Custom missions are cool and great, but the current maps of Enlisted limit the true potential of Enlisted mods.
There are two ways to create a new level for this game. One is importing a complete 3d model into the game and using that as a map. The other is more sophisticated, and it’s currently impossible to do. (heightmap + landclass + custom RI)
At the time of writing this guide, custom textures (dxp) are not recognized by the editor, or the game, and it will not load. All your maps will be textureless.
Let’s begin. You will need the following programs:
- DaEditor
- Plugin for 3dsMax
Release Build 2024/01/02 (Engine, Samples and Tools) · GaijinEntertainment/DagorEngine · GitHub
(tools_prebuilt, sample, and plugin3dsmax 7z files) - War Thunder CDK because we need the assetviewer and the one in DaEditor is broken
- A copy of 3dsmax. I have tried 2012 and 2020 versions, and they both work. Newer version has noticably better performance.
- Patience
To install the plugin you will need to copy all the files into C:/Program Files/Autodesk/3ds Max 2020/stdplugin
cfg files are important!
I am going to import this 3d model, metropolis from Gmod:
Download the model and unzip it’s content. Format shouldn’t matter, but .OBJ tends to work good enough.
We need an:
- OBJ file / File supported by 3dsmax
- MTL file (material library). Without this, the program won’t know which texture belongs to which surface.
- The textures
Launch 3dsmax. Open the OBJ file:
Before importing, you have to have these settings turned on:
- Import as single mesh (not mandatory, use it when it doesn’t cause texture problems)
- Auto Smooth - must be enabled
Convert to meter is optional, and it depends on how the model was created. Press import.
There are cases when the OBJ has incorrect information about the whereabouts of the MTL file.
Simply open the OBJ file with a text editor and edit the path:
Restart the import process and it should work now.
We are presented with the model:
The model needs to be modified so it can be exported into .DAG format. .DAG contains model and texture data that Dagor Engine can handle.
First, open the material tab by pressing M.
This model has 1000 materials. if you click on the first material’s property (third column) you can modify the type of this material:
Click on standard and change it to DagorMat2.
Another important bit. You must set a class for DagorMat. There are lot of them, you need to choose depending on what you want to achieve. If you forget this step, the model will throw missing shader error and won’t show up later
I have used simple_aces ,you should too, unless you know what you’re doing.
Changing material types will reset the diffuse texture. You will need to re-set it from scene materials.
Now obviously we don’t wan’t to change the material type 1000 times manually. Fortunetly, we have tools for that.
Press the wrench icon on the right.
Click “more”
And select Dagor Utility
Open the material tab and you will find stdMat --> DagorMat and DagorMat --> stdMat options. And
matClass
You should specify a class in Mat class. in my case, simple_aces. With the material tab open, press stdMat --> DagorMat. Wait for the operation to finish. The program may freeze during the process.
Now every material is a DagorMat:
And they have simple_aces class.
Model may turn textureless after this process. That’s fine.
Before exporting, we need to do one more thing; Get rid of degenerate triangles. Press the button and wait till 3dsmax unfreezes. (in the same toolset)
You will get info when process finishes.
Now open Dagor Scene Export from the “more” tab and export the .DAG file.
If you want to only export selected models enable the “sel” option.
If you have downloaded and set up DaEditor corectly, you will have 3 folders:
- outerSpace - the sample projects
- tools - the editor itself
inside outerSpace\develop\assets create a folder named “metropolis” (name doesn’t matter) and save the .DAG file there.
You might get this error:
It doesn’t matter. The model will export just fine.
Now we need to convert the PNG textures into .TIF format. (TIFF is not recognized by Dagor despite being the same format!) .TGA is being deprecated don’t use that.
Convert the textures to TIF. I used the following programs:
then I used (https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/) to rename the extension from TIFF to TIF.
Copy the converted TIF into the folder next to the DAG file.
Now the game should recognize our model and load the textures.
Open DaEditor\tools\dagor3_cdk\bin64\daEditor3x-dev.exe and launch a sample mission.
You either opened the map with a space station or the map with gaija_island.
Press create entity:
And add the model we’ve just created:
(press RMB on the scene)
Our object is too small. Just like in the editor, use the scale tool to resize it.
As you can see the scenery object textures are broken. It’s all upto you, how you export it from 3dsmax, i’m still new to this too, it needs more research and practice.
But the meaningful part of the map is fine.
Let’s export it into Enlisted.
If you have the island map open, restart the program and open the space station map. Gaija Island map will crash the game because it cannot read the landclass textures.
CTRL+A and delete everything. Enlisted doesn’t have this RI and will throw errors in editor.
Place the model on the map:
To get the scale right, place down a sample_bunker:
Then delete it. I would place the map above Y=0.
We are ready to export:
Name it whatever you want. Press Save. Check the console for progress. The program may freeze during export process.
If you get an error regarding collision (something like 40mb max) Increase this number (the middle one under collision tab) (leaf size:)
However level.bin does not contain object textures. We need to export it into DXP format. Open Assetviewer in the tools folder:
Note that DaEditor Assetviewer is broken, it doesn’t show models:
To export textures and models right click on the folder and export all (with sub folders when needed):
And it will insert unneccesary prefix into the filename after export, which you should remove:
(If you add this to the right folder in War Thunder it will load the model textures.)
Enlisted cannot load custom DXP and GRP at the moment.
Load the level binary with a custom level.blk file.
And that’s it, you’ve loaded a 3d model into the game! ( i hope)
Things that don’t work:
- game_decor and RI in general
- Built object with engineering hammer have no collision
- Navmesh generation crashes the editor
- scene_ladder
You can play these online.
Result folder:
metropolis.zip (8.5 MB)
DAG file:
metropolis.dag.txt (26.2 MB)
More info:
I have no idea. If you can find a program that can rip the map model as OBJ + the textures then probably yes.
