v.1.4.0 Panel-based UI. Blender 4.0-compatible

• New panel-based UI (in the 3D View's Sidebar), to keep pace with the ZeroGravitas SWTOR Tools version.
• Blender 4.0-compatible (as long as a 4.0-compatible version of the .gr2 Importer Add-on is installed, too).
• Auto-texturing by default.
• New Named Materials Processor Tool.
• New Collections Visibility Tool.

v.1.3.2 FX objects in .dyn crash bug corrected

FXspec-driven elements in .dyn objects weren't being properly filtered out and could crash the importing process (we are still looking at how to handle them in some minimum fashion). That's been corrected.

THIS IS THE LAST RELEASE THAT USES BLENDER'S IMPORT/EXPORT MENU FOR BEING LAUNCHED. The releases following this one will use a panel in the 3D View's Sidebar, instead. Given that, here there is a link to this one's old guide.

(Other than that, there are no major differences in features so far)

v.1.3.1 Crashing bug correction

A bug in the filtering of the types of objects in the elements of the .json files wasn't thorough enough and could crash the importing process. Now it is corrected.

There is a lingering issue with some collider objects that seem be filtered out despite being parents to other objects. It's still under investigation.

v.1.3.0 Support for Placeables

Importing of "Placeables", both static (.plc directly mentioning .gr2 and .mag) and dynamic (.plc mentioning .dyn that in turn contain .gr2 and .mag). That means that objects such as GTN booths, holoprojectors, spaceship cockpit's seats, etc. that weren't appearing in the imported scenes now do.

Some caveats:

• The addon's size has grown up to 17 MB!!! That's because it houses a compressed export of SWTOR's .dyn objects nodetree (dyn.zip). THERE'S NO NEED TO DECOMPRESS IT: the addon reads its internal zipped data. We are thinking about future strategies to make such kinds of data available to all addons and avoid duplication.
• There are some object types still unsupported, such as .fxp ones that will be difficult to do other than just dropping their meshes into the scene to make them available, no guarantees about proper transformations. Giving notice of anything missing or weird in our Discord would be appreciated.
• There could be crashes. We seem to be trapping all errors so far. Fingers crossed.

v.1.2.0 New importing options

New importing options:**

• Show Full Report In Terminal: from now on, the console output will limit itself to a single line of progress per stage of the importing process unless errors are reported. The old barrage of progress reports becomes an option.
• Separate Object Types in SubCollections: creating and sorting objects into Objects, Terrains, and Lights SubCollections is now optional.
• Lights generation's defaults change to not creating them.

v.1.1.3: No error msgs when terrain folder doesn't exist

Added catering to lack of terrain folder to avoid scary error messages.

v1.1.2 Minor Collection adjustments

Minor per area-Collections changes:

• Sub-Collections order is now Lights - Terrain - Objects.
• No Terrain Collection if there isn't any terrain object.

v.1,1,1 More Import options, better error trapping

In order to deal with two kinds of enormous area imports that leave Blender in a super-laggy state, the addon provides with these two new options:

Hide Objects After Importing:
Imported Area objects are hidden ('eye' icon in Outliner, 'h' shortcut) to keep Blender more responsive when having massive amounts of objects per individual Collections. Lag could persist if the Outliner is overloaded, but it should be far more tolerable.
Recommended when importing .json files weighting several MegaBytes each.

Exclude Collections After Importing:
Resulting Collections are excluded (checkbox in Outliner, 'e' shortcut') to keep Blender fully responsive and be able to manage them without lag. Excluded Collections won't list their objects in the Outliner: that's normal.
Recommended when importing a massive number of areas, such as whole worlds.

(Excluding Collections resets the hide/show state of the Collections' contents. The Hide Objects After Importing option won't have an effect if this option is on)

v1.1.0 QoL, provisional terrain import support

• New Hide Collections In Viewport After Importing option. When importing, it unticks the checkboxes of the per-location (per .json file) Collections. Meant for massive importations of location data, such as when importing whole SWTOR worlds (a Dromund Kaas, a Coruscant): by disabling the Collections in the View Layer, Blender won't get stuck under the weight of so many objects to visualize and will let us save the project immediately or do some organization first without lagging hard.

• Basic support for importing pre-generated terrain patches (that requires a heightmap-to-.obj tool that is still in progress).

v1.0.1 Better error trapping

Some .gr2 object files have been found out to crash the .gr2 Importer Addon. Better error trapping has been added to let the Area Assembler keep working when encountering such cases.