Wreckless Conduct:: Yellow Boxing

'Lo and behold, it's that time where I do an update. Expect much boring stuff to occur right now. Here's some screenshots of some progress with unwrapping the car to keep your eyeballs entertained.

It's essentially 1 solid mesh of a Lowrider and then over 18 separated parts that will break off when you crash it in game. It's going to take some time to get a nice and smooth UV happening so don't hold your breath. I didn't model it, you may thank the genius behind it by giving him cash.

I've been working on a MEL script/Export tool that's going to help me export props for Wreckless. It's getting close to an alpha stage so I'm going to write about it since it does more things than a half-unwrapped car.

It's a tool that's built to work with Matt's BuildCollisionOnImport for Unity and make exporting props to the Wreckless build simpler. A basic run down for skim readers:
- It will export an FBX to either my current folder or somewhere I choose
- It will rename my mesh and current material to the same name as my Maya scene.
- It will also copy the image file linked to the material into the directory I chose
- It can place collision volumes under a collision node
- I can tag collision volumes using this tool (more about that below)
- It does pivot point placement
- Everything is placed under a node called Export

Here's some shots of what it does and what problems I've come across. Note: This tool only exports as FBX, I could probably make it do other file formats but that's not necessary at the moment.

1. This is our substitute model, it has a clean construction history and an assigned texture. The export tool is that thing on the side, you will get a cleaner shot of it later.

2. Pivot Settings, move the pivot to particular places. It has general placements at the moment but I will be trying to include more expansive options. The pivot offset only works for above and below the model. It doesn't do x or z axes at the moment.

You may ask why not and I would have to explain why trying to move the pivot 0.2 meters below the prop is a little bit tedious. You may read that as "she's a lazy little thing" and you would be right.

3. The export buttons. Quick export will dump your FBX to the same location as your Maya scene. Export will place your FBX into the folder you direct it to. It will also copy the image file you're using to texture it into any folder marked "Texture" in the same directory as the FBX. Placement for lazy people will be coming up.

4. I hit a problem with trying to stick duplicated versions of the model under a Collision Node. In the top picture, you can see it completely missed the collision volume I had put in the scene.

Surprisingly checking where it was calling the function actually fixed it. The bottom shot shows what you're meant to get with the tool. If you have noticed, it will also rename your mesh and current material the same name as your scene. That's a good thing if your scene is "Vending_Machine" but bad if it's "R_204892-492". I might include extra bits that allow the user to set a name for the mesh and material.

Exporting into Unity looks like this:

If you're not familiar with Matt's script, basically it will look for a node called "collision", then look for anything that has an ID tag. Depending on which tag you use, the script will then make a collider where you put a volume and then delete the mesh you used to make that volume.

So in the above case, the "_Box" tag we stuck on our collision volume will make a Box Collider. Feel free to come bug me if you don't get that explanation, stabbing costs you extra.

There are a few things to fix with the current version of the tool.

It can't generate collision volumes, these need to be made by the user. However it does come with some options that make it easier to put collision under the right node. I started putting these in when I remembered that there are props which contain more than 1 type of volume.

It's got a problem with naming volumes, as you can see it'll keep appending the tag to the transform's name. Don't you worry, I will fix it soon.

The current GUI looks like this, most things are explanatory but you can ask questions and I may try to answer them.

To Do:
- Solve problems with the collision tags, and node.
- Refine the export function
- Refine the naming system
- Include additional pivot point options

If you have any suggestions or complaints, please fire them at my head. I'll be sure to get them in a most painful way.