Gmax?

[King of Atlantis]

I was wondering if there are any plugins for gmax like the one for 3-dmax so that i can export files?

[Bwian]

Unfortunately not.

When Discreet made GMax, it was intended to be a commercial venture. What they did was to give away the basic program free of charge, but then to licence the building of plugins that would allow models to be exported. The program itself is limited to saving models only in it's native format.

The cost of a plugin licence for GMax was a 5-figure sum when it first came out....

Some games ( Quake 3, MS Combat Flight Sim 3 and a few others ) have licensed plugins, but it is only really something that a big game manufacturer would profit from doing. For smaller developers, it just isn't worth paying out hte money to licence a plugin for their model format. You would have to shift a LOT of extra units to make it commercially viable.

Anyway...in short, I do not think there would ever actually be a way of making a freely available export script for GMax. The software is designed to prevent just that sort of thing!

Currently only 3DS Max has the necessary script to export. I have heard that some people are looking at other modelling software as an option. It needs to be something with basic skeletal support and easily obtainable. Both Blender and Milkshape have been mooted.

[Myrddraal]

I believe the 3ds max plugin works for importing into G-max, but not exporting as Bwain said, so if you know someone or can find someone on these forums willing to convert for you, you can open models in G-max, edit them, send them to someone who has 3ds max, and they can export back to CAS...

[shifty157]

Thats not to say that it isnt possible. Back a year ago i tried my hand a bit at modding custom maps for HALO. Someone had made a program to turn the gmax file into the necessary map file. It was pretty impressive but probably took alot of work. Probably the only person around who could manage something like that would be vercingetorix.

[King of Atlantis]

Well thanks guys i guess i just have to get 3d-max.

[Sundjata Keita]

I will happily convert any of the files to .cas for you and anyone else for that matter if you have modelled them in g-max and want them exporting. Just pm me.

Regards,

Sundjata Keita

[Bwian]

It IS possible to get some sorts of models out of GMax using some of the existing plugins. The usual choice is the Quake one. What it DOESN'T do, though, is to export the file in any way that can be used for RTW. You would still need to have another bit of 3D modelling software to import your quake file and export a CAS file. With a skeleton, bone weighting etc.

Personally, I don't like Max ( I am a Lightwave man by choice ) but Max is the industry choice for gaming, and when it comes to game modding, it's just about unavoidable

[King of Atlantis]

well i got the 30 day trial for 3d-max so problem solved.

[shifty157]

well i got the 30 day trial for 3d-max so problem solved.

For thirty days at least.

[Legionario]

Personally, I don't like Max ( I am a Lightwave man by choice ) but Max is the industry choice for gaming, and when it comes to game modding, it's just about unavoidable

Eh..eh..there must be a reason for this...

[King of Atlantis]

For thirty days at least.

I'll probably buy it after that.

[Bwian]

Legionario.... yes there is a reason. It is a VERY powerful, high quality tool that does EVERYTHING. It is great for animating etc. but a real pain when you just want to make low poly game models. I found the whole thing very awkward. None of the menu bars actually fit on the screen, so just FINDING stuff is a chore, and it always wants to do things ITS way, not mine

Lightwave, on the other hand, is a breeze once you get used to the key shortcuts.

For example......

You want to copy a chunk of model in Lightwave..... Ctrl C. You can clone by just hitting c

To do it in Max.... find the edit menu, choose 'copy' then you have to make sure you select 'copy' not 'instance' since the instances don't get exported properly to some formats...And you won't find out till later.

and another example.... UV mapping!

Lightwave.....set one window to UV, and you can just play about with the mapping. Then you can export the UV window to Photoshap to make your texture template in one go.

Max....add modifiers, muck around with 'gizmos' just to get hte mapping done. No thank you!!!

It's a personal thing, and I just find I am more comfortable doing the mesh and texture work in Lightwave. It's sweet and slick and it's my friend

[Spoonfrog]

I'll probably buy it after that.

You must be some kind of millionaire