Step 2 - Creating a translucent chainlink fence section

The "chainlink fence" portion of our fence prop is made up of a single flat plane (quad).  This quad will be double sided (the default for new meshes in Blender) so that it is visible from both sides.

New objects in blender are created at the location of the "3d cursor".  Pressing "shift-c" will return the 3d cursor to the origin (the 0,0,0 point) in Blender.  Go ahead and do this now.

Now that we've made sure the 3d cursor is centered at the origin, we're going to add a "plane" mesh to the scene.  With the mouse over the 3d view, press the space bar.  From the menu that appears, choose "Add->Mesh->Plane":

A new plane should appear, centered on the origin.

By default, the plane is created across the x and y axis, and can be though of as laying flat on the "ground".  We'll need to rotate it into the upright position.

Before rotating the plane, we're going to switch the 3d view to "side" view.  The 3d view can be switched to "side" by pressing the "3" key on the numeric keypad of your keyboard, or by selecting "View->Side" in the header of the 3d view.

Note: it's possible to customize your blender window layout to display multiple 3d views, see Working With Blender Windows for more information.

With the 3d view in side view and the plane mesh selected, press the 'r' key once to begin rotating the mesh.  By holding down on the "ctrl" key while moving the mouse, rotation is constrained to 5 degree increments.  Move the mouse while holding down on the ctrl key until the plane has been rotated by 90 degrees, then left click to complete the rotation (or right click to cancel).

Right now, the plane is resting halfway in the ground (centered on the origin).  We need to move the plane up, so that the bottom of the plane is resting on top of the (0,0,0) point.  To move a selected object in Blender, press the 'g' key on the keyboard (g for grab) and then move the mouse.  Holding down on the 'ctrl' key while moving an object constrains the movement to the grid.  You can press 'x', 'y', or 'z' while moving an object to constrain the motion to a given axis.  Just like rotating an object, left-clicking completes the move operation and right-clicking cancels the operation.  Go ahead and move the plane up on the z axis so that it is resting on top of the origin point.

Now that we've got our plane moved into position, it's time to resize it.  By default, new plane objects are 2x2 blender units (2x2 meters at default scale in Torque).  This is roughly 6.5 feet, which isn't quite tall enough for a security fence.  We want this fence to be about 10 feet tall in order to prevent trespassers from easily climbing over it :-).  Instead of scaling the plane in object mode, we're going to manipulate the edges/vertices directly using the "edit mode" of Blender's 3d view.

With the plane selected, switch the 3d view into edit mode:

Once in edit mode, we want to switch the selection mode from "vertices" to "edges":

Switch the view to "front" (numeric keypad '1' key) and select the topmost edge by right clicking it:

Grab the edge ('g' key) and then constrain motion to the z axis ('z' key).  Move the mouse upwards while holding down on the ctrl key (snaps to grid) until the top of the plane is 3 units from the origin:

Now our fence is 3 meters tall (almost 10 feet).  The fence section needs to be a bit wider though.  Grab the "side" edges of the plane one at a time and move them along the x axis ('x' key while moving to constrain movement to the x axis) until the fence is as wide as you'd like.  I've made my fence section 4 meters wide:

Next up, we're going to add a texture to the fence.  In order to texture the fence, we are going to need a Blender "3d view" and a Blender "UV/Image editor" open at the same time.  This can be accomplished by splitting the "3d view" down the center into two separate Blender "windows", and then changing the type of one of the windows to "UV/Image Editor".  See Also: Blender Survival Guide - Working with Blender windows.

First, move the mouse cursor over the line dividing the 3d view from the window header at the top.  You should see the cursor change to a double arrow:

Right click on this dividing line and select "Split Area" from the menu that appears.  You should now have two 3d view "windows" side by side:

Next, we're going to change the window on the right into a "UV/Image Editor".  This is accomplished by clicking the pulldown in the lower left corner of the "window" and selecting "UV/Image Editor" from the menu that appears:

Now we're going to switch the selection mode in the 3d view to "Face Select".  Move the mouse cursor over the 3d view and press 'ctrl-tab' .  Select "Faces" from the "Selection Mode" menu that appears.  Right click on the center of the plane to select it; you should see the plane outlined in a yellow-ish color:

Next, we're going to load an image into the UV/Image editor window.  If you haven't done so already, download the zip file that contains the pre-made images used in this tutorial.  Unzip or copy the images into the same folder as the .blend file.

From the "Image" menu, choose "Open..."

Navigate to the folder containing the image files, and open the ChainLink.png file:

The image file is now opened, although it won't be visible in the UV/Image Editor until we select it explicitly.

Next up, we're going to UV unwrap the plane.  From the "Mesh" menu of the 3d view, choose "UV Unwrap":

Select "Unwrap" from the UV Calculation menu that appears:

You should now see the face of the plane mesh show up in the UV/Image editor window

Next up, we need to assign the image that we loaded earlier to the face of the plane.  This is done by selecting the image in the pulldown of the UV/Image Editor window.  Any time an image is selected with this pulldown, it is assigned to the currently selected faces in the 3D view.  It is also possible to assign different images to different faces on a mesh using this method.

In order to see the chainlink texture mapped to the plane in Blender's 3d view, we need to change the viewport shading mode (draw type) to "Textured":

With the initial UV mapping, the chainlink texture is way too big.  We want the texture to "tile" or be repeated many times across the face of the mesh.  This is accomplished by scaling up the UV vertices in the UV/Image editor window.  Before scaling the vertices, make sure all vertices are selected in the UV/Image editor window by moving the mouse over the window and pressing 'a'.  The 'a' key toggles between "select all" and "select none", so you may have to press it a couple of times.  Once all vertices are selected in the UV image editor window, use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom out a bit.  Begin scaling up the UV vertices by pressing the 's' key.  Move the mouse and left-click to complete the scale operation.  Zoom out more and repeat this operation as needed until the chainlinks appear to be about the right size (remember that our fence section is 3 meters high and 4 meters wide).

If you zoom in on the plane in the 3d view, you may notice that the chain link texture appears slightly 'squished' on the plane:

To correct this, we need to scale the UV vertices down along the y-axis slightly in the UV/Image editor window.  With the mouse over the UV/Image editor window, press the 's' key to begin scaling, then press the 'y' key to constrain the scaling to the y-axis (vertical).  Left-click to complete the scale operation.  Scale the vertices along the y-axis a little bit at a time, complete the operation, and observe the results in the 3d window.  Continue adjusting the vertical (y-axis) scaling until the chainlinks appear roughly square:

Switch the 3d view back into object mode

Select the fence mesh by left-clicking it in object mode and rename the object to "Fence":

Save your file now. 

Note: The exporter will not see changes in texturing or new textures until the 3d view is switched back into object mode.  Switching the 3d view out of edit mode "applies" the edit mode changes and makes them visible to Blender's Python API.

Next, we are going to open up the exporter user interface and adjust the dts material properties for our "ChainLink" texture.  We need to enable the "Translucent" option in the Materials panel of the exporter, otherwise the transparent parts of the texture will be opaque in Torque and Showtool pro.  Once the exporter user interface is opened, navigate to the "Shape->Materials" panel:

Make sure that the ChainLink texture is selected in the list on the left (it should be automatically selected since it is the only material we've added so far) by clicking on its name in the list.  Turn on the "Translucent" setting for the material by clicking on the "Translucent" button:

After setting the "Translucent" flag for the ChainLink material, go ahead and press the export button.  You should end up with something that looks like this if you load the exported dts file into Torque or Showtool pro:

Important Notes:

• Textures/images are not stored within the exported dts file.  If you copy your dts file to a different folder, you need to make sure that you copy the image files along with it.
• TGEA users may need to enable the "Write TGEA Material Script" option in the exporter's general panel to get the translucent texture to display properly.  Unlike TGE, which reads the material settings directly from the DTS file, TGEA uses a separate material script to define material properties.  This material script will need to be copied along with your DTS file and image files if you move the exported DTS file to a different folder.  By default, this script is called "materials.cs".