahhh that will prob. explain why it only works on my linux box.

thanks

Ive gotta say, now theres a decent exporter for blender for use with b3d i took the plunge, blew the dust off the manual and started learning all about blender animation...

Holy ....!

Its wicked! Talk about easy, powerful and easily tweekable! I rigged skinned and animated a model in no time! And using the scene system could make several posed animations in one file. Up to now have been using fragmotion and milkshape to animate my blender made skins via the X or AC3D formats, but this is sooo much easier to use! Especially when things like the mesh or textures need a tweak or a mod. This would have taken so much longer to do the old way

Your 'friend' is an absolute hero and should recieve the blitz medal of honor if there was such a thing.

Yay, blender Rox... Even More! So far, i had a go at animating my dragon and exporting it :)
http://blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=70410

Here's what you need to do if you still are getting distorted meshes after export to .b3d format,

Make sure your armatures don't have any gaps in them. All the bones need to be connected. This can make some types of blender animation harder to do if you're using inverse kinematics, which may take advantage of a broken armature.

Thanks 4 the info :)
The dragon i made (see gfx sh.case) had gaps, but i was using only 1.0 weights and no IKs.
Now u mention it though, I seemed to get distortion when i loaded it in fragmotion, but that is because frag decided to put in its own weight values which screwed it up. For some reason it loaded fine into b3d (mabe b3d doesnt support weights, im not sure :/ )

I was using weight painting, so you can wind up with varied weights. As a precaution I told it to do 1.0 weights only, and trimmed any varied weights.

With the gaps in my armature, I made new bones that filled the gap, but made sure they didn't effect the mesh at all.

news

26/07/2007 - Version 1.03 release
· 25/07/2007 - Animation bug fixed by Diego


here's the link
gandaldf.altervista.org/b3dexporter.htm
try it and email him ( for your opinion!
bye & Thanks!

I sent him my "broken" armature and he's fixed it up. I tried it on another character I made with breaks in the armature and it works perfectly now. Thanks!

Now you can take advantage of inverse kinematics better!

I had to modify the zombie sample slightly to get it to run in BlitzMx with minib3d. This assumes you've installed minib3d as a mod.

Import sidesign.minib3d


Graphics3D 800,600,16,2
'SetBuffer BackBuffer()
'AppTitle "Animated B3D Exporter Test"

light = CreateLight()
PositionEntity light,0,0,0

camera = CreateCamera()
PositionEntity camera,0,1,-2

tex=LoadTexture("ZOMBIE.JPG")

model = LoadAnimMesh("zombie.b3d")

EntityTexture model,tex
PositionEntity model,0,0,0
Animate(model,1,0.1)

While Not KeyHit(key_escape)
	TurnEntity model,0,0.1,0
	
	UpdateWorld
	RenderWorld
	
	Text 0,0,"Surfaces: "+CountSurfaces(model)
	Text 0,15,"Faces: "+CountTriangles(GetSurface(model,1))
	Text 0,30,"Vertices: "+CountVertices(GetSurface(model,1))
	
	Flip
Wend

Also, the zombie came up untextured in the example, so I added the two lines to fix it.

Awesome script, btw.

I think the exporter is quite 'mature' to find home in the 'ToolBox' section, or even in the 'Spec&Utils' under Blitz3d Exporters!

i agree, it would be a very valuable addition to toolbox :)

Thanks to the author. Now together with blender this is the first professional toolset (for use with B3D) for free.

reporting a message from the author GaNDaLDF:

w00t!

I've almost pissed my pants! I saw Gandalf asking a few questions on the blenderartist's python forums and hoped he was adding new features to this fantastic script.

This is great news. Blender now supports two sets of UV co-ords and it sounds like gandalf has got this to work with his exporter so we can lightmap from within Blender, export to .b3d and all for free... brilliant. Normal maps too... result.

Forum gods, can you please add this exporter to Specs and Utils? Although I don't use Blender, I would certainly like to be able to find this plugin easily if I ever do need a free solution for animated characters.

wot jh sed.

I wonder if anyones working on reversing the script. It would be fantastic to have a 2 way b3d pipeline built for blender.

Any news on the lightmapping support?

http://www.gandaldf.com/


Fantastic news from the author! New version of the B3D Exporter has been released with full support for multi texturing and multi uv - lightmap, normalmap, vertex colors and some great optimizations!

http://www.gandaldf.com/

Great new, thanks for the update and of course to Diego for all the hard work. Testing now...

Oh my giddy aunt, it works! It flipping well works. Model with 2 sets of UV co-ords, UV texture and UV lightmap, exported perfectly from Blender, tested in Filax's B3DViewer... Goodbye to Gile[s] from me, my pipeline is firmly set as Blender and err.. that's all I need. Happy, happy days. I will be donating cash to Diego for this fantastic script.

dont forget the animation... the ANIMATION!

yay

It's great! I couldn't find a "What's New" on the website nor in the download. Can anyone list all the additions in version 2?

reporting a message from the author Diego "GaNDaLDF":

Really nice, thanks.

Goodbye gile[s]? Blender is several worlds of Gile[s] with its new mapping algorithm, terrain creation capabilities etc :)

but yes, definitely great progress.

I made a simple tutorial for baking shadows to textures here: http://hai2you2.googlepages.com/tut_blender_lightmapping

EDIT: I made a much better mesh with lightmap (at like 2am), but can't seem to make another one just like it. http://files.filefront.com/bl3d+lmapterrainzip/;9743744;/fileinfo.html


Does anyone know what the icon in the bottom left corner of this image is?

It means you've got 'active face select' enabled.

I've looked again and again, but I still can't figure out how to get lighter shadows, like the file I posted earlier.

Hi all!
Diego has released the new version of his exporter

here's the link
http://www.gandaldf.com

Bye & Thanks!

awesome +1 :)

Will test tomorrow, but many thanks for the link.

Version 2.04 released upon a bug report by me, it's more stable! Get it http://www.gandaldf.com

ha, i did not follow the link @ first and I typed in Gandalf.com its really weird.

Legolas.com is equally disturbing

Frodo.com is blocked under HACKING!

Dont have any idea why i just did that, after the gandalf one, i just had to check! Sorry. (Im not on drugs)

Just a moment to tell you that I have updated the B3D Exporter to the 2.05 version, fixing a bug concerning the lightmaps export.

For more information:
www.gandaldf.com

nice :D