Navmeshing Part 2
(Creating the navmesh)
Note: In this navmesh method, we are not going to use saveQuadNoP4.con and exportGTS.con. These are scripts that run some routines from the editor automatically. We are going to take care of this manually from the editor. This is because, if there are problems with the navmesh when we get to this step, the editor will display error messages in the command window that we won't be aware of if we did this automatically.
Now we're ready to make a navmesh.
Create Navmesh obj
Yes it's time to make the actual navmeshes! This process takes many hours depending on the size of the level and the complexity of the terrain and objects within it.
Note: If using a laptop, turn off the sleep mode! You don’t want to wake up the next morning and find that the process died during the night because the laptop went to sleep.
This process will create wavefront obj infantry and/or vehicle meshes that can be edited in any 3d modeling program that can import the obj format and handle up to 3 different materials for ground, shallow water, deep water.
There are two standard navmeshes: Infantry and vehicle. Infantry navmeshes are for whenever bots are not in a vehicle. Vehicle navmeshes are for non-air vehicles. Air vehicles use a non 3d pathmap called an aerialheightmap that is created by the editor and will be explained later.
Maya and 3dsmax have obj importers, but are expensive. Gmax is free but does not have an obj importer, but there are workarounds on the net to get Gmax to work with obj files. Blender is also free, but the obj importer does not handle the different materials correctly and therefore is only useful for editing ground only navmeshes.
Using the BFSPnavmesher.bat script. Make sure that the map/mod is correctly selected and displayed at the top of the screen and that the type of navmesh to create is correct (Infantry, Vehicle or both).
Note: It’s best to start with the infantry navmesh. It’s faster to create just one navmesh at a time. The infantry navmesh should be verified first before working on the vehicle navmesh. If you have sudden CTD problems during gameplay, that usually means a navmesh issue. It’s easier to track down the problem if you work on one navmesh at a time.
This process eats up a lot of your pc's resources for quite some time, so unless your are doing a small combat area, you may want to do this part over night while you sleep.
Brace yourselves, because after this it starts getting time consuming and tricky as we work with a 3dmodeling tool to get a vehicle and infantry navmesh fully working in-game.
Keep an eye on the output window. If you have notice that the numbers are not incrementing, then you will need to restart the proces..
Once you have a sucessfully completed navmesh created, now is the time to check it and make any edits to it that are needed before you t'fix' it.