Guidelines

Import - Notes

• Animations will be imported as linear animations on a per-frame basis.
• It should be possible to re-export animations directly after import. For SWBF1 you need to have at least one material though.
• .msh files exported with MshEx won't import.
• There might be some misplaced edges.

Export - Avoid

• Overlapping clusters: Might break the .msh file. Might mess up the exported .msh's UVs/Weights/Vertex Colors.
• 5-Sided(or more) Polygons: Might break the .msh file. Will mess up export result(missing polies).
• Unsupported Model types: The supported model types are: poly mesh, null, bone.
• No Materials: You should have at least one material named Scene_Material when exporting. If you have at least one material you don't need Scene_Material.

Export - Collisions

• Collision meshes can be created by naming the model collision_* or *_collision.
• To create collision primitives you have to follow some guidelines:
  1. The type has to appear in the name of the object.
  2. The object's name has to begin with p_.
  3. And of course the labelling for the engine(-svbot- or whichever entities you want it to collide with).
  4. DON'T FREEZE THE COLLISION PRIMITIVE. This will remove some properties the exporter needs to produce a working collision primitive.
• So, the final product will be something like these:
  1. p_-svbot-cube
  2. p_-svb-cylinder
  3. p_-ot-sphere
  4. p_-svt-cube_back_left_semmel

Export - Weighting

• Always apply the envelope to ALL bones. This might slow your workflow down but it ensures the points are weighted to the correct bone after export.
• Only weight to objects with bone in their name(NOT: root, eff).
• Try to apply the envelope only to models which won't be merged after weighting. This does not have to break the .msh, it could though.

Export - Materials

• Material/Render flags are applied per material.You can apply them by opening the ZETools Material Manager, selecting a material and then clicking "ZE-ify". This will add all the ZeroEngine material flags to the material. Afterwards inspect your material (click the "Edit" button) and change those settings in the appended options.

Export - General

• It's not important how you animate bones (FK or IK etc), the exporter will go through all frames one-by-one and get the current local transforms of every bone.
• The currently selected object + all it's children will be exported.
• Only apply one 'master' UV projection to a object. All subsequent projections should be Sub-projections.

Cloth

• Try to avoid triangles in the cloth mesh. There's a high change triangles might produce artifacts in the cloth simulation.
• Cloth will be split along UV seams, so UV accordingly.
• If you have problems with cloth simulation artifacts, provide a screenshot from the debug SWBF.exe with "render_cloth_connections" enabled via the console.