Use FGD with Blender - ATTN CODERS Created 8 years ago2016-01-25 14:45:32 UTC by Tetsu0

I've been spending a lot of time with Blender recently, and I can finally say I'm comfortable with the modeling aspect of the program. However there has to be more under the surface and this is why I request an audience with a coder to toss some ideas around.

Built into Blender there is a .map exporter. I haven't played with it, but it exists. That means it's already possible to create some form of a Goldsource map with blender. (To what extent, I don't know, because i haven't actually tried this yet)

So that got me thinking, how far can we go with this? I haven't tried Python, and I'm not great at coding, but would it be possible to export light data with the .map. For example, if you make a map in blender and toss point lights inside blender you can light the level in real-time and then just export the lighting values to be compiled - it won't be perfect but it'll get you close to the final result.

Blender already has point light and spot light objects, and you can even set textures to be emissive - there's your texture lights too. If we could somehow convert blender's light data to goldsource equivalent values it could help take the guesswork out of compiling.

So if that all works (that alone would be awesome) would we be able to take this one step further? Would it be possible to import a fgd into blender and lay down some entities?

In any one of the 3 scenarios, this could add up to a huge time savings when mapping. Brushwork made simple, Lighting made simple, Entities easy to visualize...

So is someone familiar with python or blender addons?

The .map format is a very generic extension used by a lot of different programs for many different purposes. Are you sure the .map format used by Blender is the same as the format used by Hammer?

The blender documentation says it's an export for quake so i'm assuming it'll work pretty nicely.
Also, there's this
And any off-grid issues should be mitigated by importing into Sledge

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Also it seems lights have kinda been figured out too:
http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/map-entities-prep-export.php

Although there are five different types of lighting ("Lamp") object in Blender, "Spot", "Sun", "Hemi", "Area" and "Point", only the latter, "Point" lamps, work in a way that replicates the behaviour of .map based 'light' entities. This means lamp placement in Blender will generally approximate the final outcome of a levels lighting once compiled (lightmaps), without necessarily requiring any additional work in a level editor after-the-fact.

Neat. I can't wait to try this

You can already do all of the above and more with Wallworm, from Shawn Olson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM7h96TbG-8
I know it's not what you want, but if you`re comfortable with modelling in Blender, then almost any other modelling software shouldn't be a problem for you.
Just get the free student version and have a go at it for a couple of weeks. Or convince Shawn to swap to Blender, from that resource sucking, money milking thing that some refer to as a good modelling tool.
Either way, if you come across anything that works for you, let us know. I'd be interested as well.

Yeah that's the point of the thread. I might follow that quake tutorial i found but i'd love to see if there's a way to get more lighting info out of blender rather than just point lights.

I am not a student anymore so i can't get 3DS max. I really liked using it but Blender is more appealing to me now.

I also asked Shawn about a wallworm tool for blender and he said his focus is on 3DS MAX so I do not believe that's an option.

Didn't noticed your last post until after i replyed, i'll give it a go too ,maybe over the weekend.
Also, as long as you`re learning something new each day, you`re still a student imho!

Gave this a go today, I couldn't find the exporter tools anywhere. At once point they were built into blender, but not anymore.

I found a few exporters floating around the interwebs but the format is all messed up - crashes sledge upon loading.

Bummer