• Best Blender Addons

So I have the truck built. Like I said before, this is just for demonstration purposes.

• Transfer settings to new version of Blender. You can always use the new Blender Cloud Sync addon. It requires a Blender ID (free) and the addon (free).
• N-gon from Edges ¶. When there are many edges Blender will make an n-gon. Note that, this does not support holes, to support holes you need to use the Fill Faces tool.

There isn't much here, but at least we can all know what we are talking about by just looking at this truck and not getting too confused because there just isn't much here. Importing and exporting will probably be easier with this as well seeing as it is so simple.Edit: Also feel like I should mention. This thing has 4 L-Beams. 2 per axle being used as the leaf springs. Like I said, I tried to keep it relatively simple, so I think 4 L-Beams (seeing as those are what you had concerns about) should be a good starting point. I also included an interchangeable rear axle (with rear steering.

That's the only difference) which should reliably simulate a single car with multiple parts. A lot of times these extra parts will end up having the same node names as other parts, so figuring out how to deal with that may also prove to be a challenge in and of itself.Spitballing here real quick. Rather than importing the ENTIRE set of JBeams to be modified, it might be useful to be able to import the whole lot, and then pick and choose which parts should be editable (for instance, if I wanted to modify one of the rear axles of this truck, I could choose to only import 1 of the 2 available to make modification easier)Not sure how much work it would take to create something like that, but I could help come up with the logic behind it (I don't know the actual code type that blender uses. And probably don't even know whatever programing language it is. But I understand how if, then, else, while, do loops and how to use them for logic all works). Click to expand.I'm impressed!!!

I had no idea the addon was even usable yet! In my head, it's all just theoretical. Thanks a lot for sharing It's really encouraging to see.,Good idea, simpler is better for testing. Thanks for that. I'll begin dissecting it right away.

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Yes, I agree the import should allow for modifying specific parts rather than the entire machine. I've been working on that lately.,Could I take a look at the full jbeam files generated by the addon? Maybe I'll be able to figure out what went wrong from there. To make things easier to handle, please create an issue on the bitbucket repository.Manged to clear up a couple of hours daily for this project. The hardest task is juggling all the different bits of data and where they live in blender. When I restructure it for the import, I have to do the same for the export. It's a slow-and-steady affair but totally worth it to see the addon being used.

Additionally, a very generous user donated a BeamNG license to me. I'll finally be able to see the other side of the magic as well. Got a lot to learn. I'm impressed!!! I had no idea the addon was even usable yet! In my head, it's all just theoretical.

Thanks a lot for sharing It's really encouraging to see.,Good idea, simpler is better for testing. Thanks for that. I'll begin dissecting it right away. Yes, I agree the import should allow for modifying specific parts rather than the entire machine. I've been working on that lately.,Could I take a look at the full jbeam files generated by the addon? Maybe I'll be able to figure out what went wrong from there.

To make things easier to handle, please create an issue on the bitbucket repository.Manged to clear up a couple of hours daily for this project. The hardest task is juggling all the different bits of data and where they live in blender. When I restructure it for the import, I have to do the same for the export. It's a slow-and-steady affair but totally worth it to see the addon being used. Additionally, a very generous user donated a BeamNG license to me. I'll finally be able to see the other side of the magic as well. Got a lot to learn.

Click to expand.Glad I am able to help. Also, the good news about that simple truck is that not only can I answer any questions you may have about it, but it's so simple just about anyone that has done JBeam modifications for Beam should be able to read and make sense of it. That way, if I am not here for some reason to answer a question, just about anyone can pick up the torch and read the part you need help with to answer the question.Also. To possibly help with your exporter, I also included (and forgot to mention) with that file a.blend file of the truck I created in blender. I used the much older blender exporter (just because I had that installed already) to make this thing as quickly as I did (I hate to admit it, but there is only about 10 minutes of work in that truck) That is why the nodes are named as they are. Not because I wanted them named some specific way, but because that's just how the exporter named them. Click to expand.That's actually more correct than you know.

It will literally keep the last property defined right up until there are new properties defined even if it is across JBeams. For instance. While making that truck, I defined the shocks in the front axle as one of the last lines of the beam section. That loads before the rear axle, so when the game loaded the rear axle, rather than using the default properties, it just kept on chugging with the properties from the previous file.

That basically turned my rear axle into a floppy noodle rather than something solid as they were all now shocks rather than beams. This is why it is always a REALLY good idea to redefine the Beam Properties at the beginning of every Beam section.

I wouldn't doubt that the nodes section works the exact same way as well. I haven't had any issues with them yet, but I don't doubt that they would work the same way.Perhaps for safety sake, it could automatically define a new set of those parameters for each group we create.

Then we can either just leave them as they are, or define them as we wish. Granted, that's more for the in blender builder and exporter and not so much the importer as I am sure that not all groups will have these parameters defined for them before importing.

Thank you for all the info It helped a lot,that additional bit about the headers and also the part on group declarations couldn't have come at a better time. I was hard-coding the positions of the headers (ie. 0 for node IDs, 1 for x position, etc). Now I can take that into account and make the import a bit more flexible.,yes, sounds safer to redeclare every property at the start of a new group during export.

The import is actually where I'll need to account for files that do not follow the safe recommendation. The export has already just been modified to redeclare everything. I'll push the update in a few hours.A quick tip. Before we get to a point where we can consider an update system for the addon, for those who wish to be informed of new updates as they happen, Bitbucket has a 'watch' feature that alerts you to new commits. As always, keep in mind that it may be buggy and always test with files you have copies of. Yes, you'll have to download the zip file and install it. One way to do that is to extract it and copy it into your Blender addons folder.

Then you simply enable it in your user preferences. The process is similar to regular Blender addons.

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After installing it, you should see it in Blender's right panel (the N-Panel).It works by tagging objects as a beamng type. An object can be a 'flexbody', 'skeleton', or nothing. So once you select a mesh, you can tag it as a skeleton for example, to reveal the options to populate the jbeam file.

It breaks down the sections of the jbeam file into different tabs. The screenshots above show some of the contents of the tabs. If you've worked with jbeam files, their options should look familiar.You move from tab to tab filling in the necessary information. The Nodes, Beams and Coltris tabs allow you to assign vertices, edges and faces to different groups when you go into edit mode.

You can name the groups and assign values for their properties. When all that is done, you export your jbeam file using the large button above. The addon also takes care of assigning left, middle and right nodes using the prefixes you provide. This is done based on the object's local X axis.I recommend going over the structure of the jbeam file in the documentation here, to get a general understanding of its structure.Edit:I should also mention that there are currently some parts of the jbeam specification that have not yet been implemented. The main missing features are refnodes and paired nodes.

You should always verify the saved jbeam file for correctness.