Blender 3D Exporter for BMS - Request
-
A short while ago I looked into helping out some of the third party modders with their projects as I am reasonably proficient with modelling in Blender, and texturing in Substance Painter and Photoshop. Sadly the 3D file format used by Falcon BMS can only be generated with exporters using 3DS Max. While it could be possible to develop a workflow where the majority of the 3D modelling, UV unwrapping and animation is done using Blender, one would still need to export/transplant everything in 3DS Max, get it working and then export.
I sadly do not have the time to develop that workflow. I studied older threads to try and find examples of how it could be done but I could not figure it out. If there is ever anyone that has the capability, will and time to develop an exporter plugin for Blender that would allow us to bypass using 3DS Max altogether, please let us know. I do not have anything to offer in return directly, but I will help out some of the campaign/theatre developers by contributing a 3D asset or two in the process.
In my view, Blender is easy to learn by newcomers, easily accessible and free, and with some clear examples/tutorials it could help breathe some new life into Falcon BMS by enabling the community to update some very old models or creating new ones.
So if someone is out there that can make this happen, please consider it. It would be awesome if you could.
-
I have dabbled a bit in scenery modelling for xplane11 on Linux (simple buildings imported from openstreetmap or similar) and I have used an export tool from blender to XP11 (written in python) that might serve as a starting point.
While I can find my way around python scripts I’m not a stellar programmer by any stretch of the imagination, but who knows, maybe it’s helpful to others as the exporter itself is free and open source.
All the best,
Uwe -
Blender is absolutely the way to go! Not only is it free, it also has a massive community and is now being widely adopted for professional use. Having a plugin for it is a good way to assure that people can contribute to BMS for years to come.
-
no one from the dev team can take this task…
We will need help from outside!
-
@maxwaldorf said in Blender 3D Exporter for BMS - Request:
no one from the dev team can take this task…
We will need help from outside!
This will be complicated to be done since the lod File datastructure is not publicaly documented and there always we’re concerns in the past days someoene would use the knowledge of the File Format to use the Models elsewhere. Lets hope things have changed.
Regards -
@_noname said in Blender 3D Exporter for BMS - Request:
@maxwaldorf said in Blender 3D Exporter for BMS - Request:
no one from the dev team can take this task…
We will need help from outside!
This will be complicated to be done since the lod File datastructure is not publicaly documented and there always we’re concerns in the past days someoene would use the knowledge of the File Format to use the Models elsewhere. Lets hope things have changed.
RegardsRegardless of LOD format, if there will be someone to perform this task, he will have anyway to join the BMS team. It’s practically impossible to be made from the outside.
-
This will only become more pertinent with time since Blender is removing 3ds exporting functionality while Autodesk products become more and more expensive.
IIRC most exporting plugins for Blender are written in Python. The good thing is their API is well documented and publicly available (along with the source code of similar plugins and Blender itself). It’s probably not the BMS way, but it may be that time is coming when import requirements would have to be documented as well, perhaps this would raise the chances of some software engineers from community coming to help as is the case with other tools.
-
Again…
Open for people with skills to help…
We don’t need words or explanations, we need action!Cheers
-
@MaxWaldorf said in Blender 3D Exporter for BMS - Request:
Again…
Open for people with skills to help…
We don’t need words or explanations, we need action!Cheers
Hi @MaxWaldorf
Does the dev team have a document on how the file format works? Is it a matter of someone developing a plugin for Blender using Python that can handle the model setup and export to the correct format, or is the format a ‘black box’ that no-one has access to?
If it is the first mentioned I am sure one can try to get something going? I once created a crude X-Plane OBJ8 importer using Unity, but that was using the OBJ8 file format documentation of course and it was proof of concept only.
-
@WaveyDave is the one behind the exporter…
Up to him to check with you if you’re interested to make a blender one…
-
That’s clear that if one day 3dsmax exporter is no longer compatible with BMS I will stop dev here…
-
@Radium
But at least the exporter would be compatible with the up to date 3dsmax. as far as I know the latest exporter is 2009 or maybe 2014 version. So if somebody want to do a new model then they also need to install an another old version of the 3dsmax just because of the exporter and there is a chance then the model is not compatible backward,
And also the blender is free so if somebody could complain the not legal use of 3dmax it would be an alternate to have a free tool for somebody who want to make some assets in the game.
But I also prefer the 3dsmax it more handy for me.