Blender .X

[morerunes]

Blender .X

Alright, I'm getting sick with all the pirated copies of 3ds, because I betcha the only thing wrong with blender's exporter is the header and the helpers.
I am now on a quest to make blender export directX files with ease, only replacing maybe helpers and header with one from fable. Maybe I can even write a program to do it for you! (just export from blender, open in my program and export from my program)
I just (no really, about 30 seconds ago) confirmed that if you set it up right, the .x exporter in blender exports skinweights, so it may be rather easy to make stuff like bows and maybe even creatures with blender, and by the looks of it so far, it could mean that you no longer need 3ds for anything you can't do in blender when it comes to fable.
Just thought I'd update you guys, and I'll make sure to make some progress on exporting bows soon.
--edit--
How about them apples? I got a bow working, and judging by the way blender exports the stuff, I'd reckon it's possible to do creatures too, but I don't think I'm quite ready to step up to that yet.
I basically had to re-build the skeleton in blender, using correct names and hierarchy, and weight it like you would expect, parenting the mesh to the skeleton. Right there I found a problem. Blender's DirectX exporter only exports the weights right, if your mesh is parented to the skeleton (as it usually should be in blender), but the directX files for Fable don't like that, they like to have both the mesh and skeleton parented to scene-root. That is a problem. So, after exporting, I just did what I did for static weapons, the copy and paste method.
I copied from the beginning of the actual mesh frame (not the bones, since those come right before the mesh), all the way to the end bracket that is commented with "#End of Root Frame", and then I pasted it over (in a bow mesh exported from CBox) from "Frame Hero_bow" to the last end bracket ( } ) just before "Frame Bow_bone_main". Now it looks like this:

Frame Scene-Root {
 
 FrameTransformMatrix {
  1.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000;;
 }
 Frame MESH_BOW_YEW_01 {
 
  FrameTransformMatrix {
   1.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000;;
  }
  Frame Mesh {
        FrameTransformMatrix {
          0.000000,0.000000,-1.000000,0.000000,
          -1.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,
          0.000000,1.000000,0.000000,0.000000,
          -0.080100,-4.245000,0.000000,1.000000;;
        }
Mesh {...
and so on and so forth, until reaching
...(mesh stuff)
        }
  } // End of XSkinMeshHeader
  }  // End of the Object Mesh 
}  // End of the Root Frame
 Frame Bow_bone_main {
 
  FrameTransformMatrix {...(continues)

Please, notice how it ends with four end brackets. That last one, the one that says "End of the Root Frame" is a liar, it's actually the end of "Frame MESH_BOW_YEW_01", but it doesn't matter since it's just a comment, you can leave it.
What you just did is paste your mesh and skinweights over the mesh and skinweights of a different bow, so that bow is now gone, and your bow has taken it's place. Then, you just follow the procedure for the helpers if they are in a different spot then before. That is covered here.
This is all the info you need to start using Blender for everything that you would normally need 3ds for, for fable. Hopefully soon, I can prove that you may even be able to make new creatures
--edit--
Hey, what do you know? I got a creature of my own creation to import into CBox without any visible problems, so now I've just got to test it.

 

[OldBoy]

Re: Blender .X

Interesting work... Hope this will pay out for you (us). +rep

 

[morerunes]

Re: Blender .X

thanks ^_^

the creature doesn't seem to work though