Modding:Creating and Exporting Meshes in Blender: Difference between revisions

First you need Blender 3.6 and to install Norbyte’s Blender installer.

https://github.com/Norbyte/dos2de_collada_exporter

You should also install Padme’s Addons, specifically ‘Create LODs’

https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/346  

Now open your (up to date I hope) modder’s multitool. Click ‘Search Index’. Filter by .GR2. Search something like HUM_F_ARM_ and browse the in game meshes available to regular size humanlike females.

You do at least need to extract HUM_F_NKD_Body_A (or whatever you are basing your outfit on) to fit your new outfit around.

You generally cannot import a modded-in mesh without the plugin crashing Blender. Hopefully you save your own work often and can re-export it from there, and have obtained permission to edit all the modded items you want to import, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

Your armatures will import in at 90 degrees. This will cause it to export flat to the floor and follow a naked character around like a lazy dementor, so you need to fix it. Object > Apply> All Transforms, until the coordinates for its location all read 0, 0, 0. You may need to do the same thing on the mesh as well.

The game’s armour system works by vertex paint. It uses this, in combination with the .lsx code, to tell it what to hide and what to show. For example, an armour mesh may unload the torso as it will not be shown. The bottom half of a pant leg may not show when boots are equipped. You can use existing meshes as a reference for this.

The HUM_F_NKD_Body_A is useful as reference here. For example if you set an upper arm to be hidden for some gloves, you may wish to fit it around these seams to ensure there is no gap in the body showing.

Sometimes, this is generally because the verts were too close together and the importer made a hiccup.

See this video.

You may need to edit if it’s a new mesh

-LOD should be set by the addon

-Lod Distance is the distance from which your mesh swaps to the next LOD. For this reason your high quality should probably be something like 9-15 metres, while your last LOD always needs to be set to 0. If you don’t particularly care about it performing well on bad computers, you can have no LOD and just set your high quality mesh to have a Lod distance of 0.

-Export order. Generally all your LOD0 meshes go first, then your LOD1, LOD2, LOD3, assuming you have multiple LOD0 meshes. Look at imported game meshes for reference. If there is not a consistent export order, the mesh will refuse to export. If you get this wrong in the code some meshes may end up with the wrong material assigned to them, but no other consequences.

It is not only possible but very recommended to hotload meshes, it enables you to fix them in action. [Modding:Hotloading See here for how.]