NeverBlender: A look back

NeverBlender was a Python script that allowed exporting Neverwinter Nights format Bioware MDL files from Blender.

It supported exporting basic model geometry and texture UV maps. It also allowed keeping MDL-specific settings in a text block in model file.

The fancy future direction would have been to support animation exporting and some of the other features supported by MDL file format. At the time, the prefered 3D modeling program for making MDL files was Discreet’s Gmax (a cut-down freeware version of 3DS Max), and it only supported a single timeline, which sounded janky because Blender supported multiple animations.

Git-ified version of the original NeverBlender repository is available in Codeberg.

It was originally developed between 2003–2006, and as such, you’ll probably have no luck getting it running on modern versions of Blender.

I currently have no ambitions in getting back to developing it. I was not a good Python developer at the time, and people who contributed to the code did Cleverer Things I Was Able To Do. But then again, Gmax was discontinued by Autodesk, so maybe there’s interest in this again…?