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Creating Unreal Tournament 2004 Static Meshes in Gmax?
Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 3:02 pm
by Dakatsu
Is it possible to create static meshes in Gmax and putting it in UnrealEd? For those who don't know, gmax is a free version of 3dsmax, although I believe it is pretty old. I can barley get $50 for a date with my girlfriend, let alone get $3000-4000 for 3dsmax. I can map with UnrealEd, but BSP brushes are poor in doing what I want to do, and are VERY prone to BSP Holes (I MEAN, JESUS CHRIST!).
I know you can create Static Meshes for UT2004 with 3dsmax, just hoping you can do it with gmax.
Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 3:34 pm
by []V[]essenjah
Maya PLE, that's what it's there for.
Gmax is alright but dumbed down in comparison.
Re:
Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 4:38 pm
by Duper
[]V[]essenjah wrote:Maya PLE, that's what it's there for.
Gmax is alright but dumbed down in comparison.
X2
Seriously. I have both. Get Maya.
There are sure to be UT plugin for Maya.
Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 5:42 pm
by Dakatsu
Good idea! I checked it out and there are plug-ins for it. But can anyone hook me up with a good tutorial for using it? I can use gmax to create anything, so I am not new to 3d modeling.
Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 6:24 pm
by Duper
Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 10:21 pm
by Kyouryuu
Ah, you've got to love Epic's decade-old BSP code. Would you believe it's still as broken in Unreal Engine 3 as it was back in Unreal?
Tirade aside, you will find Maya vastly easier to use with UnrealEd since they interface closely together. Maya isn't hard to learn if you already understand 3DSMax. Just make sure you keep your units consistent and build your static meshes so their extremities line up with the grid.
Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 1:46 pm
by Isaac
i think i had to get a pluggin for max to export to obj. I got it to work somehow, but it was a long time ago. But you should be able to export a file that unreal editor takes with textures attached and all.
Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 10:54 am
by Dakatsu
Alrighty, I am starting to learn it. So far so good, need to learn to deal with textures, and how to combine objects/weld and seperate vertices, but I am rolling along.
Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:57 am
by Aus-RED-5
The UT2004 SE DVD set has some tutorials on it.
Shows and gives you tips on how to use Maya with UT2004.
Can't remember if there was level building with Maya or UnrealED in some of the tutorials?
Probably both.....
Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 12:12 pm
by Isaac
Im not sure when discreet added the tool, but i know if you dont have this you can download it as a pluggin. Edit Mesh sucks for the most part. Get or use Edit Poly. It will look and feel like the exact same thing but with way more tools. The weld and bridge features it has in the new versions of max are great.
Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:16 pm
by Dakatsu
Ummm... I am doing good except for the fact that I need Maya 7.0 PLE or 7.5 PLE for the plug-in to work, which I can't find. I have Maya 8.5 PLE
Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 10:51 pm
by Isaac
And im guessing you've tried going from gmax>to>maya>to>unrealeditor ?
Re:
Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 8:07 am
by Dakatsu
Isaac wrote:And im guessing you've tried going from gmax>to>maya>to>unrealeditor ?
No... but that would be pretty awesome.
Re:
Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 11:32 am
by Isaac
Dakatsu wrote:Isaac wrote:And im guessing you've tried going from gmax>to>maya>to>unrealeditor ?
No... but that would be pretty awesome.
Oh i thought you had a version of maya installed. If you do then try converting in that order.
Re:
Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 7:19 pm
by Dakatsu
Isaac wrote:Dakatsu wrote:Isaac wrote:And im guessing you've tried going from gmax>to>maya>to>unrealeditor ?
No... but that would be pretty awesome.
Oh i thought you had a version of maya installed. If you do then try converting in that order.
Well, I have no idea how I would convert... I have learned a bit, I just need Maya 7.0-7.5 to continue!
Re:
Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 10:37 pm
by Isaac
Dakatsu wrote:Isaac wrote:Dakatsu wrote:Isaac wrote:And im guessing you've tried going from gmax>to>maya>to>unrealeditor ?
No... but that would be pretty awesome.
Oh i thought you had a version of maya installed. If you do then try converting in that order.
Well, I have no idea how I would convert... I have learned a bit, I just need Maya 7.0-7.5 to continue!
No you don't.
http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?p=2062841 wrote:
How to use Gmax models in Unreal
Unfortunatly there has never been an official Unreal gamespack for Gmax, making it difficult to export models to Unreal. Follow these 5. steps to use Gmax as your modeller for Unreal.
1. First you will need to get Gmax, download it from Turbosquid. During the installation you will be asked for a serial code which can be attained through the registration link provided in the setup program. The registration is done at the Turbosquid site. Now create a model.
2. Now that you have Gmax, you will need the MD3 exporter to export the model outside of Gmax. You can download Quake-3 MD3 exporter beta v1.0 (ExportMD3_gmax_beta1.zip) from Browser ICE's home of Chris Cookson GMAX and 3d max plugins/scripts . MD3 is the format Quake3 uses for it's models. Put the dle file in the plugins directory. The next time you load Gmax, you will be able to export to the MD3 file format. From here it is only a small step. 3. Download the Quake3 to Doom3 file converter. Put the md3toASE file in the meshes directory of Gmax, it is all you will need. Go to the directory in the Command Prompt and use "md3toASE myfile.md3 myfile.ase" to convert your file. This converts the file to .ASE file format. Now your file will work in Doom3. However if you load it into UnrealEd?, it will crash. This is due to a small bug in the .ASE file format that the converter produces.
4. You will need to manually edit the numbers of the faces of the ASE file to have a ':' behind them. Example:
Old: *MESH_FACE 0 A: 3 B: 1 C: 0 AB: 1 BC: 1 CA: 1 *MESH_SMOOTHING *MESH_MTLID 0
New: *MESH_FACE 0: A: 3 B: 1 C: 0 AB: 1 BC: 1 CA: 1 *MESH_SMOOTHING *MESH_MTLID 0
Also, you might want to use the MESH_SMOOTHING which has no number to have the correct smoothing group, but this is optional
Finally, to get UV mapping correct, you need to multiply each 3rd value in *MESH_TVERTLIST with -1, so for example:
old: *MESH_TVERT 0 -0.003987 0.995361 0.000000
new: *MESH_TVERT 0 -0.003987 -0.995361 0.000000
If the orientation of the texture does not matter you could skip that step.
Also, edit the line with the filename of the texture that you used (All sides of the model need to be textured) to have the correct extension and remove the part that refers to Doom Example:
*BITMAP "C:\\mybitmap.bmp"
5. Now import your model in UnrealEd. Make sure to save your map before importing, a small error is enough to crash UnrealEd...
Read it a few times, and it dosen't look to bad. If you have a friend who's a programmer he can write a small app that will cut the bad code out for you. Hope this helps.
MD3 exporter