The original one, I was using code based off the MD5 exporter to gather tri's into submeshes which was really slow for 3ds max to do. I found a much more efficient way to do it. As an example, exporting the Zealot mesh would take 25 seconds in the old version, now it takes approximately 5 seconds. I don't know how quickly it'll do 80k tri's, but it won't take forever that's for sure. I'll respond to your PM soon, I'm still pretty busy with things.
Okay, no problem. :) I thought you might be busy.
I'll give it a try sometime soon. I was curious what the compression in m3 was like for a demonstration on how battle.net 2.0's size limit would hurt custom assets (there's already 4 textures per unit to worry about, 10mb won't hold much in custom content at all much less an actual mod).
Oh, another question - does this plugin handle smoothing groups? In Homeworld 2, if I had no smoothing groups, the model's lighting would be really weird ingame and I had to apply a smoothing group without any smoothing groups.
@NiNtoxicated01: Go
Oh, another question - does this plugin handle smoothing groups? In Homeworld 2, if I had no smoothing groups, the model's lighting would be really weird ingame and I had to apply a smoothing group without any smoothing groups.
Does the exporter apply smoothing grps? I don't believe so, just use a mesh smooth before exporting.
I'm aware if you're using meshsmooth (that is, subdivisions) you will get unnecessary polys in your model. If you're doing organic modeling work for anything but games, this is acceptable.
You are right though, I can't imagine any cases where you'd want to use subdivisions for game models. It's getting to the point where you can work with a lot of polys, but you're probably not going to want to have as many polys as a mesh smooth iteration creates in a game model.
Don't completely rule out subdivisions. There are a lot of cases where smoothing groups simply won't cut it.
In short mesh smooth is the easy way out. I use it intermediately during the modeling process to get some idea of what it will look like. But all I was doing was suggesting if he wanted to see his model in game for gratification purposes throw a mesh smooth on with no iterations and export it.
Actually I wanted to make absolutely sure there was no smoothing at all as most of my ships have hard edges and the smoothing groups really broke them in homeworld 2. I can mesh smooth stuff like my Hydromek if I absolutely need to.
As for all Blizzard's model formats, smoothing is done through vertex normals for M3's. 3ds max is a pain in the butt when it comes to vertex normals, a huge pain in the butt. You can only set them manually through an Edit_Normals modifier and by setting all the normals to explicit. However more complications arise as the Edit_Normals modifier can apply more than one normal per vertex but M3's only allow one normal per vertex *sigh*. I broke vertex normals being imported for the new version of the importer too so it no longer works. I'll be fixing that with the next update. If you use an old version of the importer and tick vertex normals you'll notice the mesh is smoothed properly as it is in-game. If you then export it however, you'll notice the smoothing is lost due to max stubbornly grabbing it's pre-calculated normals rather than using the custom ones I've forced it to use.
The next exporter version should allow you to export your own custom vertex normals, but I don't know how it'll handle smoothing groups, if at all. Right now I'm going to be using the edit_normals modifier to do all the vertex normal exporting. I think there's a way I can condense multiple normals into one vertex normal if multiple are assigned, otherwise I'll just have to use one and hope the end user only applies one normal per vertex. In short, something as simple as vertex normals is way more complicated than it needs to be since 3ds max has never had its vertex normal functions updated properly to support them :@.
That's a lot of arcane words I'm not very familiar with haha, but I presume that you're talking about some kind of autosmoothing that the engine/model format does?
I mean as long as I can have hard edges that's fine, but what you're talking about sounds pretty far beyond my skillset to do.
At least sc2 doesn't auto-blur filter textures like wc3 does. That really pissed us off when we were trying to put high-rez textures into the game.
here's the trick i use for "smoothing" with sc2. you select the polygons you want in that smoothing group. you DETACH them. then put a smoothing group on those polies.
The language barrier (English/German) is killing 1 out of 100 words for me. That doesn't sound much, but it seems to be enough to let me struggle at the easiest steps.
I'd be realy thankfull if someone would be willing to set up a short tutorial of to use 3D max in combination with the script in order to get from the polygons to the texture and from there to the over the animation to the ingame model.
At the moment I am trudging through the 2000+ lines of script for the Importer. Looking primarily at the bones. It doesn't appear to be creating the bones quite right. It's close but just a hair off. Going to see what I can re-script on my end and work out. Its a great script, btw.
One thing I also noticed is that the exporter is not handling point helpers correctly, or not at all. I have not looked over that piece just yet. Just started looking at the Importer to beging with. This should be a fairly easy solve, but I will know more once I start working through it.
Mike Coment has some nice code in relation to auto-generating bones. I am going to use that as a basis. At least that is the thought at the moment.
Any bone suggestions for the import would be great. At the moment I have quite a few models doing bizzare things (Immortal.m3 is a great example) and I'm not quite sure how to fix it just yet. Another problem is I'm using the Euler_XYZ rotation controller for the bones which means they experience gimbal lock during some animations. I've attempted to use the TCB_Rotation controller instead but the animations then adopt strange interpolations which screws them up pretty good. Any input is appreciated.
Animation support is now live!
Animations should work perfectly well. I've exported M2's, which you can see here, and they animate entirely correctly. I've also exported MD5's from Doom3 (an Imp model) which required an adjustment of the FPS, but it also has correct animations. I'm sure there will still be problems though, animations have been difficult to get working properly. Make sure you make start frame and end frame animations for your bones you're going to animate, or else you'll get weird animations.
If anyone knows of an MDX/MDL (those are Warcraft3 models) importer that WORKS for a recent version of 3ds max, please let me know. I'd like to export some wc3 models into sc2 because there's been alot of demand for it, and because it'll be fun. Even though the quality of the models will be horrendous compared to the sc2 ones :D.
At some point when I'm not so busy I'd like to do up some tutorials on how to work the tools so people aren't so lost using them. I've done my best to make them as intuitive as possible. Cheers all and enjoy ^.^
Any bone suggestions for the import would be great. At the moment I have quite a few models doing bizzare things (Immortal.m3 is a great example) and I'm not quite sure how to fix it just yet. Another problem is I'm using the Euler_XYZ rotation controller for the bones which means they experience gimbal lock during some animations. I've attempted to use the TCB_Rotation controller instead but the animations then adopt strange interpolations which screws them up pretty good. Any input is appreciated.
Animation support is now live!
Animations should work perfectly well. I've exported M2's, which you can see here, and they animate entirely correctly. I've also exported MD5's from Doom3 (an Imp model) which required an adjustment of the FPS, but it also has correct animations. I'm sure there will still be problems though, animations have been difficult to get working properly. Make sure you make start frame and end frame animations for your bones you're going to animate, or else you'll get weird animations.
If anyone knows of an MDX/MDL (those are Warcraft3 models) importer that WORKS for a recent version of 3ds max, please let me know. I'd like to export some wc3 models into sc2 because there's been alot of demand for it, and because it'll be fun. Even though the quality of the models will be horrendous compared to the sc2 ones :D.
At some point when I'm not so busy I'd like to do up some tutorials on how to work the tools so people aren't so lost using them. I've done my best to make them as intuitive as possible. Cheers all and enjoy ^.^
here's the trick i use for "smoothing" with sc2. you select the polygons
you want in that smoothing group. you DETACH them. then put a smoothing
group on those polies.
God damn no... And what happends if we dont de-attach ? That's pain in the ass...
There are some importers on Hive for 3dsmax I think.
This is cool, animation support. Still, we dont know any specific details.
How does attachments work ? How does animations work ? Death animations, particles... What is same and what different from Wc3 ?
All that info would be very useful.
Hi all i found impexpMDX plugin, which work in 3ds max 2010, you can import models from warcraft 3, but i don't know imports if he animation or not because I recently started studying 3dsMax.
Any bone suggestions for the import would be great. At the moment I have quite a few models doing bizzare things (Immortal.m3 is a great example) and I'm not quite sure how to fix it just yet. Another problem is I'm using the Euler_XYZ rotation controller for the bones which means they experience gimbal lock during some animations. I've attempted to use the TCB_Rotation controller instead but the animations then adopt strange interpolations which screws them up pretty good. Any input is appreciated.
Animation support is now live!
Animations should work perfectly well. I've exported M2's, which you can see here, and they animate entirely correctly. I've also exported MD5's from Doom3 (an Imp model) which required an adjustment of the FPS, but it also has correct animations. I'm sure there will still be problems though, animations have been difficult to get working properly. Make sure you make start frame and end frame animations for your bones you're going to animate, or else you'll get weird animations.
If anyone knows of an MDX/MDL (those are Warcraft3 models) importer that WORKS for a recent version of 3ds max, please let me know. I'd like to export some wc3 models into sc2 because there's been alot of demand for it, and because it'll be fun. Even though the quality of the models will be horrendous compared to the sc2 ones :D.
At some point when I'm not so busy I'd like to do up some tutorials on how to work the tools so people aren't so lost using them. I've done my best to make them as intuitive as possible. Cheers all and enjoy ^.^
YEESSSS.
Awesome. Actually, awesome doesn't begin to describe it. This makes me very happy.
EDIT:
For some reason every time I try to export, nothing happens. I pick a filename, click save, no file is made. I'm probably just doing something stupid. >_> (I'm trying to save a modified Zealot, redone attack animations and a modified Charge animation.)
Hi all i found impexpMDX plugin, which work in 3ds max 2010, you can import models from warcraft 3, but i don't know imports if he animation or not because I recently started studying 3dsMax. Put files in 3dsmax directory/scripts/startup DOWNLOAD MIRROR 1 MIRROR 2
Many thanks. Doesn't appear to be importing the animations right at the moment, I'm guessing it's mixing something up. I'm getting some... interesting... results. Bones going everywhere. A little searching suggests there is an "ImpExpMdx" which is for 3DS Max 4-5, is this the same one?
That 3DS Max 4-5 importer/exporter also works in GMax, however, which might be able to serve as a middle man in importing.
Okay, no problem. :) I thought you might be busy.
I'll give it a try sometime soon. I was curious what the compression in m3 was like for a demonstration on how battle.net 2.0's size limit would hurt custom assets (there's already 4 textures per unit to worry about, 10mb won't hold much in custom content at all much less an actual mod).
Oh, another question - does this plugin handle smoothing groups? In Homeworld 2, if I had no smoothing groups, the model's lighting would be really weird ingame and I had to apply a smoothing group without any smoothing groups.
They mentioned some kind of star tools, but did not elaborate.
Does the exporter apply smoothing grps? I don't believe so, just use a mesh smooth before exporting.
@ltitans: Go
WHAT????
NEVER mesh smooth. jesus christ.
I'm aware if you're using meshsmooth (that is, subdivisions) you will get unnecessary polys in your model. If you're doing organic modeling work for anything but games, this is acceptable.
You are right though, I can't imagine any cases where you'd want to use subdivisions for game models. It's getting to the point where you can work with a lot of polys, but you're probably not going to want to have as many polys as a mesh smooth iteration creates in a game model.
Don't completely rule out subdivisions. There are a lot of cases where smoothing groups simply won't cut it.
In short mesh smooth is the easy way out. I use it intermediately during the modeling process to get some idea of what it will look like. But all I was doing was suggesting if he wanted to see his model in game for gratification purposes throw a mesh smooth on with no iterations and export it.
Actually I wanted to make absolutely sure there was no smoothing at all as most of my ships have hard edges and the smoothing groups really broke them in homeworld 2. I can mesh smooth stuff like my Hydromek if I absolutely need to.
@IskatuMesk: Go
As for all Blizzard's model formats, smoothing is done through vertex normals for M3's. 3ds max is a pain in the butt when it comes to vertex normals, a huge pain in the butt. You can only set them manually through an Edit_Normals modifier and by setting all the normals to explicit. However more complications arise as the Edit_Normals modifier can apply more than one normal per vertex but M3's only allow one normal per vertex *sigh*. I broke vertex normals being imported for the new version of the importer too so it no longer works. I'll be fixing that with the next update. If you use an old version of the importer and tick vertex normals you'll notice the mesh is smoothed properly as it is in-game. If you then export it however, you'll notice the smoothing is lost due to max stubbornly grabbing it's pre-calculated normals rather than using the custom ones I've forced it to use.
The next exporter version should allow you to export your own custom vertex normals, but I don't know how it'll handle smoothing groups, if at all. Right now I'm going to be using the edit_normals modifier to do all the vertex normal exporting. I think there's a way I can condense multiple normals into one vertex normal if multiple are assigned, otherwise I'll just have to use one and hope the end user only applies one normal per vertex. In short, something as simple as vertex normals is way more complicated than it needs to be since 3ds max has never had its vertex normal functions updated properly to support them :@.
That's a lot of arcane words I'm not very familiar with haha, but I presume that you're talking about some kind of autosmoothing that the engine/model format does?
I mean as long as I can have hard edges that's fine, but what you're talking about sounds pretty far beyond my skillset to do.
At least sc2 doesn't auto-blur filter textures like wc3 does. That really pissed us off when we were trying to put high-rez textures into the game.
@NiNtoxicated01: Go
here's the trick i use for "smoothing" with sc2. you select the polygons you want in that smoothing group. you DETACH them. then put a smoothing group on those polies.
Hello everyone!
The language barrier (English/German) is killing 1 out of 100 words for me. That doesn't sound much, but it seems to be enough to let me struggle at the easiest steps. I'd be realy thankfull if someone would be willing to set up a short tutorial of to use 3D max in combination with the script in order to get from the polygons to the texture and from there to the over the animation to the ingame model.
So far,
Soziopat
ANNNIIIIMAAATIOOONNN import please =)
I second that! :D
he's working on animation support, and it doing pretty good at it.
Sweet!
Keep it up, NiNtoxicated01! I'm rooting for you! :)
Oh man, I'm dying for animation support. But being that I'm a natural survivor I'm sure I'll make it to its addition. :3
Keep up the fantastic work! Once animation is in, custom unit models can start being imported, and then things will get wicked awesome very fast.
At the moment I am trudging through the 2000+ lines of script for the Importer. Looking primarily at the bones. It doesn't appear to be creating the bones quite right. It's close but just a hair off. Going to see what I can re-script on my end and work out. Its a great script, btw.
One thing I also noticed is that the exporter is not handling point helpers correctly, or not at all. I have not looked over that piece just yet. Just started looking at the Importer to beging with. This should be a fairly easy solve, but I will know more once I start working through it.
Mike Coment has some nice code in relation to auto-generating bones. I am going to use that as a basis. At least that is the thought at the moment.
@darksuit: Go
Any bone suggestions for the import would be great. At the moment I have quite a few models doing bizzare things (Immortal.m3 is a great example) and I'm not quite sure how to fix it just yet. Another problem is I'm using the Euler_XYZ rotation controller for the bones which means they experience gimbal lock during some animations. I've attempted to use the TCB_Rotation controller instead but the animations then adopt strange interpolations which screws them up pretty good. Any input is appreciated.
Animation support is now live!
Animations should work perfectly well. I've exported M2's, which you can see here, and they animate entirely correctly. I've also exported MD5's from Doom3 (an Imp model) which required an adjustment of the FPS, but it also has correct animations. I'm sure there will still be problems though, animations have been difficult to get working properly. Make sure you make start frame and end frame animations for your bones you're going to animate, or else you'll get weird animations.
If anyone knows of an MDX/MDL (those are Warcraft3 models) importer that WORKS for a recent version of 3ds max, please let me know. I'd like to export some wc3 models into sc2 because there's been alot of demand for it, and because it'll be fun. Even though the quality of the models will be horrendous compared to the sc2 ones :D.
At some point when I'm not so busy I'd like to do up some tutorials on how to work the tools so people aren't so lost using them. I've done my best to make them as intuitive as possible. Cheers all and enjoy ^.^
SEX!
God damn no... And what happends if we dont de-attach ? That's pain in the ass...
There are some importers on Hive for 3dsmax I think.
This is cool, animation support. Still, we dont know any specific details.
How does attachments work ? How does animations work ? Death animations, particles... What is same and what different from Wc3 ?
All that info would be very useful.
Hi all i found impexpMDX plugin, which work in 3ds max 2010, you can import models from warcraft 3, but i don't know imports if he animation or not because I recently started studying 3dsMax.
Put files in 3dsmax directory/scripts/startup
DOWNLOAD
MIRROR 1
Link Removed: http://www.mediafire.com/?tzkjnjtayzj
http://www.youtube.com/user/RussianMapster
YEESSSS.
Awesome. Actually, awesome doesn't begin to describe it. This makes me very happy.
EDIT: For some reason every time I try to export, nothing happens. I pick a filename, click save, no file is made. I'm probably just doing something stupid. >_> (I'm trying to save a modified Zealot, redone attack animations and a modified Charge animation.)
Many thanks. Doesn't appear to be importing the animations right at the moment, I'm guessing it's mixing something up. I'm getting some... interesting... results. Bones going everywhere. A little searching suggests there is an "ImpExpMdx" which is for 3DS Max 4-5, is this the same one?
That 3DS Max 4-5 importer/exporter also works in GMax, however, which might be able to serve as a middle man in importing.