Gmax

#1 Not without commercial entanglements or illegal conversion utilities.

#2 No, contrary to popular belief Gmax is not free. The developers pay for modders to use it through exporters. And so far, no Torque developer has paid for a license to gmax.

#3 Excerpt from the gMax EULA, it doesn't say anywhere in it that you cannot convert their save/exported file to be used in your game.

1. Grant of License.
a. Installation and Use.
Autodesk grants to you a personal, nonexclusive license to make and use the Software for the
purpose of designing, developing, testing, and producing game content provided that you are the
only individual or entity using said Software and provided that you do not modify or alter the
Software. You may also make personal copies (either in hard copy or electronic form) of any
electronic documents included with the Software only for your personal use on your premises.
This license is not sublicenseable by you without Autodesk's prior written permission.

Full EULA.

But after reading a lot on this topic, it seems that it has been discussed before. And that there is no simple way to do the conversion, but I still don't see that it is illegal. Anyway, thanks for the responses.

#4 Sure the program is free.

Writing an export plugin for GMax is NOT free.

#5 Charles, the EULA gives you the right to use gmax with authorized game packs, that's it.
there is no such pack for Torque (ie like Tempest for Q3, etc)

#6 There are problems with making a gmax game pack for Torque because it could potentially be used for so many games, losing Discreet a lot of money on potential Max licenses.

Not only would it be freakishly expensive, but it would not be a cross-platform solution, thus a limiting investment even if it were affordable.

#7 Alex, maybe a gmax entry in the FAQ ? ie the question pops up with alarming regularity :)

#8 That is an excellent idea, Nicolas.

#9 Done.

#10 First, I've seen the entry in the FAQ that states that GG will not be licensing GMax. I would agree that the price/year at this point doesn't seem worthwhile since there are a number of free or cheap 3D applications.

I've also read the EULA very carefully and see nothing that says which engines/games it can be used for (or which it can't). I see NO reason why Torque owners couldn't use GMax to develop content IF that content could be gotten into Torque. There may be moral issues (discussed on a separate thread), but I don't think you should cross moral with legal. With the money Autodesk has, wouldn't they have said something about Gamepacks or specific games that you can use GMax to develop for if they really wanted to exclude certain games/engines? It seems trivial to add a line about "And the Software can only be used to develop content for the Games..." where "Games" were defined at the top.

Maple 3D has apparently developed a script that works with GMax to create MAP files. As a test, I followed the instructions provided and got a MAP file (fairly complex I might add!) into Torque in less than an hour using the 2.2 scripts and GMax (both free).

I'm a licensed owner of Gamespace and after seeing just how easy GMax (mostly the scripts from Maple 3D) I would see no reason why others couldn't use this tool to do MAP->DIF work. I'm considering it myself. I still plan on using Gamespace for all DTS work.

Thoughts from GG?

-nerseus

#11 Why make content in a program that cannot legally be used for your game, when there's the free QuArK where you can?

#12 If you've got enough money and lawyers to beat a lawsuit from discreet, go for it. According to the letter of the law, you'll probably win.

I don't think the rest of us have the financial resources to actually get to our day in court without going under. :)

#13 I'm not trying to argue about the letter vs. intent of the law - I just didn't see any part of the EULA that looked even remotely like it would be wrong to use GMax to develop content for Torque (or use the MAP file, a common bsp format for MANY engines).

Of course, it's hard to predict (for discreet that is) what resourceful users will do given a scripting language such as what Maple3D has done. If discreet were to change the EULA or make a statement that GMax can only be used for certain engines, then I'd be the first to say don't use it. But as it is, I see no reason not to.

For the record, I'm asking not for myself as much as for people who I'd like to do mods for me (eventually). I figure by the time I get around to creating content, I'll be using Gamespace. The DTS exporter is great and the MAP exporter is coming along very nicely. Right now, it would be *nice* to use GMax to get a quick MAP built with minimum fuss, but I certainly don't to break even the intent of the law.

-Nerseus

#14 Sure I suppose the EULA lets you export a map then you can do what you want with that. But if you look closely, the original question was for a gmax2dts exporter. That would require a license.

@Harold, yeah yeah semantics :P I meant that its not free in the sense that its not freeware, there are limitations. Really you just get a free license.

Is a plugin an adaption of the program? Because:

Quote:You agree not to rent, lease, modify, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software or otherwise attempt to discover the source code of the Software
except to the extent permitted by law where this is indispensable to obtain the information
necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created program with the Software with another program and such information is not readily available from Autodesk or elsewhere.

I think that means you cant make plugins/modifications to make it work with other software.

#15 I would love to see something like this for the Torque Game Engine and I am sure I am not the only one. Anyone working on anything like this? How hard would it be? The key to the success of this app seems to be the Snoop feature. It looks to be a Gmax script. Very inventive.

"A key element of the NWmax (gmax) package is NWmax Snoop. This is the little windows program that sits in the system try and gets all that information out of the gmax Listener window."

http://nwmax.dladventures.com/

"NWmax is a suite of import, export and modeling scripts and utilities for Discreet's free gmax 3D modeling software. Unlike the previous scripts available to the community, NWmax is a no compromise full implementation of all features available to NWN 3d models. Skinmesh, Aura Lights, Emitters, animations, danglymesh... it's all there and it exports and saves without any copy+pasting required. NWmax offers the user a suite of custom utilities to use while importing, creating and exporting NWN weapons, creatures, placeables, tiles and VFX creations."


Additional reading see the following link.

http://nwn.bioware.com/builders/builder_profile_dla.html

#16 The key to the success of this app would probably be in the license. ;)

#17 Well, ideally the cost wouldn't be THAT prohibitive, if enough users wanted it.
For example, I paid $269 for Gamespace, plus another $60+ for a few addons.

I would assume that there are at least 6 Torque owners that bought Gamespace for a similar cost - say $333 per user, give or take. That's about $2000 if 6 people wanted it. I think someone said it would cost $10,000 per year (?) which would require about 30 users each paying $333 or 100 users paying $100. It *might* be possible to raise the funds. Easier if GG wanted to kick in a few thousand to meet the Torque community halfway.

The problem in this logic is that I don't think many would pay $300 or even $100 when, if they waited long enough, the *other* member's money would make gmax available to everyone for free.

Anyway, regardless of what Torque users or even GarageGames think, I think discreet should be the one answering the Big Question. Hopefully, with an officially sponsored answer. Since there is no public email I could find for gmax support, I've posted my question on their forums here.

I'd hate to see gmax be *somewhat* useful, but there be an unanswered question as to whether you could or could not use it legally. That very problem exists with Hammer, as I hear it. Supposedly they gave their consent to allow Hammer (or the previous version) to be used for Torque content but it never made it to the EULA so it would be, technically, illegal to use it to create MAP files.

And yes, I know the original question was for creating DTS objects in gmax. I would think that if discreet allows the use of scripts to create MAP objects that could be used for the Torque engine (or others, if people wanted/needed them) then they would allow DTS objects to be created, too. I don't think it would take long for someone to get a DTS exporter working for gmax IF it were offically made legal.

-nerseus

#18 The issue at one point was that the GMax license is per *game* not per *engine* so you would have to pony up $10K for every game that wanted to use it.

#19 I've asked the GMAX guys that question before, Nerseus. The answer was 'exporting without a gamepack is not allowed.' I'll be watching to see if they say anything different this time, though.

#20 Perhaps we would be better served to talk to Newtek and see if we couldn't get a special low cost or free Lightwave license for development purposes, with the understanding of purchasing the full product at some later point? They seem pretty hungry, and it may get more people familiar with the product.