Creating an ASE model using multiple Materials

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This tutorial is assuming that you've read the Modeling - Basic Tutorial which shows how to export a simple cube with a single material to ASE. If you want to use multiple materials your mesh has to be tweaked a bit, as mutltiple shaders require your model to be separated into several objects. This tutorial refers to Blender 2.43.

Create and texture your Model

We're using a cube here as in the other tutorial for the sake of simplicity. We will apply two different materials to the faces. So basically, create the cube, enlarge it by a factor of 10 (it will be too small in-game otherwise) and unwrap it by switching to U/V Face Select, selecting all the faces and and hitting U:

ASE cube.jpg ASE uv unwraped.jpg

Go to the U/V editor (with all the U/V faces selected) and select the shader for your cube (Image > Open) - I used the blocks_008_editor.tga file directly from the repository:

Ase uv loaded image.jpg

Now we select a single U/V face to apply a different texture to it. Just right-click the according face:

Ase uv single face.jpg

In the U/V editor, select Image > Open and select a different image (here brick_004_editor.tga):

Ase uv different texture.jpg

Note: you can preview your textured model by going to the Object Mode and choose the "Textured" render mode:

Ase textured mode.jpg

Separate your Meshes

In order to export your model to ASE you will have to separate your meshes according to their textures. In our case we only have one face that is using a different texture than the rest of the model. Switch to Edit Mode and select that face. Hit P to separate the face from the mesh and create a new object out of it:

ASE separate faces.jpg

Go back to Object Mode: This is what it should look like if you select the cube and move it - the separated face should stay where it is - this is just for illustration:

ASE separated.jpg

Export your Model

Don't forget to hit Apply Scale & Rotation (CTRL+A) if you resized and moved your model and select the two objects (the cube and the single face). Now export the model using the Export > ASCII Scene menu and use these options:

Blender ase export options.jpg

I exported this test model to c:\games\doom3\darkmod\models\darkmod\cube.ase as this is just a testmodel I will delete it anyway.

Edit your ASE File

Open your ASE file using your preferred text editor and you should find two *BITMAPS entries. You will have to change both of them now to the according darkmod shaders (the right image shows the corrected shader references):

Materials before the change Materials after the change

Test your Model in-game

Now create a testmap and place your model into it. Load it into the game and voilà:

Ase models cube ingame.jpg