Import Static Props

[snake-biscuits]

Should collab w/ other addons like Perimeter
.rpak tools will be a must

Formats

• Titanfall: Source Engine .mdl v46
• Titanfall | 2: Titanfall Engine .mdl
• Apex Legends: Titanfall Engine .rmdl

Settings

• Physics Model Only
• Maximum LoD level
• Can we do multiple LoD per-instance?
  • Simulate LoD switching?

Prerequisites

• Import Materials #2

[snake-biscuits]

It's possible to import SourceIO in Blender Python, provided it's installed & available
We could probably rig up a bulk asset importer for Titanfall that hooks that

try:
    import SourceIO
except ImportError:
    pass  # switch to our own implementation / disable feature

# OR

import importlib
if importlib.util.find_spec("SourceIO") is None:
    ...  # disable prop loading feature

imo option 2 is better, as we can use a is_SourceIO_available global

Titanfall 2 .mdl / Apex .rmdl support might require collabing w/ SourceIO devs
A fork or PR of SourceIO is an idea, but I'd want to check w/ the devs first to make sure they'd be OK with that

Otherwise we just build our own importer

availability could get wierd depending on the order addons are initialised & cached in
I haven't encountered inter-addon dependencies before so idk

[snake-biscuits]

To figure out what parts of SourceIO to use, I'd trace backwards from operators
e.g. SOURCEIO_OT_BSPImport
We'd have to implement our own content manager for Titanfall Engine assets
I still think hooking the .mdl importer would be less work than building our own

[snake-biscuits]

nvm, SourceIO doesn't bulk load static props like I thought it did
we'd be better off w/ our own importer:

• Instanced props
• Blender Asset System
• Less debugging nightmares