UFO:AI Blender Map Importer preview

Importer is currently under development, there's a plan to release something about alpha quality together with Blender 2.5 beta. Nevertheless, I've decided to make a little preview, hoping to learn what features are expected, or the most needed. The main goal of the importer is to allow for creating cut-scenes using existing maps.

Download and unpack "ufoai" folder to Blender's ".blender/scripts/io" folder. After restarting Blender you should get 2 new items under File --> Import. The only option you need to set is the path to base directory (the directory with maps, models, and textures; is a part of UFO:AI checkout). Note: this is not yet ready for production use, even crashes (eg. due to inconsistent geometry) may happen.

Caveats:

• importer only works with the current Blender SVN (rev. 29692 at the time of writing), Blender API is unstable and actually changes from time to time, if it stops working you may try to check out the most recent version using bazaar (eg. bzr checkout http://www.wrwrwr.org/bazaar/UFO:AI/trunk ufoai);
• a lot of things are still missing, most face flags (phong, surface lights, transparency etc.), anything related to animation (eg. only the first frame of models is imported);
• lots of unfinished, untested code, even design is not stable, experience may vary;
• importing a big map may take a couple of minutes, progress bar is planned ;-)

Useful features ideas, suggestions of different defaults or wiser behaviour and bug reports (especially on missing and broken geometry, badly mapped textures, or improperly rotated models) are all welcome!

Some screenshots for all that don't won't to compile Blender.