Hi guys,
I seem to be able to (with a fair bit of your help XD ) grasp most of the JME concepts. I'm a hardy Java programmer, so it's great to tinker with this stuff.
Where I am falling down is on the graphics side. I have pulled my hair out several times over trying myself to produce something and failing miserably. I have scoured the internet, but I cannot seem to find a decent low-budget resource with enough decent consistent material.
So Blender 2.5/2.6 is "nearly" here, and I was wondering if anyone knew if it is supported by JME? I have had a try, and at first glance it appears a lot (and I mean a lot) more straightforward than its predecessor. With some hard work, I might be able to produce something on this platform, but it would be a huge learning curve for me, so it would be great to know if this is intended to be supported (perhaps in JME 3.0?).
I did try to search for this on the forums, but "2.5" seems to screw the search up!
Cheers
Richard
There's really nothing special that needs to be done to support blender 2.5, not for jme devs. The HottBJ exporter will need to be ported (blaine?), there's also the OgreXML exporter, which someone else will have to port. Then there's the other formats like OBJ and 3DS which are already supported by default in blender, so really I don't see what the issue is, as long as the exporters are ported to 2.5 it should be fine.
Momoko_Fan said:
so really I don't see what the issue is, as long as the exporters are ported to 2.5 it should be fine.
That really is the problem :) Blender 2.5 changed its internal API not just massively but completely. I saw some people stumble already because of this, so it will take a little longer until all exporters are made compatible.
Thanks Momoko fan, that is reassuring. So we just need to get blaine some beers then?
I am looking to create an animation, and I don't think OBJ supports that… Does it?
I might be lucky and the ".blend" file will be backwards compatible, as long as I don't use any of the newer features.
I gotta say, I think JME is an attractive option for if it supports the latest Blender. I think the "completed" version of Blender will be 2.6, with 2.5 being the alpha and beta versions.
Fingers crossed for me then.
So is there a time frame on when the HottBJ and/or OgreXML->jme exporters will be ported to Blender 2.5? I mean is it something that will be done fairly soon or should I just continue to use Blender 2.48 for now?
I don't see whats the rush to switching to Blender 2.5. The previous version is just as good, and with 2.5 you will probably have more bugs since its a WIP.
There are no timeframes, especially since both of these exporters are open source/free you can't expect things like that. The OgreXML will probably get ported quicker though since a lot more people are using it. As for HottBJ… I haven't seen blaine much lately, for all we know he could be done with jME…
I see. Thanks for the info. 
I think it's a bad idea to develop external tools/scripts for alpha software, even more than I think it's bad idea to trust serious work to alpha software and now that blenders backwards compatibility is dead, more so… the thing about the blender community is that everyone's always waiting for the next shiny new version that "should" do something better than the last and then never really get anything done, in fact there one guy seems to nothing but "spy" on the blender devs, have wet dreams about new features he's waitin for/can't do without and then proceeds to not make any use of them because he's once again foaming at the mouth for some revelutionary new feature that makes life worth living :? …I personally work between 2 fairly compatible older versions "dont ask" and 2.49b for normal maps and texture stuff as well as scripts that wont work with the old blenders
I wish I hadn’t asked… :roll:
The original question wasn’t meant to incite fury about how JMonkey devs should prioritise their work. I had only just started working with Blender, and I find the interface extremely inintuitive uninintuitive. I am more than sure that any new features are certainly not going to make the slightest bit of difference to my very basic game. However, the interface is much (IMHO) more user friendly.
It immediately struck me that if I were to be starting out in game development, and I was considering the 3D development tool for the engine, then I wouldn’t want another barrier to entry that is the weird Blender interface.
Having said that, you do get used to it. I’m still somewhat baffled by all the texture fiddling, but I’m getting there slowly.
Momoko_fan certainly gave me pause for thought when he mentioned that blaine may be unobtainable. I just kind of assumed he had a keen interest in developing for JME. Ho hum… Such is the way with open source eh?
the "old" interface is f**ked up… true… particularly the texture/material handling, it took me months to realize that a uv texture applied to a model would show in the view port but wont render unless attached to a material, that seperation of function baffled the hell out of me since I was coming from max where texture and materials were nicely integrated rather than "unaware" of each other like blender…but I got used to it, it takes time and questions and reading the forums.