Tutorial for Renumbering Nodes in Blender

Charger

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If you enjoy having a well organized truck file, but also use Blender for the ease of building your N/B, you know that one of the biggest downfalls of this method is having to renumber all of your nodes after you export it. This is a quick guide on how to renumber your vertices in Blender so they are easy to place in groups within your truck file after export.

Before going further I want to give a slight disclaimer: This guide is meant for users who have a pre-existing knowledge of using Blender, navigating through its various menus, as well as a knowledge of N/B building concepts. It will NOT teach you how to use Blender or build N/Bs.


- Open the python console with Shift+F4, then enter this command: bpy.app.debug = True
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- Go back to 3D view with Shift+F5
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- Enter edit mode on your N/B
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- Navigate to the mesh display panel in the N menu, and check the "indices" option, your vertex (node) IDs will now be visible
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- Select a group of nodes, specifically the group that you want to appear LAST in the truck file
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- Search for the "Sort Mesh Elements" command, click the "selected" option. Your selected nodes will now be renumbered. (Note: Node numbers will only update after you have moved the camera with the middle mouse wheel)
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- Repeat steps 3-5 until all node groups in your N/B are renumbered, keep in mind that each group you renumber will start at zero, and will therefore be placed at the top of your nodes section in the .truck file. So you must renumber your node groups in REVERSE order that you want them to appear in the nodes section
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- If you're still unhappy with the order of nodes after renumbering all of your groups, you can select the group(s) you want to edit, navigate back to the Sort Mesh Elements dialogue and select another criteria for the node numbers to be sorted by. I've found that "View axis X" and "3D cursor" seem to provide the most desirable results in my case. The 3D cursor option renumbers nodes based on their distance from the 3D cursor in the blender viewport, so be sure to set the cursor to a position that will yield the best results for you. The best thing about renumbering node groups after you've renumbered them the first time is the order of your node groups will not be affected, so groups that were at the top of your nodes section will still be at the top, and groups at the bottom will remain at the bottom, etc.



This method is somewhat crude and doesn't allow you to control the ID of individual nodes, but in most cases that isn't necessary and this process will hopefully speed up the N/B building process quite a bit for those of us who used to spend time renumbering nodes in the editorizer or other tools.





Happy N/B building!
 
Last edited:
Blender portable, it works better than hadgervriese's.
 
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