File Specifications

The following files are supported by the add-on:

World (.w)
Mesh (.prm)
Collision (.ncp)
Instances (.fin)
Mirror Planes (.rim)
Hulls (.hul)
Texture Animation Spreadsheets (.ta.csv)
Car Parameters (parameters.txt)
Track Zones (.taz)

World

File extension: .w

See Mesh. The only addition is the environment color list that defines a specularity color for certain polygons if the flag is enabled for them.

The environment color is accessible on a vertex color layer called Env. The alpha value of the color is only accessible via the face property editing panel since it's written to a per-face float layer (EnvAlpha).

Do note that environment colors are per-polygon. The average color will be sampled from the vertex color layer when an env-enabled polygon is selected.

Debug:
There are debug options in the add-on settings (bounding boxes). They are for debug purposes only and they will not affect the export in any way.

Mesh

File extension: .prm

Vertex Color Layers:

Col: Color layer
Alpha: Alpha layer (black: translucent, white: opaque)

UV:
Only the uv map called UVMap will be exported.

Textures:
The texture file name is used by the game engine to determine the texture number for exported faces. Make sure it's named correctly (e.g. tracka.bmp, car.bmp). Currently one car texture and up to 64 track textures are supported, all present files must be named in order using scheme presented bellow. Example: tracka.bmp ... trackk.bmp trackl.bmp is correct set but tracka.bmp ... trackk.bmp trackm.bmp is incorrect - the last file and any further will be not loaded.

0 tracka
1 trackb
2 trackc
3 trackd
...
25 trackz
26 trackaa
27 trackba
...
51 trackza
52 trackab
53 trackbb
...
63 tracklb

Note: For convenience add-on changes the imported image names (not file names) in blender's image editor to <number>.bmp, please use same convention when adding a new images. There are built-in tools to take care of all the names, see helpers section.

If the imported mesh is a car mesh, the texture path will be taken from parameters.txt.
If it's a level file, the texture name will be generated from the polygon's texture number and taken from the level folder.
If a texture file cannot be found, a 512x512 dummy texture will be generated.
If a texture with the same path already exists, it will be used instead.

The texture number is also written onto a bmesh integer layer. This layer can be used instead of the texture on the tex layer for exporting (see add-on settings).

Level of Detail:
If a PRM file includes mulitple meshes all of them will be imported.
A suffix will be appended to the mesh name (|q0 is the highest quality, |q3 is a lower quality).
A fake user will be assigned to them so they're not lost when saving the file.

Note: Only car wheels support LoD.

Collision

File extension: .ncp

NCP flags and materials are written to the integer layers NCPFlags and Material. A preview color for the materials is written to the NCPPreview vertex color layer.

All objects of the scene will be merged into one mesh and then exported to the file. Objects will be ignored if they're a debug object or have the ignore object property set (Properties Editor).
Faces that have the material NONE assigned to them will not be exported.
The vertex color layer called NCPPreview will be ignored since it's only for previewing purposes.

A lookup grid will be automatically exported. This can be turned off in the export settings.

Instances

File extension: .fin

Instances are PRM meshes placed around a level. An instance file contains metadata about multiple instances.

ModelRGB: Each RGB value ranges from -128 to 127. The color picker in Blender likes values from 0.0 to 1.0 most, that's why the default ModelRGB is (0.5, 0.5, 0.5).

Mirror Planes

TODO

Hull

File extension: .hul

Note: For importing hull files qhull needs to be installed on GNU/Linux (macOS too) in order to import Hulls (on Arch, install it with sudo pacman -S qhull, package name may be similar on your distro). The add-on is shipped with qhull.exe for Windows systems, nothing needs to be installed additionally.

Hull files are mainly used for car collision and some other moving objects (some of which can be found in the models folder).

Importing a hull file results several Blender objects:
One (sometimes more) convex hull which resembles the car body.
The interior (one per convex hull) consisting of spheres.

Note: Vertex and edge data is ignored when importing but written to exported files. Many custom .huls don't include vertex and edge data, apparently the game works without them.

RV Add-On