Baby steps, textured sphere loaded from an obj file

In my game engine I basically have this sort of layout:

sphere/
sphere.obj
sphere.mat
sphere.png

The .obj points to the .mat file which points to the .png file. So in Blender I would set the material name to “sphere” and ideally in the .obj file it would have a line like this, “usemtl sphere”, I would then get the sphere part and append “.mat” and load the material. I’m not sure if this is standard practice for Blender export scripts, but when exporting to the obj file format, Blender adds the texture name to the material like so, “usemtl sphere_sphere.png”, not cool. Anyway I thought, hey, the export script is written in Python, I wonder if I can fix this?

1) Locate the script. I read somewhere on the Blender site that scripts are in “/usr/share/blender/scripts/”. “export_obj.py” is there, along side “export_obj.pyc” and “export_obj.pyo”.
2) Edit the script.

gedit /usr/share/blender/scripts/export_obj.py

3) The script is pretty well documented. I knew that I should search for “usemtl” as that is the only constant part of the string (Apart from “_” which is much harder to search for). There are two in the file and we want the second one:

mat_data= MTL_DICT.get(key)
	if not mat_data:
		# First add to global dict so we can export to mtl
		# Then write mtl
 
		# Make a new names from the mat and image name,
		# converting any spaces to underscores with fixName.
 
		# If none image dont bother adding it to the name
		if key[1] == None:
			mat_data = MTL_DICT[key] = ('%s'%fixName(key[0])), materialItems[f_mat], f_image
		else:
			mat_data = MTL_DICT[key] = ('%s_%s' % (fixName(key[0]), fixName(key[1]))), materialItems[f_mat], f_image
 
	if EXPORT_GROUP_BY_MAT:
		file.write('g %s_%s_%s\n' % (fixName(ob.name), fixName(ob.getData(1)), mat_data[0]) ) # can be mat_image or (null)
 
	file.write('usemtl %s\n' % mat_data[0]) # can be mat_image or (null)

mat_data is a dictionary that is filled out and then written the file with “usemtl”. I replaced the offending line:

mat_data = MTL_DICT[key] = ('%s_%s' % (fixName(key[0]), fixName(key[1]))), materialItems[f_mat], f_image

with this:

mat_data = MTL_DICT[key] = ('%s'%fixName(key[0])), materialItems[f_mat], f_image

And then I realised that it was exactly the same as the line from the “if key[1] == None:” so you could probably remove the branch etc. if you want, I didn’t bother.

If you are exporting groups by material you may also need to edit the “if EXPORT_GROUP_BY_MAT:” branch also, again I didn’t bother. Anyway, save and you’re good to go.

4) I was worried that I would have to compile into bytecode or something for Blender to be able to use this, nope, either restart Blender or hit “Update Menu”. Actually as it is an export script, I’m not sure you even need to do that, it probably gets reloaded when you hit “File > Export > Wavefront (.obj)”?

This is the entirety of my Python knowledge, oh, I also know that whitespace is important or something, woo.

PS. I’m loving git, I can’t believe I didn’t switch earlier!