Editing Environment Models

Initial Importing Process

1. Make sure you have cloned the project-reignition-assets repository and installed SEGA NN Tools.

2. Open Blender and press [N] to show the sidebar.

3. Click SEGA NN Tools -> Import -> Model .*no.

4. In the import window, change Format to GNO, Game to Sonic and the Secret Rings, and the import mode to Batch. Note: Some files may have problems being imported. Remove them temporarily and try to find a way to re-import them later.

5. Navigate to Models/Original Models in project-reignition-assets and import the correct models using this page as a reference.

6. Delete unneeded armatures.

7. Select everything [SHIFT + A], scale it down to 10% of its original size with [S] -> [0.1], then apply the changes with [CTRL + A] -> All Transforms.

To remove armatures, first select all the armatures in the outliner. Then, press [X] to delete them. Select any mesh, go to its Modifiers tab and remove its Armature modifier. Then, with the mesh still selected, tap [A] to select everything else, and press [CTRL + L] -> Copy Modifiers to remove the Armature modifiers from all other meshes. Finally, run Renamer.py to remove unused vertex weights.

Setting up Materials

Materials must be renamed in Blender before environment models can be exported to Godot. Although it is not strictly necessary to link image textures in Blender, it is still recommended to import textures into Blender to help show what textures are being used while editing.

• In Blender's scripting tab, open Process Materials.py from the project-reignition-assets/Scripts folder and press [ALT + P] to run the script.

  • Note: Materials with multiple textures or special shaders may need to be combined manually.

• Go through each material and change its Image Texture to the corresponding renamed image texture in the level's texture folder. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to automate this yet.

• Run Process Materials.py again to rename all the materials.

  • Note: Materials with multiple textures or special shaders will need to be renamed manually.

Guidelines

• Meshes that share the same materials and exist in the same chunk should be joined together to reduce draw calls

  • Do NOT merge vertices as that will make it difficult to unmerge the meshes should you ever need to.

• Use Blender's Collections to separate models into chunks that can be easily culled.

• Link Blender's textures to the textures found in the level's textures folder. Be sure that all textures are renamed to something more human readable first.

• Unless a piece of environment needs to be animated, meshes should NOT be attached to any armatures.