Terrain Exporter - Kizari/Flagrum GitHub Wiki
After a lot of hard work, the terrain exporter is now live with Flagrum 1.2. A huge thanks to Katelynn Kittaly for help with developing the terrain shaders and testing the exporter/importer. Thanks also to NightysWolf for assisting in the development of the terrain shader.
To use this exporter, you will need Flagrum 1.2+. To use the importer, you will need Blender 3.0+, and Flagrum's Companion Blender Add-on.
Terrain render by Katelynn Kittaly
Terrain tile information is one of many types of data stored in EXML files. You can therefore attempt to export terrain from any EXML file, but you will only get terrain if it is contained within the file.
Files primarily concerned with terrain often have the _h suffix. For example, you can find area_leide_h.exml in data://environment/world/ebex/heightmap which contains all of the terrain tiles for Leide.
Once you have selected the file you wish to export, simply right-click it and hit Export as Terrain.
NOTE: Be careful exporting terrain from any top-level EXML files, such as those with the area_ prefix (besides the ones with the _h suffix). You are very likely to get the entire continent if you do that, which Blender will struggle with immensely.
Inside Blender, click File > Import > Flagrum > Import Flagrum Terrain. Select the FTD file you exported in the previous step, then shift your attention to the Import Options on the right.
By default, the mesh resolution is set to 512x512 quads. This is the highest possible resolution, but beware it is very expensive. For example, importing area_leide_h.exml at this resolution produces a file with over 20 million vertices. If you are concerned about performance, select a lower resolution.
Once you have selected your mesh resolution, hit Import. The time this takes will depend on the resolution selected, but may take several minutes on the maximum setting due to loading in terrain for entire regions of the game.
Now that the import is done, select a mesh from the scene viewer and hit Numpad . to move to where it has loaded. It will be loaded at the exact position it would be in the game world. You may also want to hit N, go to the View tab, and increase Clip End to a higher value so you can see more of the terrain at once.
Materials will be set up for you automatically by Flagrum, so you can also switch to material view or rendered view to see how those look.
- If you are struggling for performance, consider hiding or deleting parts of the terrain that aren't needed for what you're working on
- If you are working on a render, consider importing at a high mesh resolution and taking a tile (or a few tiles) around the area your scene will be and moving them over to another low resolution import of the same terrain. This way you can get a detailed foreground, and have the terrain in the distance less heavy to make rendering larger vistas more viable
Interactions with Modded Game
The exporter may fail if your game files have been modded in a way that makes the file you're trying to export unreadable. You can mitigate this by using Flagrum's new Mod Manager functionality. This functionality also enables you to disable and enable mods in a single click, so if a mod is interfering with your export, you can always disable it temporarily.
Cliffs, Rocks, Foliage and Ground Cover
These are not part of the terrain and therefore won't be imported with this tool. Cliffs, rocks, and trees are usually found in environments. See our documentation on the Environment Exporter for help with exporting these. Unfortunately foliage and ground cover does not currently have any tooling available, so you will need to improvise.