Importing and Exporting

Importing and Exporting

Four formats, each with an entry under File ▸ Import and File ▸ Export.

Format	What it holds
.4ds	The model: every frame, its geometry, materials and hierarchy
.5ds	One animation for that model, keyed by frame name
.tck	The movement track beside an animation
.6ds	The coarse shadow mesh the engine casts from

The import dialog

Option	What it does
Collection Per Model	Puts everything the file holds in a collection named after it, so two models in one scene stay apart.
Load Its Animation	Looks for a .5ds named like the model beside it and loads that too.

The export dialog

Option	What it does
Selected Objects Only	Writes the selection instead of the scene. Every check and message then talks about those objects only.
Fix >2 Joint Influences	Corrects vertices weighted to more than the two joints the game allows.
Fix Non-Parent-Child Weights	Corrects vertices weighted to two joints that are not a joint and its own parent.
Fix Long Rotation Turns	Splits a rotation of more than half a circle between two keys, which the game would otherwise play the short way round.
Write Its Animation	Writes a .5ds beside the model from the scene's own actions.
Write Its Track	Writes the .tck holding where the actor travels while that animation plays, under the same name again. On by default, and available while the animation is being written and an empty in the scene carries movement.

The report

Every run writes a staged log to the system console (Window ▸ Toggle System Console) and opens a summary when anything needs attention:

[MBT/4DS] Importing Tommy.4ds
[MBT/4DS] Version 29, 5 material(s), 24 frame(s)
--- Materials ---
  [Mat 01/05] TOMMY1.BMP 0x00040001
--- Frames ---
  [Frame 01/24] 'base' Visual/Single Morph
[MBT/4DS] Import OK: Tommy.4ds

Lines are tagged [MBT/4DS], [MBT/5DS], [MBT/TCK], [MBT/6DS], so the add-on's output can be picked out of a shared console.

Tip

A model imported and exported again comes back byte for byte, the save date aside. Try it once on a file you care about: if it round-trips, everything it held survived the trip into Blender.

Nothing is written until the whole file is built

The export assembles the entire file in memory and checks it before a single byte is written, then writes to a temporary file and moves it into place. A failed export leaves whatever was there untouched — no half file, no leftover.