Multiverse Exporter
From DeleDWiki
Contents |
Features
The Multiverse Exporter for DeleD Lite/PRO automatically generates the following files on export:
- .mesh
- .material
- .physics
- .asset (one for .mesh, and one for .material).
These files are saved by the exporter into a chosen asset repository. The user can also define what category the the model will be listed under, as well as the scale of the model.
The exporter supports all of the collision volumes Multivese supports:
- Oriented Bounding Box
- Axis Aligned Bounding Box
- Sphere
- Capsule
Information on the Multiverse collision volumes can be found here.
Installation
The Multiverse Exporter can be downloaded from here. Once downloaded, unzip the file and place the ExportMultiverseMesh.dll into your DeleD's Plugins folder. Now you can export static meshes to Multiverse.
Usage
The following details how to create a simple model in DeleD and export it successfully to Multiverse. Our example model will be a simple bridge with two texture files mapped to it:
To add Collision Volumes to our bridge, we have to define a few primitives. Since this is a fairly simple model, we'll use Oriented Bounding Boxes (OBB). Generally its best to turn off DeleD's snapping features, as the OBB collision volumes have to be rectangles. Currently, the only way to implement collision volumes is by making a material called "collision" and applying it to the primitives that will be our CV's. Since CV's are generally displayed in red in Multiverse, it may be convent to set the collision material's color to red, and modulate. This has no impact on what is exported, save for the benefits to the user.
The traditional method of naming the collision primitives(e.g "mvcv_obb_bridge_xx" for 3D Studio Max) is not yet supported, thus naming the primitives in DeleD will have no impact on the export. But, as a general rule it is good to follow convention.
Below is the bridge with all of its collision volumes:
Now, to export we start up the exporter from DeleD's plugin menu, and select where we want to output the export. Options are as follows:
- Asset Name: The name of the object.
- Asset Repository: Where your asset repository is located, you can click the ellipse button to select a new one, or the the button to the right of that to select the default asset repository.
- Category: Currently DeleD only has the four basic categories that ships with Multiverse (buildings, props, walls, characters, misc), you cannot create your own category yet, but you can always edit that later in the .asset files.
- Scaling: You can choose the scaling of your model. By default 1 DeleD generic unit = 1 mm in Multiverse. It's a good idea to always keep scaling in mind when you're modeling, for instance the author of this guide uses a 100 major grid line size and 10 minor grid line size. So every unit box is 10 cm, and every box enclosed by the major grid lines are 1 by 1 meter, thus 10x scale is appropriate here.
Now to check the export, here's the model loaded up in Multiverse's Model Viewer. Note that the original model was actually one whole mesh, but because we used two separate texture material, the mesh is now two sub-meshes (the bridge bottom + railing, and the bridge foot path). The exporter defines sub meshes, material names, and collision volumes based on the texture material associated with it.
Success! The collision volumes also exported nicely. As you can see, exporting from DeleD is really an easy process. For more complex models, it is however generally necessary to manually modify the mesh' material file - e.g. if you want to include normal mapping, scrolling textures, etc.
Unsupported Features
The following are a listing of options or features that are not yet supported by the plugin. but are goals for after the 1.0 release.
- The command-line arguments from the Multiverse Conversion Tool
- Sockets
- Collision Volumes are not associated with submeshes; eventually support for tagging primitives will be added, so the traditional CV naming method can be applied. Currently, the CVs will stay in place in your world even if a submesh is turned off.
