[pathfinding] Alternatives to Blender

[crcdng]

Now that Blender 2.8 removed the game mode and with it the nav mesh creation, which alternatives are out there? Is the format for the Nav Mesh used here documented? Would it make sense to develop a Blender plug-in using the existing code from Blender 2.7 for example?

[RangerMauve]

Have you seen Mozilla Spoke? https://hubs.mozilla.com/spoke/

It has navmesh support as well as GLB export.

[donmccurdy]

@RangerMauve Is it possible to create a navmesh in Spoke, then export it to a standalone mesh?

Is the format for the Nav Mesh used here documented?

It's a mesh with fully-connected triangles. You can create a surface in Blender and export that to a format like glTF.

...which alternatives are out there?

One workaround is https://github.com/donmccurdy/aframe-inspector-plugin-recast, or you can use Recast CLI directly on a mesh perhaps.

Would it make sense to develop a Blender plug-in using the existing code from Blender 2.7 for example?

I'd be happy to see a navmesh-only addon for Blender, although I am not planning to do so myself. Unfortunately I don't know if it's possible to use native dependencies in Blender addons... the Recast library was what Blender used before, and what my inspector plugin uses above. (and Spoke too, for that matter).

[dirkk0]

I always thought of a NavMesh as something that needs to be created by an algorithm, but since I created one manually (https://github.com/donmccurdy/aframe-extras/issues/226#issuecomment-544875442) I think creating it myself is the much better option for game development.

[crcdng]

Thanks for the suggestions, I will have a look. Maybe we can keep this issue open to collect other alternatives?

[donmccurdy]

There's a clever suggestion here using boolean modifiers: https://www.reddit.com/r/blenderhelp/comments/a7gdx7/navigation_mesh_in_blender_28/. I think you'd have to adjust it a bit with non-level terrain — not just a simple plane — but the same idea should be workable.