I've been playing around a lot with the Blender -> FPM Editor-> FP chain lately. A couple of questions, if anyone has time/experience:

1. Is edge splitting really the only way to create smooth groups in Blender? It messes up your model.
2. I understand your plugin does not support animation, so you have to use MilkShape3D for this, am I right?
3. If you still have animation stored in your Blender model, will it affect the export?
4. I tried building a custom model for a drop-down target. It seems to render ok, but as soon as I hit the target, FP crashes instantly. I can't pinpoint the cause. Is it because I have no animation inside?

One additional tip from my side: make sure you apply transformations (Ctrl-A) before you export your model, so the object scale is 1.0 for each dimension. Otherwise you get the overbright rendering again.

to 1. yes, as i know, it is the only way - there is an option to mark edges as sharp, but it is used for the "Edge Split Modifier" and is effectly doing the same... (you can redo splitted edges/faces when you select all vertices and "remove doubles" - that will merge that vertices back to a single one)

to 2. currently my addon is ignoring Armatures and its PoseBone animation. And it does not apply any Constraints and Modifier.
But by the way, FuturePinball does not support animations - its support is extremely limited, thats the reason, why i did not spend more time for that in my addon.
BUT: i am currently building a "Scripted Animation"-Library (framework) and a Blender Tool Box addon, to be able to export animations as a script and use it in FuturePinball.

to 3. my addon will ignore every thing, that is not able to export.

to 4. i don't know, it is possible...

PS.: today i find out, that blender has changed its implementation of Matrix since revision 42816. if your model lies on the side after export or import, you are using a combination of blender and my addon that will not fit... today i will publish a new fix for that.

@1: Yes I Googled my ass off, and found the mark sharp edge functionality and noticed that again it was input for spit edge modifier, so no change there.

@4: Maybe this is not for this thread, and has less to do with the plugin, more with FPM/FP, but have you ever used Blender to implement successfully a drop-down target, and make it go down when hit? What I did is design in Blender, export using your utility. The model is ok, it can be used as ornament just fine. But when I load a drop-down target into FPM, exported from FP, and replace the ms3d model with the one exported from Blender, it doesn't go down when hit (I've used the PopDown method in the _Hit sub), although the ball will go through; so the model is still there, but the blockage has gone down. And later on FP even start crashing everytime I hit the drop down target.

#4. i think for a drop down, your model MUST have a animation (FP expect that).
(...) but currently you will be not able to do this with my addon - sorry, you have to go back to milkshape for that...
and i am not sure, if FP will crash, if you will use more than one joint for the animation...
but please ask someone who has more experience than me with that.

PS.: an updated version of the addon is available, that will work also with blender 2.6x rev. 42816.

Will do beta-tester, and thanks again for this awesome Blender plug!

I have used models with 2 joints (T-rex head for example is a drop target, and have two joints, one rotate the model and the other is for the mouth) so I guess FP not crash with more than 1 joint

I had no joints! So the crash was likely due to the fact that there was no animation in the model at all, I'm not sure. So Francisco, you did the animation in ms3d then? Also, for the T-Rex model, which you say is a drop-down target, I assume that there are more than just 2 frames, right?

YES. I can't remember how many are, I guess 20.
The number of frames afect the speed of the animation. A drop target with 30 frames going to sink slow, the same with 5 frames is going to do real quick.

One thing that crashes FP when you make drop targgetes is the lack of collide ball. You can read more of it here viewtopic.php?f=7&t=47

Yep, that thread did the trick.

Good,

BTW: What are you modeling? and are you good with that?