Blender

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blender mdl7 exporter

download exporter ~ 50kb - copy it to your blender scripts directory!

description

this script exports all selected meshes to 3dgamestudio's mdl7 format (3dgamestudio version 6.4 and newer!).

usage

1. open a script window besides a 3d window (a 3d viewport has to stay visible during export otherwise animations won't get exported!) and start the script: scripts -> export -> 3dgamestudio mdl7 (.mdl)...
2. select the mesh objects to be exported.
3. set the scale (in blender units usually get used more like meters and in 3dgamestudio more like inches).
4. select [external textures] or [internal textures] depending on if the textures should be stored internally or externally (for now only textures assigned to faces per uv/image editor will be exported, internally stored textures will only get mipmaps if their width and height are powers of two).
5. select [world space] or [object space] coordinate export (object space probably doesn't make much sense if exporting multiple meshes).
6. press [export animation] if animation should get exported.

   • animation sequences get defined by an animation sequence name and a list of frame numbers separated by spaces. with [v] enabled the sequence will get exported as vertex animation. with [b] enabled the sequence will get exported as bone animation. with the middle mouse button the gui can be dragged up and down if the list gets too long.
   • press [add] or [remove] to add or remove animation sequences
   • notes for exporting bone animations
     • the mdl7 format currently doesn't support weighted skinning so every vertex should only have 1 bone influence. if there is more than one influence the exporter will take the strongest one or a random one if all influences have the same weight.
     • bones whose name begin with "ik" (not case sensitive) won't get exported.
     • only the armature of the active mesh object (=last selected) will get exported.
     • the armature must have the same origin and transformation as the mesh object it is parented to!

7. press [export].
8. set the path and filename and press [export mdl7] to start the export.
9. wait until the "export done!" pop-up appears. (exporting can take a while for complex models. the progress can be watched in the console window.)
10. with the [save options] and [load options] buttons the export settings for the current blend file can be saved and loaded.

other notes

• names shouldn't be longer than 20 characters for bones, 16 characters for texture file names (without extension), 16 characters for mesh objects.

• exporting internal textures can be slow because of mipmap generation.

• the exporter can also output a xml version of the mdl7 format if the line model.save(filename[:-4] + ".xml") gets uncommented. this functionality was originally added for debugging purposes but maybe the xml format can be helful for someone.

blender animation tutorial

animation tutorial

this tutorial should give an idea about character animation in blender and also covers using the exporter.

FBX export

From version 2.45 on, blender's native fbx export has improved a lot. Since Acknex supports fbx now, you could export your model to fbx. Bones, animations, skins and materials will be exported.

Either get the latest blender version from the blender homepage or download the py script directly >download.