you do not need that for an alpha map, I only use groups for textures that I have alternate versions.

If you want, if it'll help I can upload a psd with alpha channel done for tex1 and all the channels on tex2

:) thx for offer, but I don't need help with it (i hope). It should not be a problem to make such images. I can paint the textures separately and when needed "connect" them together, in/with other tool.

I'm just saying that the feature should be good for work, not just for solving problem with Gimp Alpha channel. I will try to find some more info about that...

You could try either:
1) deselect/disable the rest of the channels before deleting alpha, so any changes there won't affect the rest.
2) Just deselect/disable the alphachan, copy RGB-chans to a new alphaless image, overwrite.


Hm. No, there's absolutely no smooth polys on the my mykonian wormbox aircraft. In fact, in several cases, it's just a default blender box that had its quads converted to triangles (more paranoia, i heard something of Spring doing something bad to >3-gons, "always beware of unknown shit".), a single Empty object and an UV unwrapping.

Or, i'm mixing up smooth edges and smooth polys? Then, /r/ images for the brainless.

So I'm finaly posting screens and files about a "bug" with exporting s3o from Blender. I made one simple model to show it.

1st picture is screenshot of Upspring model. You can see one bad unwraped face:


2nd picture is uvmap from spring:


3rd picture is uvmap from blender:


I now don't know if this is aproblem of export script or general problem of how spring do smoothing.

The only way how to fix this is mark seam edge also as sharp edge. After that the export works fine, but this kills smoothing in blender, so I must allways mark this edges just before the export. It will be fine if export will work without this tweeking (...also without triangulating the mesh and applying modifiers, scale, rotation, ...)

I think s3o has too many weird features...

the source files:

Just a crazy guess here, I'm completely talking out of my ass.... but have you tried shrinking the skinmap an eency weency bit? Perhaps it's a bug in how it handles vertices on the very edge of the skinmap.

I'd say that's what it looks like.


Probably an accidental "<=" instead of a < in some code intended to wrap around any uv coordinates that somehow become negative? Or maybe it is some bug or unwanted behaviour regarding welding - AFAICS one vertex cannot have two texture coordinates.

This must be a problem with the export script...

No. You can have the negative coordinates, because textures are usualy repeated along u and v. I test it, And the upspring draws the cylinder with negative coordinates in a right way.



In spring or in general? Because I think in general you can have more coordinates for vertex, because if you are using this vertex in more faces you will surely sometimes need more than one coordinate. I think it is up to you which texture coordinates you will use for vertex.

I made another test (I hope that upsring renders models in same way as spring). I tried fix the smoothing with "Recalculate vertex normals" and it did the same thing. One edge was not smoothed after import. So this issue needs to be fixed in export script. And there can't be made texture seam on smoothed area.

A vertex is a "dot", it's 0d. How can it have two diffrent positions? theres no width, no height, no length.

So imo, a vertex can just have one set of coordinates, not more

Whut? That means that seaming your texturemaps is impossible. Every seam requires having the vertex represented at each edge of the seam-cut.

Seriously, no seams?

You got me there :)

Can you add 3do. file support please? I need it so that I can make models for BA.

i've fixed the problem with pieces that have mixed tris and quads, it now converts them to tris. i'll update the file soon.

the uv thing i haven't figured out yet. i think i'll need to make it duplicate verts for each uv coord. sorry for the moment.

i may do 3do at some point, but not right now.

I just want an 3do importer.

you or anyone else who wants 3do capabilites could probably modify the s3o importer to do 3do pretty easily, but i'm not going to do it anytime soon.

some few months ago, I tried fix this problem by myself, but end just before implementation. I added two more lines for printing vertexes with uvs and faces with vertex indexes and uvs (for research).

The idea how to fix it is this:
1. you can export vertices with uvs for entire object like you are doing it in 0.6 version.
2. now, if you are exporting faces you must compare uvs from face data to uvs from vertexes array.
3. when you will find that you are exporting vertex which is in vertex array and it has different uvs that are in current exported face, you must create new vertex with uvs from face. And use this vertex for exported face instead of original one.
4. every new vertex that you are creating you must compare with all new created vertexes

Hope you understand it, i have bad english ...

Anyway I also tried to add support for exporting only objects that are child from selected root. but i found that objects don't track their children they know only their parent, so you must search for children in all objects. maybe it will be easier to export only selected objects, so user must select all objects in hierarchy before export.

you will find this useful, because you can have any objects in scene, for rendering (cams, lights, ...) and also more versions of units that you are working on. Good thing is work on the unit and just before export duplicate it apply all modifiers or make other changes. I think good will be automating this process but there is another blender catch that in blender API is not function for applying modifiers... (i hope that 2.5 will be better in this)

Out of curiosity: Does the plugin still work fine for the test builds of Blender 2.5? I waited getting into Blender until the UI update was done and now things are starting to iron out...

i haven't tested it yet as 2.5 doesn't seem far enough along yet, i'll try it as it gets closer and work out any updating i need to do.


also, as a work around for the UV problem you can just split your UV seams

could you possibly upload the blender file for the solar panel you used in the code example? i'm new to blender and i'd like to use this plugin, just not sure exactly how i'm meant to be setting everything up... would speed me along 10x!

(i've done keyframes with max, so hopefully i can get my brain around this)

thanks for an awesome contribution