navgenlauncher

The navgenlauncher tool is a standalone, command-line utility for generating NavData to represent the terrain in your game. It is invoked transparently whenever you use the Navigation Lab to generate NavData. You can also use the navgenlauncher tool directly if you need a scriptable command-line tool for generating NavData in your production pipeline.

The navgenlauncher tool accepts as input a .navgenproj file. This file contains a list of one or more .obj files that contain the terrain geometry, a set of configuration parameters for the NavData generation process, and additional information such as seed points, NavTag volumes, etc.

You can generate .navgenproj files in the following ways:

• When you use the standalone Navigation Lab tool to generate NavData for a terrain, the information about your generation is saved in a .navgenproj file.
• Programmatically, using the utility classes provided in the navgenproj library. For more information, see The navgenproj Library and its main NavGenProj class.

• Programmatically from your own application, or by hand. Although the expected format of the .navgenproj file is not yet documented, it is a simple human-readable XML.

  An example of a .navgenproj file that you can use as a template for creating your own configuration files is one of the .navgenproj files generated by the Navigation Lab. You can also generate a blank template with default parameter values by calling the navgenlauncher with the -t command-line option.

  Once you have a template, the mapping between the elements in the XML structure and the configuration options offered by the NavData generation system and the Navigation Lab is fairly straightforward. If you need help understanding the structure or elements, contact Autodesk® Support.

You can provide the navgenlauncher tool with an absolute base output directory and a relative path within that directory as arguments on the command line.

• If you provide both arguments, the output directory is determined by appending the relative path to the absolute base path.
• If you provide only one argument, and it is an absolute path, the relative path is considered to be empty, and the output data is generated within the base output directory.
• If you provide only one argument, and it is a relative path, the output directory is determined by appending the relative path to the location of your input .navGenProj file.
• If you do not provide any output directories, the output data is generated according to the values contained in the input .navGenProj file.

Pre-compiled executables for the navgenlauncher tool, named navgenlauncher.exe , can be found within the bin directory on all platforms supported by the NavData generation system.

The navgenlauncher tool needs access to the TBB (Threaded Building Blocks) DLLs from Intel, used for parallel processing.

• On Mac OS X platforms, add the directory 3rd\tbb<version>_<date>oss\lib\mac to your DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.

navgenlauncher.exe input.navgenproj [absoluteBaseOutputDirectory] [relativeOutputDirectory] 

See above for details on how the output directory arguments are interpreted.

navgenlauncher.exe "C:\levels\projects\level1.navgenproj"

navgenlauncher.exe "C:\levels\projects\level1.navgenproj" "C:\MyGameData" "level1"

For additional examples, see the .bat files provided in tools\navgenlauncher\examples .