h1. Blender to dpm, mini tutorial

h2. Pre-required tools and reading

* Go here - http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Blender#Installation and download the export script.
* Rig / Animate as outlined here - http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Animation_in_Blender.
* Only works with blender 248a -- 249b (2.5 is no go)


h2. Blender workflow 

* Select your mesh and armature, export as smd. select Static Mesh. You only need to re-export this smd if the mesh or the rig change.
* Now export as Animation Sequence. Preferably you have one track (and smd file) per animation. name it so you know what it is (modelname_attack1.smd for example).
* You could possibly use the "Animation Sequence ( ALL )" or "All..." options, but i havent tried so i cant say if it works.


h2. dpmodel workflow

* dpmodel needs and a textfile telling it how to bake the mesh and animation/s into a dpm. This textfile will look something like:

> <pre>
# save the model as model.dpm
model model
# move the model this much before saving
origin 0 0 0
# rotate the model 90 degrees around vertical
rotate 90
# scale the model by this amount, 0.5 would be half size and 2.0 would be doule size
scale 1
# load the mesh file, this is stored into the dpm as frame 0
scene model.smd
# Each following (if any) smd's are animations
scene model_action1.smd fps 30
scene model_action2.smd fps 30
</pre>

* Place all smd's and the textfile in the same place, execute "dpmodel whateveryounamedthattextfile". If all goes well you should now have a working dpm (and .framegroups file if its animated)


h2. Caves:

 * Your mesh have to have a material assigned to it. The name of this material/s is what dp will look for to use as texture/shader on the model/mesh/es.
 * Blender exports what you got selected. make sure you have the relevant (and only the relevant) objects selected.
 * If export script fail with a encoding error, open it in a texeditor and remove the whole top comment block (lines starting with #). theres a illegal character in there according to pyton. i haven't bothered to check closer witch one it could be.