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BeamNG CDAE Blender Exporter

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Overview

The BeamNG CDAE Blender Exporter is an alternative to Blender’s legacy Collada exporter, designed to streamline exporting assets for BeamNG.drive. It introduces concepts like Roles and different export modes to simplify node tree construction and LOD management.

Important differences to Blender’s built-in exporter:

• Only selected objects are exported.
• The Blender object hierarchy is ignored (Use Roles instead).

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Installation

1. Download the latest released grille_beamng_cdae.zip.

2. Install in Blender:

   • Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → Install
   • Select the .zip file.

3. Enable the addon: BeamNG CDAE.

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Build Modes

Flat Dump

• Exports all selected objects into a flat node hierarchy.
• Ignores Roles such as LODs and collision meshes.
• Produces a basic DAE that should be visible ingame as long as the objects have mesh data.

Blender Hierarchy

• Uses Blender object hierarchy like in the legacy Collada addon.

Collada Node Tree (Roles)

• Builds a full BeamNG-style node hierarchy based on object Roles.
• Requires that every selected object has its Role properly set.

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Roles

Roles define how an object is treated during export.
A Build Mode that uses Roles must be selected for these to take effect.

• Generic – manual placement in the node hierarchy.
• Mesh – visible geometry.
• Collison – collision geometry.
• Billboard – visible geometry, displayed as billboard.
• AutoBillboard – automatically generated billboard.
• NullDetail – size in pixels at which the game will stop rendering the object.

Args

• LOD Size (PX) - Size in pixels at which the object will swap to the next level of detail, the bigger the number the sooner it will drop to the next LOD

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Feedback

If you encounter issues:

1. Share your .blend file and the exported file if possible.

2. Report on GitHub with:

   • Export mode used
   • Roles assigned
   • Blender version