posted 07-25-2003 12:55 PM           

now my question: has anyone got good tutorials for gmax to make this? This things are modeled by gmax or 3ds max, and not with easygen. The difference between model and easygen is that the model is one thing, and the terrain made by easygen consists of thousands of brushes. so the modeled ones take less performance to render.

posted 07-25-2003 06:06 PM          

They both render with equivalent speed. Q3Map2 meshes the triangles together into large surfaces anyway.

Well, the top one renders a bit slower due to all those trees...

posted 07-25-2003 06:37 PM           

The second one was a test for ase importing and lightmapped models.

Since the model and brush versions of terrain will take about the same amount of performance to render, you're probably better off with just normal brushes. It's also easier to texture since you can just use a terrain shader as opposed to UVW mapping the model.

posted 07-25-2003 07:15 PM           

GMax is going to need a more practical export solution soon otherwise people will drop it as a tool and switch over to the competition. There's a lot of talk about this issue over on the gmax support forums

posted 07-25-2003 07:31 PM           

I use 3dsMAX, which has a built in ASE export that you can quite easily convert to an MD3 with Q3data and MD3fix. Or you can just use the ASE or 3DS files with Q3map2.

posted 07-26-2003 05:51 AM           

how can i export it? and how does the textures work?
If its an .ase finally, how can i import it into radiant? Which radiant features that? I currently use q3radiant202.

posted 07-26-2003 06:16 AM           

Exporting:
As mentioned above, exporting in Gmax can be a hassle. Try to find the ASE export plug-in. There is also a Gmax Tempest beta plug-in that (I believe) has an MD3 export, but it's a terrible plug-in that is more likely to crash than actually work.

ASE importing:
ASE importing is only available with recent versions of GtkRadiant - Q3radiant does not support ASE. You'll also need a recent version of Q3map2 in order for it to compile.

http://www.qeradiant.com

http://www.shaderlab.com

posted 07-27-2003 06:42 AM           

models/mapobjects/console/under

posted 07-27-2003 07:08 AM          

obsidian, i contacted you via icq, as i asked a friend of mine to convert models to ase with max, and those were borked - could you tell me what im/he's doing wrong?

vertex and face normals get mixed in the file:

code:

---

			*MESH_FACENORMAL 86	0.6513	-0.7167	0.2492
				*MESH_VERTEXNORMAL 260	0.6513	-0.7167	0.2492
				*MESH_VERTEXNORMAL 259	0.6513	-0.7167	0.2492
				*MESH_VERTEXNORMAL 258	0.6513	-0.7167	0.2492

---

posted 07-27-2003 07:24 AM           

Thread: http://www.quake3world.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/025888.html
Link: http://www.psc.edu/~burkardt/src/ivcon/ivcon.html

posted 07-27-2003 09:10 AM          

it doesnt read .gmax, just a few other formats.
see http://www.psc.edu/~burkardt/src/ivcon/ivcon.html for details.

you probably want to export to 3ds (that IS possbile with gmax, right?) and then to convert to ase.

posted 07-27-2003 07:31 PM           

I took a look at your ASE and 3DS files that you sent me. It doesn't look like you skinned the model - at least that's what it looks like when I open the ASE and 3DS in MAX.

I opened the ASE in a text editor, and I don't see any shader names in there. If you were to open up your ASE in Wordpad, you'll see a section called *MATERIAL_LIST > *MATERIAL 0 > *MATERIAL_NAME. *MATERIAL_NAME should actually point to the name of your shader, instead you have the default "Material #35". This suggests that you either didn't skin the model or it didn't properly export the materials.

You might want to check through the instructions on how to skin models that I wrote for xanthos, above.

When you get your friend to export the ASE in 3dsMAX, he should use the following options in the ASE Export dialog:

posted 07-28-2003 02:33 AM          

I sent you a new 3ds, which does have UVmapping in any case (the 3ds exporter DOES export UVs!), at least it looks UVmapped in gtk. Sadly .3ds material names seem to have a limit on # of chars, so it doesnt show up textured in radiant.

Thank you for your help so far!

edit: just took a second look at the ase:

that material #35 is a multi/submaterial, with submaterials named after my materialnames in lw..

posted 07-28-2003 10:24 AM           

Here is what I did in detail, so that when you're getting your friend to export the ASE, he'll know what to do to fix the problem:

Here's what your model looked like after importing into 3dsMAX. It retained it's texture co-ordinates but the bitmap information is missing.

Opening up the Material Editor, I selected material 1, and clicked on the diffuse button to bring up the Material/Map Browser. I double clicked on Bitmap, and navigated to a texture (I used one of my own) models/obsidian/textures/metal-black.tga.

I changed this field to the path/name of the texture/shader, and then clicked on the Go to Parent button to return to the top level of the heirarchy.

On the top level of heirarchy I changed this field to the same as the previous step. I selected the Show Map in Viewport button, and then dragged the Material 1 preview onto the mesh.

In the main 3dsMAX viewport, the model now looks textured and skinned.

I then go to File > Export, and in the ASCII Export dialog, I select the above options.

I then opened up the ASE file in Wordpad and checked/edited the file paths to, just to make sure everything was correct. I checked the paths for Material Name, Map Name and Bitmap.

You can download the ASE here, http://members.lycos.co.uk/quakeroats/q3wtemp/030728_solaris.pk3
Export the contents to your baseq3/models directory.
Open the ASE file in Wordpad and you should be able to edit it so that it works for your texture/shader. Take a look at the ASE that I generated and your original in Wordpad. The "*Material 0" section looks quite different between the two versions.

posted 07-28-2003 10:30 AM           

quote:

---

Originally posted by xanthos: i have now 3ds max installed, it has a .ase plugin integrated. but when i load the .ase into the radiant, nothing is here! only a small model entity, but the model itself isnt there. shader is written.

---

posted 07-28-2003 03:06 PM          

very detailed tutorial on that, perhaps this thread (or start a new one with it) should be saved and linked?

posted 07-28-2003 03:38 PM          

ASE gotchas:

- only triangles meshes
- no submaterials
- material name is the *exact* shader/texture path used by Q3
- if you want to exceed the 1000 vertex limit and/or use lightmapped models, you have to create shaders for your textures with q3map_forceMeta/q3map_nonplanar/q3map_shadeangle N

Great tut, btw.

y

posted 07-29-2003 05:08 AM          

quote:

---

Originally posted by obsidian: You can probably use a combination of smoothing groups (limit of one per mesh) and phong shading (q3map_shadeangle N) to make that curved wall look smooth.

---

yup, though finding the right shadeangle to just smooth the faces i want will require testing

posted 07-29-2003 09:14 AM           

I took a look at your files, it doesn't look like you have any mapping co-ordinates on your model. That's why it shows up being dark grey. In MAX, you need to apply a UVW mapping modifier to the model in order for it to display the texture correctly (planar mapped should do the trick). Your model should appear correctly textured in MAX's viewport after selecting the "Show Map in Viewport" button in the Material Editor. Then export using the steps described above.

You should probably move your texture over to the same folder as your ASE model and rename the JPG to the same as your ASE (eg. terrain.jpg). Makes things simpler and the texture will actually show up in Radiant. Then re-edit the shader and ASE to match the new file paths.

Edit: BTW xanthos, would you mind resizing those screenshots at the top of the page, their borking my browser and takes forever to load on a 56K. Thanks.