New Map Exporter

#1 Looks good, Vincent. Blender has been lacking a decent .map exporter for... well, forever :)

On another note, have you thought of adding some sort of configuration gui for the script? I'd imagine you could plonk a few controls on to modify even more parameters for each entity.
Alternatively of course, you could just read some configuration options in from a Text window, which could have some .map-like syntax, e.g.:

// List of entities...
{
   // Entity class & parameters
   classname "foo"
   {
      // List of meshes or groups (i.e. empty's with children) tied to this entity
      mesh mesh1
      mesh mesh2
      group meshcollection3
   }
}
// Next entity, etc...

Anyhow, keep up the good work!

#2 W00t! This looks incredible! Thanks soo much!

If anyone has a level showcasing some of the capabilities of this, I for one would benefit from seeing an example.

I look forward to using this!

--clint

#3 Wow that is nice much better and farther along than i ever got :)

#4 Can't wait to try this out

#5 ...

#6 James: I remember the last time i played with blender it supported some kind of registry system to store settings and what not. I should try to see if i still had the code for that part of it from the exporter i had worked on.

#7 Very cool, thank you so much Vincent.

#8 AWESOME work.... Thanks.

#9 I can't wait to try this out. It's funny to see Clint up there, because he and I both know how great this would be for the lowpolycoop stuff.
Scott

#10 Phew! Finally - QuArk was drivin' me nuts!

#11 This looks sweet gonna take a look at it.

Thx thx,.

#12 @James :
Yes, It would be a great feature. Unfortunately, I don't find sufficient doc about these sctructures in .map format ( :( I'm not further able to use web) . Have you some docs about this ?

#13 Vincent,

There is a nice overview of the map format at collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?go=map_format.

Its rather simple in concept, i.e.:

// Hey look, an entity
{
  // entity fields

  // brush list
  {
     brush 1 plane & tex props
     brush 1 plane & tex props
     brush 1 plane & tex props
     brush 1 plane & tex props
  }
  {
     brush 2 plane & tex props
     ...
  }
}

// Another entity
{
  // entity fields

  // brush list
  {
     brush 1 plane & tex props
     brush 1 plane & tex props
     brush 1 plane & tex props
     brush 1 plane & tex props
  }
  {
     brush 2 plane & tex props
     ...
  }
}

(most of your brushes will be part of the "worldspawn" entity if they are not tied to any other entity)

If you want a list of all the entities you can can have, check out the map2dif sourcecode.

If your interested, i also have a tokenizer in the blender exporter, located in Torque_Util.py. It is a port of the map2dif tokenizer, which is used to parse the map files - which might be of some use to you.

Good luck with developing the map exporter :)

#14 Try this link members.fortunecity.com/torktools/doc.html for documentation on the various formats. (Still can't beleive its still up LOL).

#15 @James and Benoit : Thank you for these docs.

So, the purpose is split WolrdSpawn entity into many other entities (classnames), and to give the ability to the user to enter various properties, each with values. Am I right ?

#16 I have a question about this !

does it really work ? :)

so i mean does it ?

can i throw away quark :)

tnx this is nice

#17 Doe's it export to a dif?

#18 Use map2dif to convert from a map to a dif file.

#19 Whoa! Does that mean I can unify my work solely with blender????
:D

-BS-

#20 For converting to dif files, prefer using map2Dif_plus. It works better.