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Parik27 / DragonFF

Blender Add-on to edit RenderWare and GTA Formats
GNU General Public License v3.0
360 stars 128 forks source link

Better documentation and Error catching #84

Open LukeSeers opened 3 years ago

LukeSeers commented 3 years ago

I've been using this addon for a long while now and I've spent many hours debugging problems that should have already be documented, but they don't seem to be in there or sometimes they are stated, but not clearly. For a example(There are plenty more, but I think going through the docs will fix a lot of theses problems):

  1. Applying Scale/Location This is a pretty important step to mention to any new people who wants to start using this addon. I assumed that the addon would take care of all that, but nope. I do understand why that is the case, but it should be stated clearly for everybody.

  2. Mass Export I have zero clue on how to use that function... I have read the documentation and it's so miss leading. It don't even mention about the option in the exporting dff section "Export Collision". I did discover from one of @Parik27 forum posts that it's the collision from inside of the dff?? I don't have a clue...

How do I expect "Mass Export" to work?

I would go to one of these which fits my situation File -> Export -> DragonFF -> Mass Export (.coll) or File -> Export -> DragonFF -> Mass Export (.dff)

In these I would expect Only Selected Version Export Preserver Positions

Use case example: I have a collection("Buildings") and each object in that collection I have set the DragonFF - Export Object to Object the user clicks the collection and goes to "Mass Export (.dff)" then it would go through the collection checking if the DragonFF - Export Object is set to Object and then exports them one by one using the objects names(I should add it would also remove the .001 etc). This would also be the same for "Mass Export (.coll)".

It's worth me mentioning, I'm still new on how GTA handles their models. In that case please take my ideas with a pinch of salt. @Parik27 you might have already solved the mass export problem, but it might just not be documented well enough.

Error catching

There has been errors when trying to export like size etc, but they don't tell the user "The object size is to big". Having good error catching would be very useful for people to find problems with their models. I would list the errors I got, but to me they all look the same.

ThePortuguesePlayer commented 3 years ago

Better documentation is something I have been asking for as well. A previous issue created by me even pointed out some of the documentation was actually wrong. I think improving the documentation is one of the most important to-dos this addon could ever have.

EDIT: To give an actual example of what I mean with the documentation having things wrong, this statement in the Materials section of the wiki is false: image Other things mentioned in my previous post were corrected already. Also, no explanation of what Framebuffer Alpha actually is, still. That term only gets mentioned once in the whole documentation.