Thread: Blender 2.57 ASE export

first thing that comes to mind, check your surface normals (blender: ctrl+n in edit mode with your entire mesh selected)

there was a second thing that i experienced something similar with, but it's not coming to me. i'll update my post later if it does.


edit --
do me a favor and post if it works in your earlier thread, ill check it out when you reply. i would like this thread to stay on topic

Progress Update:

Here's the output from my test exporting a cube -

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Angle Limit: 15
0. SMOOTH GROUP ID: 0 FACES: [bpy.data.meshes["Cube.003"].faces[0], bpy.data.meshes["Cube.003"].faces[1]]
SMOOTH GROUP ID: 1 FACES: [bpy.data.meshes["Cube.003"].faces[2], bpy.data.meshes["Cube.003"].faces[3]]
SMOOTH GROUP ID: 2 FACES: [bpy.data.meshes["Cube.003"].faces[4], bpy.data.meshes["Cube.003"].faces[5]]
SMOOTH GROUP ID: 3 FACES: [bpy.data.meshes["Cube.003"].faces[6], bpy.data.meshes["Cube.003"].faces[7]]
SMOOTH GROUP ID: 4 FACES: [bpy.data.meshes["Cube.003"].faces[8], bpy.data.meshes["Cube.003"].faces[9]]
SMOOTH GROUP ID: 5 FACES: [bpy.data.meshes["Cube.003"].faces[10], bpy.data.meshes["Cube.003"].faces[11]]

ADJACENT GROUPS ID: 0 FACES: [1, 5, 3, 4]
ADJACENT GROUPS ID: 1 FACES: [5, 2, 4, 0]
ADJACENT GROUPS ID: 2 FACES: [4, 3, 5, 1]
ADJACENT GROUPS ID: 3 FACES: [4, 5, 0, 2]
ADJACENT GROUPS ID: 4 FACES: [0, 1, 2, 3]
ADJACENT GROUPS ID: 5 FACES: [0, 3, 1, 2]

-- edit: The ADJACENT GROUPS ID is the smooth group ID
The FACES output is actually the smooth groups surrounding that smooth group, not the actual faces themselves
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
It's working! Now I just have to normalize the smoothing groups so that we can reuse them in isolated areas (for example, from the data above smooth group 5 has adjacent groups of 0, 3, 1, 2 - so I can reuse smooth group 4 and cut it down to 5(0-4) smooth groups instead of 6 (0-5). The hard part is over and done with. Also, the angle limit (angle to test against) is set during export by the user.

Originally Posted by MCampagnini

SMOOTHING GROUPS (more efficiently than max too btw...)

Not posting it just yet, going to test it a bit more - tomorrow i'll send it out to the world!

Very good news. Now I just need to learn how exactly what they are and how to make them happen on my meshes.

Originally Posted by MCampagnini

You can see the obvious benefits of exporting out smoothing groups correctly. Use the exporter (coming tomorrow), set your angle, and smoothing groups will be generated automatically.

Sounds good. I presume that when you set the angle, anything matching or of a lower value will be set to be "smooth". It seems like the higher the angle value, the more "flat" shading you would want.

I may add an option for turning off normalizing the smooth groups, it will push out the export faster, but will use more smooth groups - a cube exported in max = 6 smooth groups...i do it in 3. Takes a bit longer when exporting though to recalculate.

Options are always a good thing.

Originally Posted by dukejib

Thank You and Hats off for tremendous efforts. I would like to suggest that you should put up your exporter for Blender addons repository. Coders like you are the reason blender is catching up mainstream like fire.

Agreed! Given Blender is missing this file exporter and yours is almost done, having it part of the official release(?), would help more users benefit from your work (as well as what Rich is Bored accomplished).

Originally Posted by MCampagnini

updated my first post with the latest version of the ase exporter - i hope everyone enjoys!

I know I will. Again, much thanks for taking the time. I am going to learn the new stuff and update my site.

Edit: Is it "safe" to install the 2.57a version of Blender with this exporter with out causing problems?

Me again, with another question: Is it possible to create smoothing groups by marking edges as hard/seams?

Okay it'd just be more comfortable and controllable if I'd be able to do the smoothing by myself instead of leaving it to angle detection

Yup i agree. But great work anyway.

Originally Posted by MCampagnini

the easiest way to do something like that would be to create smoothing groups through material names - assign SG_1, SG_2, etc. What are your thoughts on that? Pretty easy to code too.

The problem with this would be, how would the script separate smoothing group materials from regular mats? I've come up with 2 solutions:

- Tell the script that materials only using the e.g. blue channel are smoothgroups; problem is that the number of smoothing groups would be limited to 256 (not a problem now, but who knows, maybe UDK will have the option for more than 32 smoothing groups one day)

- Separate the smoothing groups by material name (SG_001, SG_002, etc)

Originally Posted by MCampagnini

if you need more than 32 smoothing groups, something is wrong with your mesh topology. My problem with using materials to assign smoothing groups is that it is an ugly way to do it. maybe i can whip something up that is a little more practical...

it's not that i'd need 32 smoothing groups, hell no^^ it's just always nice to have the option to have many groups :P
and I find nothing wrong with assigning materials as smoothing groups; it's a good way to examine and show them by color coding

Originally Posted by MCampagnini

yeah, what i'm thinking now is an addon that you can pop open during mesh creation and assign smoothing groups with a way similar to max. If you are unfamiliar, take a look:



and i can add an export button right in that box...if i do it, this is the right way.

Great idea, though the smoothgroup window in Max has always irritated me, why make 32 buttons instead of just one field with a number? But maybe thats just me

This is some seriously exciting stuff. For way too long have I avoided the UDK due to the fact all the current exporters for blender were.. for a lack of better words, trash.

I'd really love to see if you could implement that smoothing groups menu.

Originally Posted by MCampagnini

Made a new post, for those interested, explaining smoothing groups and how they are calculated using the exporter.

What are Smoothing Groups

Very helpful indeed.

For the picture with the 2 cylinders, the smooth one probably has 2 smoothing groups (1 for the top/bottom and 1 for the entire side). The other one has 17 (1 for the top/bottom and 16 for each face on the side)?

Adding a way to manually control the smoothing groups would be nice icing on this already delicious cake.

yeah, the thought of it has me itching to create a UDK Panel inside of blender with all sorts of UDK goodness...if anyone has some good suggestions i'll give it a go.

you are correct odedge...more specifically the one with the 17 was meant to be what it would look like if smoothing groups were not even calculated, rather than an example of 17 smoothing groups.

Thank you so much Campagnini! I had to use the 2.53 ase exporter for the last weeks and it was horrible with all the edge split and stuff and mutliple uvs/mats didn't work properly. But your exporter works perfect...well I just exported two objects yet, but it's awesome...thank you! But a nice thing would be a kind of preview window for the angle smoothing...because now it's bit complicated cause you either would have to use edge split as a rough preview or reimport the ase to udk with different settings until it fits...

Not sure if this is a bug issue... I created a mesh that is "open". I deleted some faces that won't be seen. When I tried to export it, I got this big crazy error message.

I can send you the blend file if you like.

Here is my blend file. I cleaned it up and packed the image file.

I tested a simple box with 1 face that was deleted and it worked fine. This mesh is a little more complex, but not by much.

Originally Posted by MCampagnini

ha, wasn't a bug. you have an extra vertex somewhere, select all -> remove doubles. export away.

I was actually thinking about this today and thought it might be related to the vertices.

Thanks for double-checking.

Bug Count=0

Originally Posted by Odedge

Very helpful indeed.

For the picture with the 2 cylinders, the smooth one probably has 2 smoothing groups (1 for the top/bottom and 1 for the entire side). The other one has 17 (1 for the top/bottom and 16 for each face on the side)?

Adding a way to manually control the smoothing groups would be nice icing on this already delicious cake.

You can, just not automatically (you shouldn't be doing that anyway), you need to use Blenders Seams, Edge Split modifier and/or Split Selected.

Incidentally, you can get the results from the second cylinder using 4 groups.. I'll let you try and figure out how

Seams ? Seams are for unwraping UVs, you mean Sharp edges no ?
I don't know if you're the author of the tutorial but the error is there too.
If you want to use edge split modifier with sharp edges, you have to use ctrl E> Mark sharp and not ctrl E > Mark seam.

Sorry yes... I meant "Sharp"

@gordon13

I'm using the script on Blender 2.57b (Win7 64bit / Blender 64bit Win installer)

On a related note, for scale I've found my comfort zone to be working in Metric in Blender, but scale by 48 for export to UDK.

So 1 meter = 48 UDK units, which fits nicely on UDK's grid. It's relatively close to 2cm = 1 UDK unit.

I know the default scale of 16 for the exporter works well for a generic Blender unit. I just thought I'd mention it for anyone else who prefers to work in metric but still needs to line up modular meshes, etc..

hey, I think I found a bug...I have a model here in blender, made two UV maps (TexUV + Lightmap) and two materials which I assigned to different faces of the mesh...now when exporting, in UDK I get both UVs, but only 1 material slot...though I already got two other models with multi-materials working in UDK...the only difference is that now I used a plane as the original object, at the previous models a cube...

Get the file