I took the last couple of days and wrote a weapon exporter for Nexuiz. It is currently designed to export the "in your hand" weapon model. It is not finished yet but its useful enough to post.

This is not a zym exporter or a smd exporter really although it exports both formats.

What it DOES:
For SMD export it takes your selected mesh, attaches Bone01 at the origin and outputs a SMD mesh.

For ZYM export it takes your selected mesh, attaches Bone01, configures zmodel (included) to bake all standard animations (included) and runs zmodel for you. If you don't have python calling zmodel may fail but all you have to do is run the included batchfile to finish.

Download:
http://xoopstuner.com/nex/Blender-Nexuiz-weapon-export-prealpha.zip

Crylink with spikes:


Blender Interface:

That is very cool indeed

What about more advanced/intricate animations than the standard stuff? Like if a person wanted spinny parts or tubes that would throb, would there be support for stuff like that?

I need to add the md3 export to have a "complete" weapon exporter and after that a standard HUMANOID exporter is needed.
After those are operational I'll add ANOTHER tool for baking your own animations.

Why not make a complete DPM/SMD exporter?

This is fantastic. Thank you!

leileilol wrote:Why not make a complete DPM/SMD exporter?

Various SMD exporters have varying degrees of support for Mesh, Skeleton, Animation and Physics. Writing a true SMD exporter would take much more than 2 days.
Also, a perfect SMD exporter still leaves a lot of zmodel configuring, and Nexuiz specific up to the user. The Blender template with all animations would be very complex and, hence, very delicate.
My approach was to make a simple tool specifically for the jobs of Making weapons and making characters. I'm keeping it simple and effective.

Before yesterday Ii never programed in python so why don't you give it a shot?

Great stuff, easy exporters will make adding much needed content less bothersome.

I bolted on the XreaL md3 exporter so the weapon export script will be done soon.
I have offset and scaled the md3 export module to match the humanoid models i.e. it is setup to export v_crylink.md3.
The ground model seems to be self animated so if you overwrite g_crylink.md3 it will not spin (and it would be slightly buried in the ground) .

I need to know which frames the weapon spin animation is read from. Please help.

Here's what md3 export outputs from crylink.blend:
Don't move anything around and it would fit in the model's hand perfectly.


First person perspective is also OK out-of-the-box. I just need to sort out the ground animation.

ihsan wrote::?: I need to know which frames the weapon spin animation is read from. Please help.

Afaik there's a flag in the md3 model format that causes the model to spin when it's enabled. There's no "real" animation involved, it's hardcoded in the engine.

grab modeltool from the DP SVN repos and patch you model with one of the following:

Code: Select all

EF_ROCKET       1                       // leave a trail
EF_GRENADE      2                       // leave a trail
EF_GIB          4                       // leave a trail
EF_ROTATE       8                       // rotate (bonus items)
EF_TRACER       16                      // green split trail
EF_ZOMGIB       32                      // small blood trail
EF_TRACER2      64                      // orange split trail + rotate
EF_TRACER3      128                     // purple trail


Great job on the exporter btw!

Get the BETA here:
http://xoopstuner.com/nex/Blender-Nexuiz-weapon-export-beta.zip

This overwrites the pre-alpha. You can delete the nexweapon folder once you 'upgrade'

Thanks tZork and forTe (of blenderartists.org)

Nexuiz weapon exporter Export options:
'Screen weapon Model (zym)'
'Ground weapon Model (md3)'
'Player weapon Model (md3)'
'All weapon Models (zym & md3)'
'Dump MD3'
'Dump rotating MD3'
'Dump SMD'
'Dump ZYM'

This script is my one click solution to getting your blender models into Nexuiz. Exporting a weapon model was never so quick and easy!
It applies the necessary transformations automatically when exporting but if you want to manually apply transformations dump your files instead.

now that is some serious good work you've done there. please keep it up

Cool. Stuff.


Cool Stuff.

Open Arena has some really good models (especially the ones wearing bikinis) so just to test out the script I exported the OA Shotgun. It looked so cool that I dropped on a bumpmap and this was the result:



The object centers were off a bit so it looks like my script needs work

I took a look at a youtube video of Open Arena just now. To be fair, their weapons do look a lot better than the one in Nekuiz, generally. Their gibs look better, too. Very nice blood splattering all over the place type effect.

All that said I've never really been a big fan of the Quake 3 gameplay. It'd be cool to have options to use some of the Open Arena models etc. in Nexuiz though.

What's gotta happen is that you guys that know about all of this modelling stuff need to start releasing these to the public! :p

bengreenwood wrote: It'd be cool to have options to use some of the Open Arena models etc. in Nexuiz though.

They legally can, but SavageX and I have a thing of respecting eachother's game identities.

One of my biggest issues of contributing to Nexuiz was the SMD format I couldn't export to for players. At one point I wanted to do a total manga makeover of the entire character roster to emphasize a new style.

leileilol wrote:They legally can, but SavageX and I have a thing of respecting eachother's game identities.

What shocked me was how much better the weapon looked with bump and gloss. Whoever made these models are very good at keeping polycount down. I don't want to have to chose between pretty artwork and a pretty renderer.

leileilol wrote:One of my biggest issues of contributing to Nexuiz was the SMD format I couldn't export to for players. At one point I wanted to do a total manga makeover of the entire character roster to emphasize a new style.

Player model exporter is my next project.