Blade allows you to export JMS files from Blender for use with Halo Editing Kit. Bones and markers are unsupported at the moment so this is only really good for scenery and BSPs. It is untested beyond a basic box level so hopefully some artists here can help me iron out any bugs. After static geometry is proven to work, I can hopefully build this out to serve as a fully-featured, viable alternative to Max 8 + Blitzkrieg.

Please report any issues in this thread.

Beta 1 Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hmca7li07vc8e1j/blade-beta-1.zip?dl=0

Credits:
TheGhost - His JMS Maxscript was an essential reference

GitHub:
https://github.com/night-ripper/blade-jms-exporter
Edited by NightRipper on Jun 16, 2019 at 02:48 PM

There are only a select few people in the community that use blender. I happen to be one and i am working on a bsp currently. Ill do some testing and let you know how it goes.

Seems to work well enough for Halo 2. One thing I noticed is that if the exporter errors out due to missing frame or something then the file you exported will be in use until you exit Blender. I really only use Blender for Halo modding so I'm not sure if this is something that can be fixed?

Nice to see a plugin that lets you mess with the scaling for exported meshes. Not sure how it works in CE but I have an easier time getting the scale of things how I want them when the meshes are exported 1:1.

I'm glad to see there's a bit of interest in this. I pushed a couple changes to make export errors more clear. If I can implement support for nodes and markers, I'll bundle up another release.

Just so you know, nodes and markers need to be sorted alphabetically by name when exported. The nodes need to be sorted alphabetically, grouped by how deeply nested they are.

Lets take the cyborg for example:

depth    node name
0        bip01 pelvis
1            bip01 l thigh
2                bip01 l calf
3                    bip01 l foot
1            bip01 r thigh
2                bip01 r calf
3                    bip01 r foot
1            bip01 spine
2                bip01 spine1
3                    bip01 l clavicle
4                        bip01 l upperarm
5                            bip01 l forearm
6                                bip01 l hand
3                    bip01 r clavicle
4                        bip01 r upperarm
5                            bip01 r forearm
6                                bip01 r hand
3                    bip01 neck
4                        bip01 head

You would sort them by depth, and within each depth, sort them alphabetically.
So the proper order to sort them would be:

index    node name
    depth 0
0        bip01 pelvis

    depth 1
1        bip01 l thigh
2        bip01 r thigh
3        bip01 spine

    depth 2
4        bip01 l calf
5        bip01 r calf
6        bip01 spine1

    depth 3
7        bip01 l clavicle
8        bip01 l foot
9        bip01 neck
10       bip01 r clavicle
11       bip01 r foot

    depth 4
12       bip01 head
13       bip01 l upperarm
14       bip01 r upperarm

    depth 5
15       bip01 l forearm
16       bip01 r forearm

    depth 6
17       bip01 l hand
18       bip01 r hand

I'm not entirely sure about upper/lower case, but IIRC, halo lowercases node names when compiling the intermediate jm formats into tags.


For reference, this lines up with how halo sorts the cyborgs nodes:

Edited by MosesofEgypt on Jul 21, 2019 at 06:14 PM