Art Pipeline Tutorial

This is a tutorial for using the art pipeline. You should be able to just follow the instructions with out creating a meta file or modifying the settings but if you do not want the default behavior the layout for the meta files is here.

The art pipeline tool can be found in the SVN under the art directory.

Since our game does not have very many textures used. The Textures can be placed in the texture directory of data without compression or pre generated mipmaps as long as it is not tga format.

FBX
To have a model exported to the game

Export from maya

Select models that you want to export.

Then click File -> Export Selection

Navigate to the FBX folder in the Art directory of the SVN

Set file type to FBX

Name it something meaningful. This is the name that will be used to retrieve the model in the engine. Good examples are: rat, coin, and sword

Leave the default settings for the FBX export.

Double click the ArtPipeline.exe tool

Wait for it to finish. When it is done it will ask if you want to run again.

After it is done all the files in the FBX folder will have a NBM file in the models folder.

Copy the model directory to data directory and have it over write everything in there.

Change model value in the archetype to new name of file.

The model will now be loaded in to the game and rendered for that object.

Settings file
The Converter looks in a settings file for where to look for files to convert and where to save them.

Example file
TextureConverter

{


 * OpenDirectory ".\Textures\"
 * SaveDirectory ".\DDSTextures\"

}

ModelConverter

{


 * OpenDirectory ".\FBX\"
 * SaveDirectory ".\Models\"

}

Texture Converter
The settings for Texture Converter
 * OpenDirectory - The local directory where any texture files to be processed are located.
 * SaveDirectory - The local directory where the processed files are placed.

Model Converter
The settings for Model Converter
 * OpenDirectory - The local directory where any FBX files to be processed are located.
 * SaveDirectory - The local directory where the processed model files are placed.

Model Meta file
The way a file is exported can be changed by creating a meta file. The Meta file must have the same name as the FBX file that it modifies with a .meta extension.

Ex. The file foo.fbx would have a meta file named foo.meta

Example file
ModelFile

{


 * Split false

}

Settings

 * Split - bool: True to split nodes
 * Whether or not to split FBX files nodes into different model files. Default is true. The different files would be named with the original files name followed by the node name. Ex. foo.box001.nbm

Texture Meta file
The compression algorithm and mipmap generation is controlled by a Meta file. The Meta file must have the same name as the texture file that it modifies with a .meta extension.

Ex. The file foo.png would have a meta file named foo.meta

Example file
TextureFile

{


 * Compression
 * Compress true
 * CompressType BC1_UNORM
 * }
 * MipMap
 * Levels 0
 * }
 * Levels 0
 * }

}

Settings

 * Compression
 * Compress - Bool: True to compress file, False to leave uncompressed
 * CompressType - Enum: Compression type
 * BC1_UNORM
 * BC2_UNORM
 * BC3_UNORM
 * BC4_UNORM
 * BC4_SNORM
 * BC5_UNORM
 * BC5_SNORM
 * MipMap
 * Levels - int: number of mipmaps to generate, 0 to auto select number