Looking for a second modeling tool

Support Basics & Interface
1

I’m a modder. I am pretty much a newbie but I have created and released a game mod of my own. Coming pretty much exclusively from a ZModeler experience I am looking to learn a second modeling program to suppliment my needs as a modeler.

Specifically I model for racing games and would like to expand into creating race tracks. But I need to use a program that would help to automate the process of creating Artificial Intelligence Waypoints (.AIW) files. Now what these are, are simply 3d coordinates exported from a program which, when appropriately formatted, the Game Engine AI’s use to follow a track’s race line. Each coordinate represents a waypoint to the AI. A race track can contain in excess of a thousand waypoints.

My question is:
Does Blender contain the necessary tools for me to created splines around a race track (to represent the AI racing line) which, when exported into a particular file format, I could then extract the necessary waypoint coordinates from to begin creating my Artificial Intelligence Waypoints (AIW) file?

Creating these AIW files is actually a lot more complicated than that but this would be a good starting point. If anyone needs more clarrification I’ll be happy to explain more.

2

I’m not entirely sure this is what you’re after, but you tell me…

You can add a curve (either a NURB or a bezier spline) and then iterate through all the points in a python script and write them to file, easily:

import Blender
obj = Blender.Object.GetSelected()[0]
curve = obj.getData()[0]
fp = open("temp.txt","w")
for i in curve
  point = i.getTriple[1]
  fp.write("%d %d %d" % point)
fp.close()

will write the x, y, z for each point in a bezier spline, easily changeable to whatever format you need.

3

This ones quite old but useful

http://www.geocities.com/swdoughty/blendertuteIndex.html

and some other useful stuff

http://www.racer-xtreme.com/article.php

http://www.io.com/~brentb/racer/

%<

4

Thanks for the answers guys. I am new to both blender and python so I’ll have a bit of reading to do.

This is the process I’ll be using:

  1. load only the track surfaces and trackside fence objects into blender.
  2. trace the raceline, track edges and fence boundaries aroung the circuit using bezier splines.
  3. extract those coordinates into an ASCII text file. (my .AIW file)

Phlip:
One other thing… I’ve used bezier splines before and think that this is what I want to use. But I’m not familiar with nurbs. Which would you suggest is simpler?

Thanks again for the advice.