Exporting Blender Interior Files to Torque (.dif) Not Always Working

Hi everyone,

I've been making a replica of a PlayPlace tube structure from my childhood in Blender 4.4 on my Windows 10 PC, in which I was hoping to add to one of my custom levels in Marble Blast Platinum Quest (see the first three attachments). When I try to export it as a .dif file, Blender crashes.  I spent a long time trying to figure out what causes Blender to crash, by exporting one part/mesh/object at a time, to see which exact objects cause Blender to crash. Based on my experimenting, any file parts, meshes or objects where I used the mirroring tool, or a knife/slice tool causes Blender to crash. Next, I deleted all the meshes/objects where I used the mirror tool, or a knife/slice tool (shown in the last attachment), and Blender successfully exported that file from .blend to Torque (.dif). The site where I downloaded the dif file export option for the Blender plugin can be found on this website posted by Daniel:  github.com/RandomityGuy/io_dif/  

I know by now, that I might not be able to use the tube curves or hills I made for my level anymore, but I made it look like that to make things look a little more fancy and detailed, so if anyone knows how to make Blender export the objects/meshes that I used the mirroring tool and knife/slice tool, that would greatly be appreciated.

Thank you,

Jackson

Hiya,

Try setting BSP to None when you're exporting your interior. This level looks sick, I hope this fixes the issue!

In the export window set the BSP setting to 'None'

You can also update the plugin to version 1.3.4 which was released recently to address this particular crash. 

Some exporters barf when custom split normals or bad UV maps exist.

Hello! This problem has also been fixed in the latest version of the exporter.

Thank you very much for the great advice!
With the old and new exporters, I changed the BSP Setting to "none" and it successfully completed exporting. This time, it broke it down into separate .dif files, in which my understanding is that it's supposed to do that if it cannot export it all into one file. When I add the interior in the level editor, all the platforms appear as solid white, (shown the first two attachments) but I think this may be a different issue regarding which folders each file is stored. I also checked the "flip normals" box and the "double faces" box (as for what it said on the site where I downloaded the latest update of the file exporter).

The only issue I am facing now, is that some tube parts on the curves may be missing and the interior appears as a solid white colour in level editor. I think there's something I am not doing correctly here. I suspect it might have something to do with where I put the new updated file exporter. I didn't know where to put the new exporter folder, so I just kept it in the downloads>io_dif-master>blender_plugin folder directory for now.
Shown in the last attachment, I also read on the site that has the new updated file exporter that says to "copy the resultant difbuilder.dll to blender_plugin/io_dif folder and rename it to DifBuilderLib.dll" and to "copy blender_plugin/io_dif to your blender plugins folder". What would be the best thing to do if I cannot find the difbulider.dll file?

Again, I think the issue is that I am probably putting files or exporters in the wrong folder location. I'm just not sure which folder I should put the new exporter. I am currently putting my .blend files and .dif files in the PlatinumQuest>platinum>data>interiors_pq>Custom>Blender Levels folder.

Lastly, previous levels I exported from Blender to the level editor had the textures showing up perfectly, which also had its hitbox, but for some reason the textures are not showing up for the tube structure. I have both level .blend and .dif files in the same folder, and I don't have any texture .png or .jpeg files in that folder. The texture .png and .jpeg files are in the interiors_pq folder instead.

I hope this information helps describe what exactly is going on, but if you have any questions or suggestions, please let me know.

The white interiors are a result of missing textures, you need to ensure that the name of the materials correspond to the file names of the textures (without extension) that you are using, and your dif needs to be placed in the same parent folder as the texture (you are doing this part correctly). Also you do not need to enable "Flip normals" and "Double sided", only when they are necessitated, which I don't think your case needs them. But do ensure that the orientation of your faces are correct.

As for updating the exporter, you need to go to the Releases section of the plugin and download the version from there, then just unzip the contents of the folder over your existing installation of the plugin, replacing all the files if prompted. The instructions on the README are for building the plugin from source, you don't need to follow that since you are going to download the compiled plugin from the Releases section.