When working in a production environment it is a common need to send a model, along with all of it’s associated files off to another artist. Blender makes this quite easy by allowing you to pack (compress) all of the external data associated with the model into the .blend.
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Salutations Mr. Williamson, long time listener first time caller. Anyway, I need to know how to use my mesh for other things such as using it in a Flash program to move a camera around and add stuff to etc. I have yet to find any information on actually using a textured mesh in anything else. I don’t believe that a .blend file will just transfer to a Flash app, but then again I’m a novice at anything such as this. Any information would be great, thanks. And thanks for your tutorials.
@Chris: Hi, Chris. That’s true, Blender’s mesh/material/etc data is stored in a way not readily accessible to most external programs. But thanks to embedded-Python, they’re transparent enough that writing a (Python) script to export to another data format is relatively easy.
At least one such exporter to Flash (ActionScript code) is available, URL: http://rozengain.com/?postid=54 . Or you can always google “Blender ActionScript export”. Hope this helps.
Thanks Mr. Hargo. I looked at it, and with great anticipation I downloaded it per the directions and attempted to export, only to find it was not on my export list. I’m assuming that it is because I’m using blender 2.5 alpha 2, maybe I’m wrong. I’m not sure. I would like to pose a question though, since you seem knowledgable, I would like to ask your advice maybe… Lets say that my flash program I want to make is of a 3-d Christmas tree. I want the visitor to my site to be able to rotate and zoom in and out of the tree as well as choose ornaments from a list to place on the tree. Would all of this be possible in a flash program? Again, I appreciate your help and any reply would be better than none as I’m trying to make a first program here. Thanks!
Those plugins are for 2.4x. They’re unusable in newer Blender, as BPython API is totally revised, starting from 2.50.
Any Flash program can interact with user through standard I/O device, so of course the kinds of interaction you want is possible. It’s only a matter of what 3D ActionScript library, and maybe ActionScript version, you use. I’m not really knowledgeable about ActionScript…
Thanks for the tutorial!