RenderClonkAddon for Blender 3.0+

RoboClonk · March 12, 2023, 4:51pm

Hey everyone!

I spent the last two and a half weeks working on an upgrade of the Render/BlenderClonk Addon to make it work for Blender 3.0+. After many hours of learning addon scripting in Blender and the old addon code, I was able to get it to a state where it might be useful to some. :)

Some features from the original addon I left out because I didn’t think they were necessary anymore, like exporting meshes and animations. All state/data, even from the addon, will be saved inside the blend file. Besides that, I upgraded the scripts to work with Blenders new API, added a few additional features and remade the UI layout.

There is a video summarizing all the features the addon has. Enjoy :)

You can get the addon from GitHub, just download the zip-file and install it like any other Blender addon.
Current Version is 2.7

And there is an example file that contains a new clonk and new face textures that are more fitting for higher resolution renders.

Please tell me what you think. If you find any bugs or you have feature requests, just write them here or on GitHub. (German or English is both fine)

Edit 03.04.2022:
For more information on how the addon works, I finally wrote a manual containing a quick start guide on how to load clonks and render spritesheets of them, as well as more detailed information about all the features:
Edit 12.03.2023: I’ve updated the manual
RenderClonkAddon_Manual_v2.pdf (1,5 MB)

Funni · February 14, 2022, 11:15am

Sieht doch gut aus! Kann man mit dem Addon auch andere Objekte als den Clonk bearbeiten? Also z.B. die im Wind wehende Flagge oder dass man die bisher stehenden Räder der Lore drehen lässt. Sofern die Engine das unterstützt natürlich…

RoboClonk · February 14, 2022, 1:37pm

Ja, das geht.

Allgemein lassen sich mit dem Addon viele verschiedene Spritesheets erstellen. Dabei können auch ganz andere Rigs verwendet werden oder das ClonkRig erweitert werden (Finger, Flügel, …) Weil was das Addon macht, es nimmt eine Blender Action aus der Liste und wendet sie auf das Action Target an. Das Target kann dabei ein Armature oder auch ein Mesh-Objekt sein. In dem Fall kann man damit Loren, beziehungsweise allgemein beliebige Fahrzeuge und Lebewesen erstellen.
Es gibt momentan noch eine Einschränkung bei Spriteanimationen, die aus einem Ausschnitt eines größeren Sprites bestehen. Beispiel: Holzhütte und ihre Tür. Da ist die Tür ja ein Ausschnitt aus der Hütte, die getrennt als Animation vorliegt. Im Spiel wird sie ja dann auf die Holzhütte gelegt. Solche Ausschnitte kann man bisher nicht herausrendern. Das wäre das nächste Feature, das ich einbauen will. Damit man auch Gebäude und Ähnliches erstellen kann.

Im Fall von einer Flagge sieht es ein bisschen anders aus, weil die Animation meist simuliert oder über ShapeKeys gesteuert wird. ShapeKeys funktionieren (noch) nicht mit dem Addon. Aber Simulationen kann man verwenden, die auf der normalen Blender Timeline abgespielt werden. Man muss nur Platzhalter Actionen mit Namen erstellen und dann quasi den Ausschnitt der Simulationen mit Startframe und Länge angeben.

Ich hoffe meine Erklärungen sind verständlich, da musste ich jetzt ein bisschen weiter ausholen, weil es ja noch keine Doku oder dergleichen gibt. :)

Funni · February 14, 2022, 3:18pm

Danke, finde ich auf jeden Fall gut, dass das Addon generisch gestaltet ist und sich nicht nur auf den Clonk konzentriert. Und ich hab ein bissl was über die Animationen bei verschiedenen Objekten gelernt…

RoboClonk · February 14, 2022, 4:05pm

Ja, finde ich auch. Das gibt einfach viel mehr Möglichkeiten :)

RoboClonk · February 21, 2022, 8:06am

I just published an Update for the addon that improves the ActMap export function among some other things. A full change list can be seen in the release notes on GitHub:

RoboClonk · March 19, 2022, 11:15pm

I made a new release of the addon containing cropping functionality for animations.

This can be used to render doors of buildings for example like here on a remake I made for the Hut2.

ActMaps can be imported now as well. A full list of changes is listed in the release notes on GitHub:

I changed the versioning and removed a digit. I don’t plan to have so many different releases.

I’m planning to write a tutorial next, since all the core features are implemented. If there are any questions you can ask here or look at the example files (I just added the hut). I guess many things should already be self-explanatory and if you hover over fields inside the addons panel a tooltip will appear:

Speaking of tutorial, I updated the readme inside the repository that contains already information about installation and how your Clonk content folders should be structured, so you can import clonks correctly.

Aqua · March 20, 2022, 10:12am

Wollte danke sagen, weil das awesome ist :)

RoboClonk · March 20, 2022, 10:23am

Gerne :)

RoboClonk · March 23, 2022, 7:31pm

I just added the Clonk content files to the repository, which contain clonk meshes and animations, that can be imported by the addon.
Here you can find a link to other files that were available on Renderclonks .de. This is the same link that is referenced here in the forum.

RoboClonk · April 2, 2022, 10:10pm

I just wrote a manual that contains a quick start guide for the addon as well as more detailed information about all the features: RenderClonkAddon_Manual.pdf (1,4 MB)

RoboClonk · July 2, 2022, 10:53am

There is a new release that contains a new option inside the action settings to override the main camera. This can be useful if you want a title image to use a different camera that uses perspective mode. It also changes some settings to default lightings and the overlay material so renders of clonks should look more like the original.

RoboClonk · September 6, 2022, 9:48am

In case someone had problems installing the addon: I made a mistake setting up the latest zip archive. I updated it by now, but the problem was due to all files lying directly inside that zip. All files need to be inside another folder, so Blender installs them correctly.
If you’ve already installed the plugin and didn’t get the addon to work, look inside your Addons directory, usually contained in „AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\3.x\scripts\addons“. In case there are individual files of the addon lying around, try to move them to a separate folder and restart Blender.

Sorry for any frustration this might have caused.

Funni · September 11, 2022, 7:32am

Da frag ich mich, warum Blender so doof ist, und das Addon dann auch noch importiert. Ist ja nicht so, dass man die File manuell in AppData zieht.

RoboClonk · September 12, 2022, 9:43am

Ich weiß es leider auch nicht. Es kopiert einfach alle Dateien aus dem Zip in AppData, mehr nicht.

RoboClonk · October 12, 2022, 5:16pm

New update 2.4:
This update improves the workflow with sprite animations that have different sizes. The addon will adjust the camera zoom so all animations have the same size in the game. It will also calculate the facet offset automatically and writes it inside the ActMap. There is a field to override the facet offset manually.

Furthermore, the action preview got two new shorts cuts. The override resolution can be changed via the arrow keys and the camera shift via Shift+Arrow Key. As shown in this gif:

This can be handy if an animation is bigger than usual but it must be placed „economically“ inside a frame.

RoboClonk · October 13, 2022, 10:47am

And another quick update:

Pre-made images can now be used for title images. They’re going to be scaled accordingly and placed on the sprite sheet. This can be useful if you want to use original title images from Clonk. Or if you have a complex title image that you don’t want to re-render every time. (If the image fields are left blank, Blender will render the image from the scene)

RoboClonk · October 15, 2022, 7:58pm

Lots of updates this week. :) I made another release that adds some convenient features/additional features and changed the sprite sheet rendering panel to make it cleaner:

Some of the changes were needed to make it possible to render the knights with a shield.
KnightsHDFinal

The full changelist and add-on can be found here:

RoboClonk · October 22, 2022, 2:41pm

New release! (2.6)

This update is mainly for efficiency and convenience. It adds two new buttons to reuse already rendered sprites from disc. You can also re-render only one animation if it changed and it will repack the sprite sheet much quicker.

Full change list, as always inside the GitHub release page:

RoboClonk · March 12, 2023, 4:50pm

New release! (2.7)

This update contains a few fixes and features. Sprites can be packed vertically now and a compression setting was introduced.

Full change list here:

I’ve updated the manual as well, so it covers the features that were introduced since the last manual version. It can be found in my first post.