Carnivores Export Addon for Blender

This addon is supports exporting Blender models and animations into 3DF / VTL files, and importing CAR/3DF files too.

3DF export simply exports the basic geometry (vertices,faces,active uvlayer) into the 3DF format. Material export is currently not supported. VTL export basically plays the active scene animation, and captures the vertices of the mesh for every frame in the animation, and writes that to VTL.

These features allow you to do all your modelling/rigging/animating from Blender instead of using the 20+ year old tools that were released with Carnivores.

To create CAR files out of the 3DF and VTL files, you'll have to use either CMM or c3dit.

Install

Simply go to Edit/Preferences/Addons, click Install, and select io_carnivores.py. You should see the addon in the addon list, click the checkbox in front of its name to enable, and you should be good to go.

Update

Follow the install instructions, but make sure to disable/enable the addon to make sure the newer version is active.

Importing 3DF/CAR

Simply go to File/Import/3DF/CAR, and select the file you wish to import. Import has the following features:

• 3DF: geometry, uv mapping, texture, and rigging (bones / vertex groups).
• CAR: geometry, uv mapping, texture, animations (imported as shape keys), and vertex groups. Bones are not stored in the CAR format, so unfortunately, those are missing.

Please note that import is a new feature, and still beta. any feedback on bugs, or suggestions for features related to this are welcome.

Exporting 3DF

In any Blender document, select the mesh you wish to export as 3DF model, and select File/Export/3DF. Specify the file to be written and any configuration options. Since 3DF uses integer UV coordinates (matching with the size of the texture), with a maximum texture size of 256x256, the script currently generates UVs that assume the use of a 256x256 texture.

Exporting VLT

In any Blender document, make sure you have the animation you wish to export active in the scene, then select the mesh (or armature), go to File/Export/VTL. Specify the file to be written and any configuration options.

Troubleshooting / bugs

This is my first Blender addon, so please be gentle. Known issues:

• UV coordinate conversion assumes 256x256 texture.
• Due to the way VTL stores vertices (as signed 16-bit integers, by doing float * 16) very small objects or very large ones will likely cause issues.
• Likely much more ;)