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NoolPreview for 3D Studio Max / TGEA

by Ray Noolness Gebhardt · 11/05/2006 (11:11 pm) · 38 comments

I haven't posted a blog for quite a while, so I thought I would write one up. I have been working on a new tool for 3D Studio Max that allows you to create shadergen textures for TGEA, and preview them quickly. The first component of the tool is a custom 3D Studio Max material plug-in that exposes every single parameter that shadergen provides. This includes all 4 stages and all the texture animation features.

www.noolness.com/images/noolPreview/20061105/materialsPanel.png
In addition there is a button in the material user interface that will update the viewport preview of the material. The preview only supports a few parameters of the shadergen materials, but it's better than nothing.

www.noolness.com/images/noolPreview/20061105/viewport.png
I also created a custom mod of TGEA that allows you to preview your model and material. By pressing a single button your model and materials will be exported and loaded into a minimal mission in TGEA. This allows you to see what your model and material look like in engine very easily.

www.noolness.com/images/noolPreview/20061105/previewTool.png
I am thinking about making an enhanced version of this material tool and selling it, so let me know what you think.

If you want to try out the early alpha of this tool you can download it below. It requires some changes to the DTS exporter so here are links to updated versions of the exporter for 3D Studio Max.

For 3D Studio Max 9 32-bit download:
Download Now

For 3D Studio Max 9 64-bit download:
Download Now

For 3D Studio Max 6/7/8 download:
Download Now

And finally here is a link to the NoolPreview alpha:
Download Now

To use it just copy the files into your 3d Studio Max script folder.
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Florian
#21
11/06/2006 (6:51 pm)
does this plugin also generates a materials.cs script?
if it does, AWESOME :D
if it doens't, still AWESOME XD

Torque Owner Ray Noolness Gebhardt
#22
11/06/2006 (7:12 pm)
Yes it will generate materials.cs files and also preview them.

Torque Owner Kory James
#23
11/06/2006 (11:58 pm)
Can the noolpreview show all of the maps

Procedural generation of shaders that support:
-Bumpmapping and Normalmapping
-Detail maps
-Specular
-Cubemapping
-Glow
-Refraction
-Reflection
-Texture UV animation

and can you us other software to export the maps and what if you only have 3d max 6 does the export still work?

thank you and i think this is going to be a great software for TGEA.

Torque Owner Ray Noolness Gebhardt
#24
11/07/2006 (12:04 am)
NoolPreview exposes every single parameter of TGEA's procedural shader generation. It will only show a few materials in the the actual viewport of 3D Studio Max, and the viewport preview isn't very accurate. The actual "DTS Preview" button will let you preview any shadergen shader combination possible. You just need to have a DTS mesh already setup for export for the preview to work (since it previews your mesh, in addition to the material itself).

Torque Owner Ray Noolness Gebhardt
#25
11/07/2006 (12:12 am)
Actually let me correct what I stated. Any shadergen feature that is supported by the DTS format can be previewed with the preview tool. Anything that only works with the DIF format will not be displayed, but it will still be written to the material file.

Torque Owner Tom Bentz
#26
11/07/2006 (7:12 am)
Oh wait... I guess I misread what this was.... that is pretty awesome!

Torque Owner Steven Chiu
#27
11/07/2006 (4:03 pm)
I think GG should adopt this for the final release of TGEA!

Torque Owner Adam deGrandis
#28
11/07/2006 (4:46 pm)
I know I already posted about this, but I have to say again. Nool. This is unstoppable. Very cool. :)

Torque Owner Vashner
#29
11/07/2006 (8:50 pm)
Awesome man.. awesome.

Torque Owner Brian Ramage
#30
11/07/2006 (11:52 pm)
Very nice Ray, I'd love to see this finished up and running smooth.

Torque Owner James Brad Barnette
#31
04/04/2007 (3:19 am)
Any chance you could port this to maya?

Torque Owner JoZ
#32
11/05/2007 (8:35 pm)
Just installed but... I cannot find the General DTS Objects in the helper list... And I cannot figure out why :(

Someone has any idea?

TnX
JoZ

Ok, ok ... I simply did some mistake installing more than a plugin... such a stupid ! Ehehehhe

Torque Owner JungHyuck Yang
#33
01/15/2008 (8:34 am)
Installed and succefully preview a model but no textures on there.

1) Is that need any extra step to see textures or does it support multi materails? Any clue?

2) And the exported dts file crashes on latest TGEA 1.0.3 when it loads. Any ideas?

3) Any plan to release latest version of this?

Thank you.

Torque Owner JungHyuck Yang
#34
01/16/2008 (12:42 pm)
Hello,

1) It might be due to that it runs on Vista. I guess Vista protect to write any folders under program files.
(3dsmax is located c:\programe file on my side)

2) I found the reason. Ignore it.

Thank you.

Torque Owner Rick van Haasen
#35
06/19/2008 (12:46 pm)
JoZ (or others that could help me),

i have the same problem that you had:

>>I cannot find the General DTS Objects in the helper list... And I cannot figure out why :(

how did you actualy solve it?

thanks in advance

Torque Owner Russell Fincher
#36
06/19/2008 (3:01 pm)
@Joke: JoZ satates in his post that his solution was to only have one exporter plugin installed. By the way, is this where you are looking?:

Create tab > Helpers > General DTS Objects

farm4.static.flickr.com/3231/2593089398_73ae4d9b6b_o.jpg
Sometimes people make the mistake of looking for this in the Create menu instead of the Create tab.

Torque Owner Rick van Haasen
#37
06/20/2008 (8:53 am)
Hi Russell,

first of all thanks for your reply!

the problem is that the "General DTS Objects" is not listed from the Create tab...
Maybe it has to to with the way i installed the plugin:
I copied the 3 folders (plugins, scripts and UI) from the downloaded zip file to C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 9
Then i start Max.
After that i do what is described in readme.txt:

>----------------------------------------------------
> Loading the plugin into 3d Studio Max 7:
>----------------------------------------------------
>
>With Max open click on the menu "Customize" and
>select "Customize User Interface". Then click on the
>Toolbars Tab and change the category to "Torque".
>
>You can now drag the Torque DTS Utility icon from
>the window onto any open toolbar in your work area.

Now i can open the DTS Exporter Utility, this looks fine.

The General DTS object however is not found in the max->create->helpers tab......

do you have any idea/suggestion?

Torque Owner Sebastian H
#38
03/18/2009 (4:27 pm)
This sounds brilliant.
Is this tool still around??
The links are dead, and the website is not up, been looking everywhere for this...

Anyone knows??
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