Not all heroes wear capes. Great job. I hate that export from Blender to Godot. It seems like unnecessary fluff to get it working. This is a real pain with multiple assets in the same Blender file. I think (but don't quote me), Godot reccoments not scaling the collision meshes. I've never understood why, but it's probably to do with how it does it's collision detection. Always seemed to be OK, but you never know eh ?! Also, question for you. Do you know a way to import all objects from a Blender scene as individual objects? ie they are positioned at 0,0,0 so I don't have to export them individually? Humble Bundle bought me heere, and I'll be downloading this for sure!
Thanks! And that's correct, we shouldn't scale collision bodies (or shapes) in Godot. My more recent videos take a closer at this in terms of proper workflow
You know, importing every object at 0,0,0 is an interesting idea. I'm wondering if I should include that as a checkbox in the add-on that you can apply to a whole bunch of meshes if you want. Otherwise, I have no idea how to get that done
@@michaeljburtYeah, the whole "export individually" really gets on my nerves ! I mean, you can bring them in, localise them and reset their position. But that's still a pain in the arse if you have dozens of assets. Anyway. Keep up the good work. There's people that appreciate you around here 😊
It's already a feature in the newest update, just need to release it. The add-on was packaged as a part of another bundle so I had to wait a bit on the update.
Very very helpful, thank you for creating this (I just picked it up as part of the Blender Market Humble Bundle). One comment (I haven't finished the video, I'll append to this comment if I've answered my own question): It seems parent -> child relationships in blender are not respected. Is that by design?
Also, have you thought about powering these "custom parameters" from Custom Properties in Blender? That way I can set all this stuff In Blender (no need to create a new txt file, set the data, copy the path, paste in blender, save, etc.,)
I use the "Copy Attributes Menu" Addon in Blender which makes it easy to transfer custom properties from one object to another. Maybe this isn't as elegant as having one txt file as the source of truth that many objects share.
Another cool thing I discovered -- I use the `Machin3 Focus` plugin to easily isolate objects in Blender. Seems that the "Export for Godot" button also respects this, and only imports that isolated object. Pretty cool!
I am noticing some strange behavior getting animations to import properly. As in, they're not really working. If I just import the GLTF without the attached script, animations work. So I don't think it's a problem with the gltf file / how I'm building the animations in Blender.
Hey there! I read through some of your messages but RU-vid might not be the best format to discuss. You can direct message me on Twitter @_michaeljared and we can pick up the conversation there :) To answer some: The add-on does use blender custom data under the hood. Animations are getting a patch in version 2.2 (coming soon) and will only support NLA tracks animation. In my opinion that's the best workflow for Godot, so that's why I'm sticking to that for the export button.
Hi, looks promising also the price is attractive so im set for it once im done watching :D Would be great to also separate animations into their individual animationplayers, for this I could even pay extra haha :D Great stuff.
Thanks for the comment! That's an interesting idea. I have a video on my channel for doing NLA track animation in Godot, and those automatically come in as separate animations within an animation player. Would you want each animation action in Blender as a separate animation player?
Curious if it would be possible to add a @tool script to the addon that will scan the file system for .gltf and attach that addon importer script automatically. Similarly, if there's a way to map Ctrl+S to "Export to Godot" in Blender, that way you get nearly the same functionality as the .blend importer.
I looked everywhere to do exactly as you suggested and could not find anything. As far as I know there's nothing exposed to set an import script programmatically. Or even setting a default import script would be awesome. .blend file importing is coming on the next version, just need to stay locked on 2.1 for a while because of the humble bundle.
@@michaeljburt Awesome, looking forward to it. Thanks again for the addon! Also, I just discovered that Godot has an automatic import script setting. Project Settings > Import Defaults tab (next to the 'Plugins' tab), then select the dropdown as 'Scene' and set the addon script in there. Every time Godot imports a .gltf, it adds the addon script now by default.
It's cool and all being able to add scripts and change nodes inside blender, but most of this functionality works out-of-the-box with inherited scenes and configuration within the import settings. Combine that with the blender .blend/gltf importer, you can save your blender file, and it will automatically reimport in godot. I think where this plugin goes beyond godot's features is physics body/collision shape configuration. Godot's importer prefixes are limited, and only allow for a couple basic ways of creating collision shapes from meshes. All things said, what's the point of editing Godot resources (like primitive collision shapes) inside blender? Seems more cumbersome that way.
Import settings won't allow you to attach scripts to sub nodes and bodies on the inherited scene. In general, having an asset pipeline allows there to be one "owner" of this information so you don't have to repeat steps down the road if iteration is required. The resource linking path based, so you can update whatever on the Godot side as well. Also, this video didn't really cover it, but there's a feature to create composite collision shapes using primitive collisions with parenting. I use it all the time when designing level components (imagine a house, with a staircase on the side, etc etc). All of the collision shapes are parented to the mesh in Blender, so I can move around, rescale, rotate that object and the collisions follow. The collision shapes are quite easy to make in Blender, you just shift+D to duplicate and blow apart sections of the mesh and separate selection, and then apply the primitive collision shape.
@@michaeljburt Well, the way I do it, most of the real configuration, adding nodes, scripts, etc is done within the inherited scene itself. Comparing to how my current workflow is, it just seems more difficult to copy/paste resource paths for scripts and parameters, on top of having to constantly export from the blender plugin. Definitely nice to be able to select what type of node you want an object to be, rather than having to work around the basic import suffixes. I've noticed quite a bit of misunderstanding surrounding the asset workflow in godot, and how to properly use assets in godot without having to reconfigure every time you modify an asset. Maybe I'll have to do a video about it.
@@addmix Sure, that's fair. Another thing I tell people is that this addon and workflow may not be for you. First and foremost, I made it for my own workflow, so that I could essentially do level blockout and design in Blender. I often say I "happen" to be selling it, because it was designed for a workflow I wanted. It grew from there, and now I have a few people who regularly use it, so now it does many other things in Blender (like multimesh and making very precise and topologically accurate NavMeshes), but at the end of the day, it's breaking from the standard of doing blockout in-engine. So on those grounds alone I would tell people not to use it if you want to do that.
Any chance there's a free "lite" version of the blender addon? I'm a beginner 3D developer testing things out with both with Blender and Godot. I would genuinely love to support you through paying your amazing addon and I mean no disrespect asking it for free, of course. Just wanted to ask as a small-time, broke(online) beginner developer. If not, no worries. Maybe I'll have the money one day. Anyway, thanks so much for making both programs work seamlessly, it's amazing!
Hmm, well the Godot half of the pipeline is totally free. That's where most of the magic happens. So you can check out my GitHub github.com/bikemurt/blender-godot-pipeline To be honest all the blender add-on really does is set Blender "custom" data which you can manually set in Blender. It's just a lot slower/tedious to do by hand. So you might want to tinker around with that. There's an old version of the add-on somewhere in my TestProject repo as well, but I kind of abandoned updating that as it was tough to do in multiple places
@@michaeljburt Good to know I can still be able to tinker around, I'll see if I can try it out in my workflow. Thanks again for putting the Godot part for free, I know how valuable of a work you've done for both software, so I'll be sure to buy the blender addon whenever I can. Looking forward to see it get more updates too!
I mean as Nvidia continues working on open USD I think this is kind of going to become a mute point, especially since Gadot already working on USD support I'm pretty sure [If they're not it is going to be left in the dust by unreal (which is one of the like five [non Nvidia ] programs that are already has complete USD support) ]
Yeah I agree, but I think USD will be a ways off for Godot. I have been harping on maintainers for a long time to just improve the native import pipeline. Then I wouldn't have to maintain this add-on :)
Yeah I agree. Unfortunately Godot will only trigger the re-import process when the contents of the exported GLTF file saves. So .blend file importing has an advantage there for sure.
You dont need an addon for any of this you just save the blender scene inside of your project folder. Automatically updates anything in you godot scene from blender
I covered this in a prior video and did a full comparison of all the import options. You can't set up composite base shape collisions (multiple box, cylinder, sphere, etc.), there are no options to set up Area3D collisions, you can't configure multimesh based on linked duplicates in Blender, and a whole host of other things the add-on offers. I'll assume you didn't really watch my past comparison of the import methods, or this video, either.
