Blender Addons for easier TMTK Item creation

[Gohax]

Hello,

this post is mostly a summarization to the TMTK Tools post on the frontier forums as well as the TMTK templates post, so if you know these you won't find anything new here.

As most folks who tried their hand at creating thememaker's toolkit (TMTK) items are well aware of, there are some pitfalls which can make item creation cumbersome or difficult, especially for beginners. To give beginners a headstart and support seasoned creators with routine tasks, I created two addons for the free and open source 3D creation software Blender. The goal was making the export from Blender to a TMTK-compatible FBX file as simple as possible. Here is a short rundown of the two addons:

TMTK Tools (link)

This one offers different functions to make exporting and preparing your model easier:

1. FBX export for TMTK: Sets all the correct parameters for the FBX export and optionally also takes care of eventually necessary adjustments so animations are exported correctly as well. No need to tinker with any Blender Project- or Export-Settings anymore. What you see is what you get!
2. TMTK animation fix: A sub-feature of the FBX exporter (1). This lets you apply the animation fix outside of the custom exporter, in case you want to use the default FBX export or any other exporter.
3. LOD creation: Creating just any LODs is not generally hard, but creating the copies just gets repetitive. This function creates the LOD copies for you, optionally adding pre-configured decimate modifiers as well. Manual adjustments to the LODs may still be necessary for maximum quality, but the automatically created LODs will at least make TMTK accept your submission.
4. Bone Weight Normalization: This is a precise version of Blender's built-in "Normalize All" feature for vertex group weights. This fixes TMTK's errors TooManyInfluencers, BadBoneWeights and sometimes even ugcArtifactNotFound  for animated items.
5. TMTK Hints: Targeted mainly at new TMTK creators, this function gives basic hints about the currently active object, such as informing about LODs, looking for unapplied object mode transformations and checking the object's dimensions for TMTK compliance.

TMTK Templates (link)

This one was created to give quick access to commonly used static item templates from the TMTK help discord. This way you can e.g. get the basic mesh for a 4M Wall with just a few clicks.

 

These addons should be understood as supplementary to a good manual/tutorial. They do not replace learning Blender and the TMTK pipeline. I take no responsibility if these addons malfunction and break your blender project in any way. While no severe bug has been reported to me yet, I'd still advise everyone to regulary back up their project.

[wolfpaw]

This is an awesome post, this will definitely be helpful - thanks for sharing!