Our ReVolt Pub

This plugin is not (yet) available for public download.

Currently I'm only sending it to a few Beta Testers, to get feedback, etc. But if you actually want to try it, you can PM me your email address and I'll add you to the mailing list (which is stored on my own computer and not shared with anyone or any company).

Jigrebren.

Some of you may already know that I've been working on a Blender import-export plugin for Re-Volt. Yep, that's one of the reasons why I had to leave other projects on one side the last weeks, leaving Huki working alone on v1.2 (well, seeing the good job he has achieved lately, it seems that he doesn't really need my help ).

On a side note, I have started working on an import plugin for Blender 2.49 a long time ago, but never wrote the export counterpart... A few time ago I decided to finally write a complete import-export plugin, so I switched to Blender 2.5 Beta and start to rewrite the whole thing from scratch (the python API used in Blender have been greatly reshaped between 2.49 and 2.5).

I have already a quite clean (and complete) export filter for PRM/M files (ie. car and object). The import filter also works but the code is more crappy as I have ported it from my previous 2.49 filter.
I plan to add W (world) support in a few time...

Now, I'm just wondering if there some Blender 2.5 users here?

I have not planned any release date, etc. for now, but if someone is interested to try the thing out, let me know. I don't need a lot people, just someone that already know how to use Blender, and that is ready to actually test and send me feedback...

--------
EDIT:
Here is a screenshot of the imported AMW car body:



As you can see, there is already UV texture support, as well as vertex color support. And as you can't see, it also support Re-Volt face properties (eg. Double-sided face, No EnvMapping, etc.). Prm with several levels of detail (LoD) are also supported.

Hi yeah I am still interested in this.


I do have 2.5 on my computer, but I seem to remember taking one look at it and going back to 2.49 because 2.5 was incomplete or something.

But yes I can be a 2.5 user for the purposes of testing your plug-in.

the_law wrote:I do have 2.5 on my computer, but I seem to remember taking one look at it and going back to 2.49 because 2.5 was incomplete or something.

Yep, Blender 2.5 is still a Beta version, so it may not be as complete as v2.49. For info, they've just launched the splash contest for v2.57, so I think we can expect a stable version in the upcomming months. BTW I can say that I'm getting used to the new interface way faster than expected...

Hello!
Oh my god, this plugin will be useful like... .hul converter.
I need to say THANKS even if I have not seen it in action.
This is insteresting to me because I have quite normal Blender 2.56 that does not havee many bugs. I think doesn't have enought. I am working with Blender. That is what you were asking...
I am just saying - "If you need some help (I can't believe that you should have help) then I can help you."

Can import world now

Here's market1 in wireframe, solid and textured mode:

* *

Sorry for the concise post but it's late and I'm tired...

So, i will be able to modify the body prms without losing the vertex shading?

look wonderfull
i don't know anything aboud 3D modeling
but this makes me really want to learn

i know i can't be helpfull here but can i try your plugin ?

Looks great!

Cat @ Mar 13 2011, 03:30 AM wrote:So, i will be able to modify the body prms without losing the vertex shading?

Yep, you will.

I made a test to be sure.
I have imported the AMW body and exported it without any modification. Here is the result in re-volt:

I think it looks ok.
And to be sure it actually works, I made the same but with some modifications.

I have lowered the top, modifed the vertices color above the right windows (the blue-green-pink strip), and added some transparencies to the wing.

sebr wrote:i know i can't be helpfull here but can i try your plugin ?

Not for now, it's not redistributable, even as Beta. But stay tuned, when it'll be more stable I may release a closed beta version for testing.


Also for info, I have to add that importing a stock world (as in my yesterday's post) is currently very very slow. I don't know if I'll be able to improve it, maybe only if the Blender Python API gets better in the next releases...

Zmodeler's prm filter will become obsolete with this.

As for the already modified meshes, adding vertex shading is easy?

Looks good Jigebren, though I am curious about one thing that may be offtopic.

Jigebren @ AMW wrote:I have lowered the top, modifed the vertices color above the right windows (the blue-green-pink strip), and added some transparencies to the wing.

It seems to me like the transparency is slowly fading to opaque and I didn't know that was possible. Does blender feature adding transparency per vertex?

I might be able to help testing here, though I have absolutely no experience with Blender and it's not even installed yet. I may look into it later though.

looks awesome!
i recently installed blender cause of the problems max gave me but i still need to get used to it

Cat wrote:Zmodeler's prm filter will become obsolete with this.

As for the already modified meshes, adding vertex shading is easy?

Yep, Blender + this plugin will be likely to be more powerfull than Zmodeler + prm import filter. Moreover, contrary to Zmod, Blender can also manage quad (ie. faces with 4 sides).

And adding vertex color is a regular Blender feature (called the "Vertex Paint" mode), so painting a Re-Volt model should be very easy (once you're used to Blender).

Urne wrote:It seems to me like the transparency is slowly fading to opaque and I didn't know that was possible. Does blender feature adding transparency per vertex?

In fact Re-Volt support per vertex transparency, but Blender doesn't. So I have mapped the Re-Volt alpha value to another color layer in Blender. On this layer, opaque vertices are colored white. To add tranparency to a vertex, you'll have to pain it in cyan (black also works). I could show you a screenshot of the Dragon's wings if you want...


@synasthesia (& others...)
I'm not a Blender expert myself, but I can give this advice to a any Blender beginner:
- Don't just run Blender and try to understand how it works intuitively, as you can do with a lot of other softwares. It can work for a movie player of a web browser, but not for Blender. You'll just get lost and frustated.
You'd rather read a beginner tutorial while running Blender at the same time to try commands directly. That way you'll understand the basis, and step by step you'll learn the command and the shortcuts. But be aware that of lot of docs are currently for v2.49, not for the upcomming v2.5 (which my plugin is designed for...).

i know, i have already downloaded some pdf tutorials which are pretty helpful sofar

i have the 2.5 too, the tutorial i am doing now is too, have to say Blender is pretty good for what i have seen of it, and your plugin supports me even more to learn blender

Urne, as promised, here is the Dragon model. The texture is not loaded (as it is not in the model's folder, but I could do it by hand).

First the Vertex Color layer, then the Vertex Alpha layer:
-

You can notice that the selected layer has changed in the Vertex Color list (at the bottom right of the screen).

As I said above, in the Alpha layer, white means opaque, cyan means transparent. Here the wings are semi-transparent, so we have light cyan, ie: RGB(128, 255, 255).


BTW, I have fixed a minor mistake as Alpha values were inverted when importing / exporting. You can't have noticed it, but in the modifed AMW, I had set the back of the wing to be tranparent, and in re-volt it was the front of wing that was rendered transparent...

Thank you very much for the pictures Jigebren!

By the way I do have a question about another important feature that is missing in the ASE tools. I know you said you weren't an expert at Blender, but do you know if it supports Multi-Frame? Does your plugin do that as well?

Also, could you tell me the scale of Re-Volt coordinates? I know you've mentioned this before in another topic but I've been unable to find it so far.

Continue the nice job on the plugin, you certainly deserve some praise.

urnemanden @ Mar 15 2011, 04:46 PM wrote:I know you said you weren't an expert at Blender, but do you know if it supports Multi-Frame? Does your plugin do that as well?

AFAIK Blender does not support multi-frame, at least not the way Re-Volt does.

In my previous import plugin for v2.49, I was supporting multiframe with a workaround: each frame was assigned to its own UV Texture layer, and the frame duration were writen in the UV layer's name, as you can see on the following screenshot:


But unfortunately v2.5 only supports up to 8 UV Texture layers, so I can't use the same trick. Too bad. Anyway this procedure would have been very laborious to edit...

So for the 2.5 plugin, it's likely that I'll never support the import of multiframe data.

But for the export plugin (the most interesting one for track makers), I was thinking about maybe adding a very basic support for 2 common types of multiframe:
- an array of frames, like the planet on the 'levels\muse2\\muse2i.bmp' image
- and the scrolling of the UV texture along the U axis, to give an 'escalator' or 'conveyor belt' effect.
In both cases, the speed an number of frames would be set in the UV layer name. You know, something like [24;0.12,1500] for 24 frames with a 0.12 step on the U coordinate and 1500ms as the frame duration...
But for now, it's just an idea, I don't know if I'll actually be able to add that.


About the Re-Volt coordinates scale, I don't really get the question... The scale compared to what? There is not meters or inches in a virtual 3D world.
Just for info, I have to apply at least a 0.1 factor when importing data in Blender.

[OFFTOPIC]The Re-Volt scale could be approximately determined by assuming the Neighbourhood 1 roadside cars to be life-size and estimating the length of e.g. Candy Pebbles in centimeters on that scale. This is useful for making extreme type tracks with the original Re-Volt style. [/OFFTOPIC]

-----
CW

hil told me 1 revolt unit is 24 metres approximately

just to give some knowledge XD

I think I should soon be able to release an Alpha version to a few people for testing, but I'm still unsure if this plugin can currently be run on another computer.

I have emailed a test version to The_law yesterday but still haven't got an answer (not sure he properly received it in fact...).
Or maybe someone else is ready to try. For now, I just want to know if it can be run on an other computer, I don't need mode thorough testing.
You only need to have Blender 2.56a Beta installed on your system (the version available on this page) and to know a bit about how to figure things out with Blender 2.5.
In this case, just send me a PM with your email address (or send me an email directly if you know my address).

EDIT:
Well, that's ok, the_law told me it is working for him.
So it means that I could probably release an Alpha version quite soon...

It looks like some excellent work jigebren.

I have been able to import a car in to blender, place another blender model on it (fire hydrant), joined them and then re-exported. Gaps and spaces also export without problems.

I will keep testing it.



Edit: When I try to give the appended object (eg fire hydrant) its own texture, then in game the texture of that object is replaced with the car's texture (unlike in blender). So it makes a good attempt to texture the appended object but obviously uses the wrong image. I think it would be great if you could fix this, because then we can "build" and object from other objects that are already textured. This would obviously involve copying the texture image to the car directory, and assumes that re-volt can use more than one texture on one car. If it can't, then we would have to merge the textures into one texture in blender.

i realy need to test it

sebr @ Mar 20 2011, 03:14 PM wrote:i realy need to test it 

For those who want to test (and report of course - otherwise get lost ), you may send me a PM with your email, and as soon as I can send an Alpha version you'll receive it (maybe in the evening if everything is ok...)

PM send ...

Ok, the 1st Alpha version has been sent to Alpha testers...

Currently, it should allow to:
- import and export a .PRM or a .M model (cars and re-volt models/instance).
- import and export a .W file (a track world).

It's already quite complete. There is just no support for texture animation in world file.
I think it's working without major bug now, but I have not tried yet to actually load any exported file into re-volt, so if you do, please keep me informed.

---

@the_law
It is not possible to use more than one texture for a car (that's how re-volt is designed). I think Blender 2.49 had a tool to map several UV textures into 1 single image, but AFAIK v2.5 still lacks it. Anyway, with a bit of resizing, it should be possible to do it "by hand".

Oh, and instead of: you should use the following code to display the image in your previous post. That way it doesn't take too much place (mostly width) in the topic, and it can still be displayed full size with a mouse click.

try to load a W file : ok in 3s

you just forgot to tell us one thing on the email : click on "Save As Default" button after tick the revolt plugin checkbox

or we have to do it at each blender start ...

jigebren @ Mar 21 2011, 12:47 AM wrote:@the_law
It is not possible to use more than one texture for a car (that's how re-volt is designed). I think Blender 2.49 had a tool to map several UV textures into 1 single image, but AFAIK v2.5 still lacks it. .

Ok thanks jigebren,
I could just use 2.49 to do the joining, resulting in a single texture, and then go back to 2.56a to do the export.

You don't remember what this joining of UV textures was called in 2.49 do you?

SebR wrote:try to load a W file : ok in 3s

3 sec to load a W file.
I just can't believe it... What track was it?

And you're right, I wrote a notice about the "Save As Default" stuff in a previous email to the_law and huki but forgot to add it in the last email...

the_law wrote:You don't remember what this joining of UV textures was called in 2.49 do you?

Well, the tool I was thinking of is called "Consolidate into one image", it's a script available in an UV window, from the "image" menu. But I have never used it myself...

One more question,
When I import a map, add a cube, texture the cube and then export the map, I still can't see the texture that I had put on the cube when I get in game. In fact is chooses one of the map's own textures instead.

What procedure should I be following?

A re-volt track only support up to 10 textures.
If the world is named eg. "myworld.w", all files have to be in a folder named "myworld" and the 10 textures will be named "myworlda.bmp", "myworldb.bmp" up to "myworldj.bmp.
If you follow this rule, textures should be properly imported/exported by this plugin.

frostbite.w in 3.5s

CastleKeepers.w in 90.19s

Nhood1.w in 61.61s



EDIT : I made some changes on ICEATOPIA.W and fixed a graphic bug realy easily

deleting some Vertices

See the results, video HD

Gigebren I have managed to consolidate my textures into one 256x256 image, but I am still struggle to use your script to export the car texture properly.

In the re-volt panel it says "no UV texture", so I am probably just not using my image properly. Please advise.

@the_law
I quickly mentionned it in the email. If the panel shows: "no UV texture", either:
- you are in Object mode. --> Switch to Edit mode. Or:
- the current mesh has no UV Texture. --> In the UV Texture subpanel, click on the "+" sign.

Also, to be sure it works properly, use only one UV Texture, and let the name to "UVTex" (the default value).

I managed to stitch multiple textures from multiple objects into one, as discussed earlier on this thread, and here is the result:



Sorry I didn't bother adding any blood.

Multi-frame support

Though it's likely that I'll never add multi-frame support for the import plugin, I planned to add basic texture animation support through a dedicated command line...
And I have just successfully run the first tests, so it is now possible to export a world with texture animation.

As I said somewhere above, it will be possible to:
- use UV coordinates laid out as a regular array, like for the animated planet in Museum2 (see the 'levels\muse2\muse2i.bmp' image).
- create a scrolling effect of the UV texture along the U or the V axis, to give an 'escalator' or 'conveyor belt' effect, as eg. the excalator in Museum2.

The command will be in the form:
n=16, nu=0, du=4/256, dv=0, t=0.200

• n: number of iteration
  nu: when set, activate the "Array" mode: each time 'i' has increased by 'nu', U is reset to U0 and V is increased by 'dv'
  du: step added to the U coordinate at each iteration
  dv: step added to the V coordinate at each iteration (mostly intended for the "Array" mode)
  t: frame duration (in seconds)</li>

---
@the_law
Ok, good to see the PRM import/export seems to work flawless now...

---
EDIT:
To see what is possible with this feature, I have modifed the escalator animation of Museum2. I have even made a going to and fro motion, using a more advanced command line... (of course it's only animation, it doesn't modify the escalator behavior).


For those who want to check the result, here's the modifed muse2.w (don't forget to backup the original).

At first sight it looked quite complicated, but I think I understand how it works now. I also took time to look at the test you did on muse2 and the result is quite interesting. I wonder how hard it will be to keep everything seamless visually while working with multi-frame.

you only use the "visual effect" of multiframe ... there is a hardware effect too ...
if you put your car up/down on the bottom left escalator, you'll see the car going on the top... if you do the same on top right escalator you'll see the car going slowly down ... It's the same on conveyor belt, if you put your car on the top, it will fall down at the end without driving.

I belive that is caused by a farce field, not the multi-frame as you also can see when trying Jig's modified muse2.w.

Urne wrote:I wonder how hard it will be to keep everything seamless visually while working with multi-frame.

It depends on the texture pattern you're using. I think it can be done pretty cleany by using simple ratio of the texure size. That's what they done for the conveyor:
- They used 2 squares representing the same texture, each square being exactly 1/4 of the total texture size.
- To give the proper effect, the UV texture has to scroll from the first square to the second one. To do that, it will traverse a 1/4 distance (relative to the texture size).
- If you want to do it in 25 step (for example), then each step will be (1/4) / 25 (the distance divided by the number of steps).
- So the command to use in Blender will be (with a 0.05 sec timer):
n=25, du=1/4/25, t=0.05

Simple, isn't it?

sebr wrote: you only use the "visual effect" of multiframe ... there is a hardware effect too ...

I know, that's why I specified it's only modify the animation. Modifying the conveyor behavior is another subject.
And we were also wondering with Huki why no farce field is displayed in makeitgood mode...
In fact, it's not a farce field. The conveyor effect parameters are hardcoded in Re-Volt, and this effect is applied to the world polygons via the NCP file (the collision file, which also contains the face property). The conveyor effect is just one of the available face property...

ah, my bad. I suppose that is the SG Property in ASE Tools which ali nicknamed Side-Wind?

urnemanden @ Mar 24 2011, 01:58 AM wrote: ah, my bad. I suppose that is the SG Property in ASE Tools which ali nicknamed Side-Wind?

Oh my.. some weird names there. It seems to list properties of both world file and collision file. Don't know, Head Wind sounds like the elevator property..

@jig: Is there a reason for using white-to-cyan for transparency instead of white-to-black?
EDIT: Oh well, it could make sense, if you had planned to use the "red" component of the color directly for alpha value..

urnemanden @ Mar 23 2011, 09:28 PM wrote:ah, my bad. I suppose that is the SG Property in ASE Tools which ali nicknamed Side-Wind?

Quite that. In fact, it's "Intensely Weird Magnet" and "Mildly Weird Magnet" for the museum conveyor (up and down), and "Head Wind" and "Side Wind" for respectively market1 and market2.

Huki wrote:Is there a reason for using white-to-cyan for transparency instead of white-to-black?

I decided to use white-cyan gradient for transparency for several reasons:
- it's faster to implement (well, not a very real reason...)
- the blender background is grey, so if I use shades of grey, a semi transparent face will be hardly distinguishable from the background.
- if you want to enter an accurate value (for example 0.25) in the Blender color selector, you only have to set the Red component (otherwise you would also have to set the Green and Blue to 0.25).
- it is compatible with white-to-black transparency. You can use W-B gradient if it sounds more logical to you.

Don't be afraid of the Allosaurus...

... or maybe you should, because this one can actually hit you... Indeed, what you see on here on the left are the collision data from the "allos.ncp" file, which actually looks very similar to the instance model "allos.prm" displayed on the right.

So as you can see, I'm curently working on adding support for NCP file (the collision data for world and instance models). This screenshot is the first attempt to import NCP data (for now, it's still incomplete as the face properties are not imported).
Then, I hope to be able to add NCP export support too, with the possibility to set the face property directly in Blender... That would be a great feature for track makers (as there is no tool AFAIK to directly create a NCP from a W file), and it would probably allow to practically get rid of Rv-glue.


The last version sent to Alpha testers has also seen 2 minor improvements:

- I think you remember I have added TexAnim support (ie. multi-frame) for world export through a little textual command.
Now, the import plugin could sometime be able to translate TexAnim data into a TexAnim command when importing the world file. It is intended to work only for simple cases like for example the texture animation of the stock tracks.

- Maybe you don't already know what BigCubes are? A Re-Volt world is composed of a lot of small meshes called Cubes. These Cubes are clustered into bigger BigCubes, simple as that. It's designed to optimize the rendering speed in game: Re-volt check if a BigCube can be seen, and if it can't, all included Cubes can also be skipped directly (no need to check them one by one).
Now the plugin can optionally display the BigCubes when importing a world. In fact, it actually displays the BigCubes bounding sphere. Each Cubes cluster and its associated Bounding Sphere will be assigned to the same Group in Blender, so as to know who belongs to whom...

Jigebren wrote:Though it's likely that I'll never add multi-frame support for the import plugin, I planned to add basic texture animation support through a dedicated command line...

I've been into a little discussion with huki about what you mean by "basic support". I read it as if your plugin doesn't support everything that Re-Volt theoretically supports?

Also, to me it sounds like your plugin already supports all the kind of multi-frame that the stock tracks uses. Is that correct?

Anyway, thanks for doing a great job on the plugin so far Jigebren. Peoples engagements in track making is varying though and depends a lot on the mood (which I guess programming depends on as well). It might also be a big step for max users to convert to the free and perhaps better Blender alternative. So while things might be silent right now, I am sure we'll see some feedback on this plugin if not now, then later. I'll see if I get any time to play with this and Blender itself in the next couple of weeks but for now I have to pass. I hope you understand.

urnemanden @ Mar 26 2011, 11:23 PM wrote: programming depends on as well). It might also be a big step for max users to convert to the free and perhaps better Blender alternative.

I think the greatest benefit is, that most people just can't afford 3D Max. Having a free tool such as Blender will give everyone the possibility to do extreme tracks.

Of course most people so far probably use pirated versions of 3D Max to create their tracks, but what would JESUS think about that? I for one applaud every effort to bring free tools for RV creations, even if they're not at first feature complete.

Urne wrote:I've been into a little discussion with huki about what you mean by "basic support". I read it as if your plugin doesn't support everything that Re-Volt theoretically supports?

Also, to me it sounds like your plugin already supports all the kind of multi-frame that the stock tracks uses. Is that correct?

Well, Re-Volt stores TexAnim data that way (for each animated face):
frame1: texture used, frame duration, UV texture mapping
frame2: texture used, frame duration, UV texture mapping
...
frameN: texture used, frame duration, UV texture mapping

so it means that it can store virtually any possible texure animation...
In this plugin, I wrote support for scrolling animation, as well as what I called the 'Array mode' (for animation using a sequence of images), and with this 2 effects, we can indeed recreate all animations used in stock tracks.
But it won't be possible to generate any other imaginable effects (like eg. texture rotation, resizement, etc.) or to set each frame data by hand... That's why I called it "basic support".

Arto wrote:Of course most people so far probably use pirated versions of 3D Max to create their tracks, but what would JESUS think about that? I for one applaud every effort to bring free tools for RV creations, even if they're not at first feature complete.

Maybe Jesus would have though: "Hem, let he who has never used a pirated software cast the first stone", ahah. Anyhow, though I can't blame anyone for using pirated software that cost the price Max costs, I prefer the freedom Blender gives me compared to the so-called "Professional Touch" that Max may have given me.


The last news about this plugin developement: it can import NCP file with faces material.
You can find a sketchy list of available re-volt face materials in ase tools doc. The track museum2 widely uses face materials, as you can see in the following screenshot (I have assigned each material a different color):


I should soon try to implement the NCP export couterpart, but there is some math involved to convert vertices coordinated into planes normal and distance. Nothing really complex, but enough to scratch my head nevertheless...

I've just configured Thunderbird this afternoon to diplay RSS new from the Blender Foundation, and Ta-da! less than one hour later came the annoucement that the Blender 2.57 Release Candidate has been made available for testing...
And that's a very good news, as it means that final v2.7 is now on its way to be released quite soon.

I have also released another Alpha version of my plugin (last one for v2.56 Beta as I'm now switching to v2.57 RC).

This one now supports both import and export of NPC files (re-volt collision data).

It means that we're now able to open a NCP file, modify it directly in Blender, and re-export it to be used in re-volt. And it also means that it will be possible to directly generate and export an NCP file from a world file (.W) or from an instance or model file (.PRM / .M). No need to use an external tool like PRM2NCP.EXE anymore...

It will also be possible to set the available re-volt materials (grass, marble, ice, etc.) for each face directly in Blender. Other minor options like double-side collision are also supported (for example, you can create faces that will only collide with camera, but not with cars).

This is getting more and more into a full "Level Editor for Extreme Tracks"

A little message to tell you that the development of this plugin is still nicely progressing, with several significant bugfixes recently thanks to Huki's reporting.
No major new features since last time, except that I have also added support for importing RIM file (planes definition for mirroring surfaces). I plan to add RIM export support soon (not next week though as I'm leaving tomorrow for a few days...).

Oh, and Blender v2.57 has now reached RC2 state, so maybe we can hope the final version in not so much time.

Citywalker wrote:This is getting more and more into a full "Level Editor for Extreme Tracks"

Yep. I think it's not far from being my final goal, in fact.