Making map set pieces in 3DS Max

[tmg]

hey ppls yes Im still alive

I've been mucking around with 3DS Max lately making stuff and I was looking through the grid and snap settings dialog box the other day, and it gave the option to put major grid lines every 8x8 squares instead of the default 10x10 squares, which got me thinking that I might be able to make complex max pieces in max and save the geometry as a .map file so I can import the pieces into my maps.

My question is, if I can do it, will I need to do anything special in 3DS Max - such as giving the geometry pieces names, and maybe even using a specific geometry modifier - i.e. editable poly or editable mesh...food for thought. I've seen people that make some really nice maps say they use 3DS Max for complex geometry.

I could use Worldcraft 1.6 for the more complicated stuff, but I know 3DS Max so much better, so it would be alot easier to use.

[spirit]

If 3DS Max exports to map: sure, you can do it. You gotta get the scale right though. And it won't help you circumvent Q2 engine limits of course (very complex geometry => high r_speeds).

Most stuff for more recent games and mods is modeled in 3DS, Maya, Blender or whatever. I'm not sure if that's really needed to make a good Q2 map though.

[peeweerota]

Mar 16, 2010 14:11:17 GMT -5 spirit said:

If 3DS Max exports to map: sure, you can do it. You gotta get the scale right though. And it won't help you circumvent Q2 engine limits of course (very complex geometry => high r_speeds).

Most stuff for more recent games and mods is modeled in 3DS, Maya, Blender or whatever. I'm not sure if that's really needed to make a good Q2 map though.

I can actually chime in here.


At work we used the Torque Gaming Engine which basically has a giant terrain map and allows you to drop in BSP map objects. We found that the custom tool had trouble making tri-strips and would end up cutting faces on every single polygon when lighting. This doubled and even quadrupled the lighting time for map loads for every single bsp entity.

We found that recreating the same objects in Quark was significantly better. It was funny because I wasn't even on that team but they asked me to come help because they knew that I was familiar with quark.


So moral of the story, the things that you make in 3ds Max or other tools may end up playing hell with vis. Doesn't hurt to try.

Another option is adding World Model support. This is an insanely simple change to the engine and I'm fairly certain that it either already exists or is slated to be added to clean code.