I've used it in the past to export smaller sections, but never the entire terrain of a map, and I was wondering about the limitation of how big a chunk could actually be exported from the editor.
In the past I've used 3dex to convert the XSI to X which I used to import into Gamespace for editing, but it had a 650 face limitation for resaving the edited X file. Truespace 7.6 doesn't have any face limit, so I'm attempting the same thing with TS to see what possibilites exist for larger terrain chunks.
I'd like to also like to try some simple terrain animations similar to the collapsing terrain objects I've seen used in the game. TS, has a simple animation keyframer where keyframes can be recorded as objects are manipulated to form animation sequences. Then save them as 3ds files for importation into Blender and then export them using OM's XSI exporter script. BNG.
Easiest thing to do is to try it. :-P
Havn't tried it in 5- 5.1, but previously you could only export fairly small bits of terrain with the editor, certainly not all of it, the tool could not select the whole terrain and if you tried to copy a bit that was too big, the editor would freeze up.
Winter and bitmaps are the way to do it.
im pretty sure i was able to copy out the whole chill map with the editor. This was a while ago, specifically well before ta5. I was gonna try to make XSIs of the maps for a 3D map preview.
Ooh, there's an idea for a shell asset! Right, wait till I get hold of TJ!
Lol believe it or not ive tried a few ideas on this already... for the serenesis multiplayer shell. Each map was going to have a much larger overview (say 1024x1024), and you would be able to view this by clicking on the image (a hidden button on top of it). Unfortunately i couldn't get it to work because the image is restricted to certain areas of the shell.
Didn't think of a 3D XSI viewer, but the problem is GETTING the information about which map it is to BZ2.