Project Blender Mesh Tools add-on

[Buck Rogers]

still using 3.1.2, any advantages in upgrading (for Orbiter devs)?

 

[Blake]

Probably not, if that is working for you. A lot of the work in Blender is in areas we don't much care about for Orbiter work. Still, I usually work with the latest that will work with the plugin. For now that is 4.0. I do notice that 4.0 is slower to open on my machine, so there is that.

 

[Blake]

By the way, I can recommend this guy for some great Blender tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/@grabbitt

This is a good series of his for beginners: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn3ukorJv4vvv3ZpWJYvV5Tmvo7ISO-NN

 

[Buck Rogers]

Thanks, good to know. I'll take another look when 4.1.2 comes out (hopefully no compatibility issues)
(I'm a little worried that updating will change the layout, I have an older version installed for 3ds support but except for import/export I can't use it!)

 

[Buck Rogers]

How can I get Blender to export vertex normals texture uv coordinates for a mesh group without texture?

I'm trying to get HUD, MFDs working and figured out the problem is that the display panel is only a material and blender exports it without uv coord., (only 6 and not 8 entries in the vertex list) which is correct, but HUDs etc. need them. I've tried adding a uv map, use nodes image, but it either exports without or an error due to missing tex. file?
I've done this in 3dsmax and not had this issue. Does anyone have any experience making HUDs, MFDs in Blender?

 

[Blake]

How can I get Blender to export vertex normals texture uv coordinates for a mesh group without texture?

I'm trying to get HUD, MFDs working and figured out the problem is that the display panel is only a material and blender exports it without uv coord., (only 6 and not 8 entries in the vertex list) which is correct, but HUDs etc. need them. I've tried adding a uv map, use nodes image, but it either exports without or an error due to missing tex. file?
I've done this in 3dsmax and not had this issue. Does anyone have any experience making HUDs, MFDs in Blender?

For a VC?

In Blender you will have a plane that represents the HUD or MFD surface, unwrap that and assign it a texture. SR-71R does this, and uses the same texture where the VC controls are laid out. In Blender you will see that texture on that plane, but you don't see it at runtime--just whatever is drawn to that surface.

The code to load the HUD looks like this:

bool HUD::handle_load_vc(bco::vessel& vessel, int vcid)
{
    // Register HUD
    static VCHUDSPEC huds =
    {
        1,                        // Mesh number (VC)
        bm::vc::HUD_id,            // mesh group
        { 0.0, 0.8, 15.25 },    // hud center (location)
        0.12                    // hud size
    };

    oapiVCRegisterHUD(&huds);    // HUD parameters
    return true;
}

The mesh file entry:

LABEL HUD
MATERIAL 4
TEXTURE 4
FLAG 7
GEOM 4 2
-0.0634 0.8619 15.2558 0.0000 0.0000 -1.0000 0.0001 0.0004
0.0633 0.8619 15.2558 0.0000 0.0000 -1.0000 0.9996 0.0001
-0.0634 0.7352 15.2558 0.0000 0.0000 -1.0000 0.0004 0.9999
0.0633 0.7352 15.2558 0.0000 0.0000 -1.0000 0.9999 0.9996
...
... <MATERIAL 4>
MATERIAL VC_100_Cockpit_MAT
0.800 0.800 0.800 1.000
0.000 0.000 0.000 1.000
0.000 0.000 0.000 1.000 49.030
0.600 0.600 0.600 1.000

 

[Buck Rogers]

Thanks for the clarification. So I can link it to any texture to get it to export the UVs, and then I can set tex, to 0 manually in the .msh file or just leave it.
Works, thanks again

 

[Boxx]

hi, small bug + easy fix: you export the objects with their exact same names in the .h (+prefix/suffix possibly). Hence, if an object name contains a dot ".", it turns into a syntax error. It happens whenever I duplicated an object multiple times, e.g.:

    const UINT Ceiling.000_id = 0;
    const UINT Ceiling.001_id = 1;
...

Easy fix on user's side is to replace all ".0" by "_0" in the .h
But a clean fix would be to do the same in the addon itself.

(excellent addon, by the way, it saved my life! congrats)

 

[Blake]

hi, small bug + easy fix: you export the objects with their exact same names in the .h (+prefix/suffix possibly). Hence, if an object name contains a dot ".", it turns into a syntax error. It happens whenever I duplicated an object multiple times, e.g.:

    const UINT Ceiling.000_id = 0;
    const UINT Ceiling.001_id = 1;
...

Easy fix on user's side is to replace all ".0" by "_0" in the .h
But a clean fix would be to do the same in the addon itself.

(excellent addon, by the way, it saved my life! congrats)

This is an issue I'm aware of, and have run into often. Blender, when you duplicate an object, will append the .001 to the object name. the '.' is invalid in C++ as an identifier, so you end up with a compiler error. I thought I at one point had added (or intended to add) code to just convert any '.' with '_'. The other side of that coin is that I do like when the compiler complains because I forgot to give an object in Blender a proper name. I then go back and give those objects more meaningful names, removing the .00x. The down side of automatically converting the . is that the C++ identifier, and the Blender object names don't match, but that is minor, so I'll probably take a look at that.

Regardless, I've found that giving my Blender objects meaningful names sure does help understanding the C++ code that ends up using those objects.

 

[Boxx]

Golden rule is to keep meaningful names. In my case, I duplicate with a Blender python script several objects 36 times, so that I end up with a lot of .0xx indices, they all "mean" something and I can't change them manually in Blender... Nevertheless, I can fix in C++ easily but it needs to be redone after every update of the genuine model.

 

[Blake]

Yea, there are times you cannot avoid the .0xx issue easily. I'll take a closer look at this and maybe at least provide a way to turn off the automatic conversion of . to _ if needed.

Thanks for the input.