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As for design considerations, I'd put this feature into its own module (within the UI binary, that's fine) - you can use the AutoSaver or the ClipboardModule as blueprints. Feel free to create a separate folder in the radiant/ subtree, like "clipboard". I'm not quite sure if all the dialogs can deal with the fact that some trees being reloaded in the background, that might be tricky. A few of them have been adjusted already, as you noticed, like the MediaBrowser: it monitors the MaterialManager for unload/load events and repopulates the tree when this happens. Monitoring the FM root is fine, some mappers or devs might also use the TDM root - maybe make this configurable? I'd start with some basic functionality first, and then get some mapper feedback in the forums - that way you're sure to create something people want. (On this topic, I wasn't aware of wxFileSystemWatcher - this also gives me the idea of adding an ASE model material adjuster. Since exporting ASE models from Blender has never the correct image paths, the watcher might notice when a new model is added and adjusts the BITMAP paths to point to a correct shader name automatically. I must've done this manually like hundreds of times.) |
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Thanks for the tips! I'm starting off with models, skins, and materials since I believe those will be the most useful and I think all the dialogs are able to deal with them. At that point I'll request some feedback on whether I should worry about doing the others. "Since exporting ASE models from Blender has never the correct image paths, the watcher might notice when a new model is added and adjusts the BITMAP paths to point to a correct shader name automatically. I must've done this manually like hundreds of times.)" Can you expand more on the incorrect path issue from Blender? I've only done a couple small modular sets that way so far, but I've only once had an incorrect image path due to Blender's 64-character limit on material names. It's off-topic for this issue, but I think the other way around needs some improvements too - making some Blender plugin to import TDM materials into your Blender file with them named correctly and hooked up to their textures would be really helpful. I haven't really thought about what that would look like yet, but it would definitely help out if you were doing a large amount of modeling using existing materials (as opposed to creating and texturing a model from scratch where it's not a big deal to set up a new material for it). |
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It may be related to the exporter version I used back in the day, this has been more than a several years ago. The exported ASE models used to have the image name in the BITMAP field - you could put a idTech material name in there, but then I'd have problems with rendering in Blender. It's entirely possible that I missed a step, or the exporters have improved since then. |
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This sounds quite convenient, to have DR automatically take care of updating itself whenever you're working or incrementing on an asset. Hitherto it's often been simpler just to restart the application than reload models + materials + skins + entity defs when adding a custom entity. Blender & ASE: R Soul has already made a plugin that sounds like what you want to do, but I never really managed to get it to do what I expected. For example, I imported a model with a copper material into Blender and it was assigned the preview image of a shadow texture. I believe one of the things it's supposed to do is circumvent the 64 character limit by allowing you to specify longer names in texture slots, rather than material slots. https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/19196-blender-tdm-material-manager-plugin-updated-to-version-280-blender-280-update/ Edit: seems to apply only to .lwo's Personally I've always named Blender materials after TDM materials, never had an issue with exporting to TDM except for the notorious 64 character limit. I've never needed rendering of TDM models in Blender, just assigning the diffusemap as a preview image was sufficient, but labour-intensive. |
- Anonymous
