Blender Console

Dark Exporter shows plenty of useful information in Blender Console. The console should always be on. If it's not, activate it by clicking in the top menu Window\Toggle System Console.

Below I describe the positive (error free) log of exporting the default Blender cube model:

-= Dark Engine Exporter v.2.0 =-

Python = 3.2 (r32:88445, Mar  2 2011, 16:59:21) [MSC v.1500 64 bit (AMD64)]

System = Windows, 7

Arch.  = ('64bit', 'WindowsPE')

N3ds2e.exe is found in D:\N3ds2e.exe

BSP.exe is found in D:\BSP.exe

Input filename = D:\untitled.bin

Converting to 3ds format.

3ds export time: 0.00

Running n3ds2e.exe

"D:\N3ds2e.exe" "D:\untitled.3ds" "D:\untitled.e"

.E export time: 0.07

--------------- ANALYSIS ----------------

Read from E file:

('Material', '', '0', '', 'NO_DBL')

Blender materials:

('Material', 'Material', '', 'Tex', '', 0, 0, 'NO_DBL')

------------- EDITING E FILE ------------

Mod_line: 1,"Material",,RGB 204,204,204,TRANSP 0;

Running BSP.exe

"D:\BSP.exe" "D:\untitled.e" "D:\untitled.bin" -V -l3

root Cube:

6 polygons, 0 split, 0 split planes

.BIN export time: 0.05

untitled.bin file copied to obj folder of Thief game.

First Dark Exporter prints the current enviroment configuration (Python version, Operating System version and the architecture). This is a valuable debug information.

Next it prints out the location where both N3ds2e.exe and BSP.exe executables where located. This path is taken from the Dark Exporter config file (see more in chapter Configuration).

Blender exports the model to 3DS format and prints the execution time of this process.

In the next step n3ds2e.exe is launched to convert 3DS file into E file. The execution time is displayed as well.

Now Dark Exporter performs the analysis and compares what's given in the E file to what's detected in Blender. In orange color I marked the part that describes the values read from the E file. They are given in the following order:

Material Name, Spec Shader, Transparency, Self-Illumination, Double-Sided Option

In the next step Blender materials are displayed with corresponding values plus a few more:

Material Name, Adhoc Material Name, Spec Shader, Texture Name, Image Name, Alpha-Transparency, Emision, Double-Sided Custom Property

These two sections should display the same number of detected materials. If it's not the same, it indicates the problem with materials or UV mapping in Blender. You should examine the your model to find the source of the problem. The Adhoc Material Name is a special material name generated by N3ds2e.exe. It's a bit more advanced topic.

Subsequently Blender Console shows the E file syntax line that will be entered in the modified E file. I marked that part in blue color.

BSP.exe is run. It takes the modified E file and converts it to BIN file.

In the last step the final BIN file is copied to your Thief 1/2 obj folder.