It was already quite a long
time ago when we first mentioned our goal to empower the mod community with tools matching in power of our internal asset creation pipeline. The road to get there has proved to be somewhat bumpier than we anticipated, but we are happy to report very good progress at last.
Today we are releasing the first version of SCS Blender Tools. There is still a lot of work left to be done on polishing and on proper support of the most complex types of 3D assets, but already we are in good enough shape to invite you to try things out.
Please keep in mind that what you are getting is a beta, with no express guarantees that it will work perfectly or work at all in your desired context. You are getting a dump of up-to-date SCS Blender Tools codebase, we are not holding back any part of it. There is code in there which at least partially covers all of the wide spectrum of different 3D model types in our games, but as of now we only bring out to your attention specific aspects of SCS Blender Tools we consider ready. More advanced stuff still needs time to mature.
At this point in time, it is only the types of assets listed below which we suggest you to experiment with. We do not have the capacity to provide extensive support on our forums, but we'll keep an eye on them to see if we can chip in where the community needs guidance. But there is a little point trying to get us to respond to questions concerning areas of the tools considered unfinished.
With that said, the current version of SCS Blender Tools brings you the creation and export pipeline of static geometry.
We included several sample models that generally illustrate the possibilities of asset types that you can perfectly accomplish today. Those models should guide you in creating well optimized models, just the way we make them.
Let's inspect sample models in closer detail:
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| Detailed building model |
This is a model of a detailed building. We use such models up close to the player, therefore the texture, the mesh resolution and level of detail are quite large. Once you import it you can see it uses little more material than simpler models to best accommodate its up-close placement.
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| Far distance buildings |
This is a model sample we place at far distance from the player. The mesh is considerably simpler and the texture is much smaller. Because it is placed at large distance from the camera in the game, lack of resolution is never noticeable. As you can see its uses important optimization - multiple buildings are combined into one single mesh, using exact same material and texture. This allows graphics cards to process such models much faster (as just one piece of geometry, not multiple pieces).
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| Truck bullbar upgrade model |
Here's a sample of a truck upgrade part - Scania bullbar. We intentionally included slightly more sophisticated upgrade model. This way you can see usage of materials and alpha channel on that bull-bar netting. Pretty much all truck upgrades (roof grills, low grills, side-skirts...) were built this way.
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| Front truck wheel |
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| Rear truck wheel |
And last two samples of even more specialized geometry - truck wheels. They use their own set of materials, we recommend that you explore the structure. Check out the usage of textures and mesh complexity. These models also show you an example of 'Parts' usage, and the way how special 'shadow-caster mesh' with its 'shadow-caster material' is used to make your own truck wheels correctly. [Note that there is a plan to eventually split the tyres and the wheel disks into separate upgrade parts in some future update of ETS2/ATS.]
To Get You Started
Wiki is probably the most important place for SCS Blender Tools knowledge base. There you will find the steps you need to take to begin using the tools. You can also find the download links for SCS Blender Tools. And there is even all the source code of the tools, right in the open, which could be quite interesting for the coders out there:
https://github.com/SCSSoftware/BlenderTools/wiki
We have created a special forum branch, dedicated exclusively to the SCS Blender Tools. If you feel you found a bug in the tools, or want to ask something about them, or share your knowledge with the other people just getting started - this is the place to be. We will be monitoring the forums and hopefully providing some guidance, but again, we do not expect to be able to respond to everybody and to every cry for help.
http://forum.scssoft.com/viewforum.php?f=159
In case you forget all the links above you can always start with the modding section of the Euro Truck Simulator 2 web page. The links there should guide you not just to SCS Blender Tools but also to all modding guidelines paramount for successful mod creation.
http://www.eurotrucksimulator2.com/mod_tools.php
We encourage you to import and check all the models on your own. Now all you need to start is a bit of knowledge of Blender!
