Blender mesh editing
This tutorial assumes you have some basic knowledge on using Blender (Navigating UI, basic object editing, etc). There are plenty of tutorials available on YouTube or many other websites.
Introduction
Rigs of Rods is a game that is very easy to modify. This tutorial will help you get started on editing meshes using Blender, from installing the plug-ins to exporting.
Required software
- Blender (2.79b is the latest at the time of writing)
- Blender2ogre plug-in
- Torchlight-To-Blender plug-in
- (Optional) Notepad++
- (Optional) OgreCommandLineTools-Windows (If you don’t want to use the OgreXMLConverter located in your RoR install directory)
- (Optional) OgreMeshTool
Getting started
If you’re following this tutorial, chances are you probably already have a mesh you want to edit. In this tutorial I’ll be editing Box5Diesel’s Ram EXT.
Open the .zip file for the vehicle, and extract the correct .mesh file(s) and the textures (.dds, .png, etc) into a folder you can easily access:
Next you will need to convert the .mesh file into a .mesh.xml using OgreXMLConverter which can be found in your RoR install directory (Where RoR.exe is) or by downloading it from the link above. Just simply drag the mesh file into OgreXMLConverter.exe:
If you’re on Linux, you can use WINE to run OgreXMLConverter.exeby running this command in a terminal:
wine PATH/OgreXmlConverter.exe PATH/MESH_NAME.mesh
Some meshes are exported in OGRE 1.8 format, which only RoR 0.4+ supports. You'll have to use OgreXMLConverter from those versions. The OgreCommandLineTools download only supports OGRE 1.7.2.
You should now have a .mesh.xml file in the same folder:
We’re ready to launch Blender now.
Installing Blender plug-ins
First, download the two plug-ins from the links above and place them in any folder. Do not extract.
Now open Blender. Click File -> User Preferences:
Click Add-ons -> Install from File:
Select the blender2ogre-0.6.0.zip file you downloaded earlier. You should now see the Add-on installed, but it is not enabled yet. Click the check box to enable it:
Now click Install from File again and select the ImportExportTL_blender25x_v0.6.2.zip file. Enable the add-on.
Once both plug-ins are enabled, select “Save User Settings”:
You can now close the User Preferences window.
Importing the mesh
Select File -> Import -> Torchlight OGRE (.mesh):
Find & select the .mesh file. If you don’t want it to delete the .mesh.xml file then select “Keep XML”:
You should now see something similar to this:
Press the Z key twice to get out of that shading mode. You should now see this:
The importer will automatically separate the meshes if the `.mesh.xml` contains multiple groups. The object names match the material name. If there's many objects with the same name, you should be safe to join them:
It should look similar to this now:
Fixing object shading
You’ll probably notice that your mesh is very blocky/has lots of shading errors. To fix this:
On the left menu (Press T if it’s not already open) select Smooth. You need to be in Object Mode (TAB key) for this to appear:
Now press the TAB key again to go into Edit Mode:
Select Remove Doubles from the T menu:
Now head over to the tool menu on the right and find the blue tool icon -> Add Modifier -> Edge Split:
The Edge Split Modifier should now be selected. The default Split Angle (30) should be fine in most cases. Do not apply the modifier. The exporter will do this for you.
Applying the texture
Now we can apply the texture. Press the TAB key to go into Edit Mode if you’re not in it already and click the circle icon on the bottom left -> UV/Image Editor:
The UV/Image Editor should now be open:
Select Open from the bottom bar:
Find & select your texture file:
The texture file should now be open in the UV/Image Editor.
Now go to the top right and find the little plus icon, or press N to open it:
Open the Shading menu and click Textured Solid:
It should now look similar to this:
Editing the mesh
You’re now ready to start editing the mesh. For this tutorial, I removed the stacks from the bed:
Setting the object name and material
Go to the right tool menu and select the triangle icon -> Change the name. This will be the name of your object when you export it:
Now select the circle icon next to the triangle icon -> New:
To find your material name, either look at the object name or open the .mesh.xml file in a text editor and search “material”:
Exporting
Before we export, if you moved the object while editing it you will need to apply Scale/Rotation/Location by pressing CTRL+A otherwise it will be placed wrong in-game:
Select your mesh then click File -> Export -> Ogre3D (.scene and .mesh):
Change your export settings to match the screenshot (all other settings can be left to their defaults):
You should now have a new .mesh.xml file in your folder.
And finally, just drag the .mesh.xml into OgreXMLConverter to get a .mesh:
If you want to “preview” your .mesh instead of going in-game, you can use Ogre Meshy to view it:
(You can make a .material file if you want it to be textured in Ogre Meshy)
Testing in-game
Now just edit the .truck file to match the name of your new mesh and drag the new mesh file back into the .zip and test in-game:
Congratulations!
Troubleshooting
Q: My mesh is flipped in-game!
A: Change the “swap axis” option in the export settings.
Q: My mesh is white in-game!
A: You did not assign the correct material. Make sure it matches.
Q:: I get a plug-in install error/other Blender errors!
A:: First, just Google the issue. If you can’t find a solution then you can create a thread on the Forums about it.