Using Max for .dif creation?
by Jedive · in Artist Corner · 03/25/2005 (7:33 am) · 59 replies
Well, my team has been working with some engines to power the game Myths of Leindar: Century. We are 4 people working on the game: one coder (me), one 3D artist, one 2D artist, and one music composer. The webpage of the game is http://www.century-game.tk/ The first 4 screenshots have been taken with the OGRE engine, the rest of them with Cipher.
We have been making different demos to try the engines, and won the Best Graphics award on the ArtFutura'04 show: http://www.artfutura.org/AF04/en/index.php. The version shown @ ArtFutura was made in Blitz3D, as it was mainly a fast prototype of the game we made in one week.
We tried OGRE, as it is one of the most powerful graphics engines we have seen, but discarded it as it was not a complete game engine, and we prefer to concentrate on game development that in making an engine.
After that, we came to the Cipher and Torque engines. While I love to work in Cipher, and it has an awesome integration with 3DS Max, for outdoor scenes, we have to export everyting as a mesh: terrains, buildings, grass... which is not very optimized for fast rendering.
Torque, on the other hand, provides an awesome outdoor rendering, with support for weather effects like rain and snow, water, multilayered clouds, etc. Our outdoor scenes would look awesome with it.
But the problem is that the 3D artist refuses to use those BSP-like crappy editors (like he calls them), and wants to do all the modelling in Max. It's not a problem for .dts shapes, but it definitely is for .dif constructions. Exporting a .map file from Max seems to give a lot of errors (obvious, as 3DS MAX is not a convex-like modeller).
After some searching, we came across this Max plugin: http://www.maple3d.com/GLB3Page.htm. It has a "Convex Corrector" tool which can correct invalid geometry for map generation. As it is not free, we would like to know if somebody here has been sucessfull in using Max for making Torque interiors before purchasing the plugin. After correcting the geometry to make it map compliant, will the .map be exported correctly?
Does anybody have more ideas on how to export a .dif from Max?
Thanks in advance :)
We have been making different demos to try the engines, and won the Best Graphics award on the ArtFutura'04 show: http://www.artfutura.org/AF04/en/index.php. The version shown @ ArtFutura was made in Blitz3D, as it was mainly a fast prototype of the game we made in one week.
We tried OGRE, as it is one of the most powerful graphics engines we have seen, but discarded it as it was not a complete game engine, and we prefer to concentrate on game development that in making an engine.
After that, we came to the Cipher and Torque engines. While I love to work in Cipher, and it has an awesome integration with 3DS Max, for outdoor scenes, we have to export everyting as a mesh: terrains, buildings, grass... which is not very optimized for fast rendering.
Torque, on the other hand, provides an awesome outdoor rendering, with support for weather effects like rain and snow, water, multilayered clouds, etc. Our outdoor scenes would look awesome with it.
But the problem is that the 3D artist refuses to use those BSP-like crappy editors (like he calls them), and wants to do all the modelling in Max. It's not a problem for .dts shapes, but it definitely is for .dif constructions. Exporting a .map file from Max seems to give a lot of errors (obvious, as 3DS MAX is not a convex-like modeller).
After some searching, we came across this Max plugin: http://www.maple3d.com/GLB3Page.htm. It has a "Convex Corrector" tool which can correct invalid geometry for map generation. As it is not free, we would like to know if somebody here has been sucessfull in using Max for making Torque interiors before purchasing the plugin. After correcting the geometry to make it map compliant, will the .map be exported correctly?
Does anybody have more ideas on how to export a .dif from Max?
Thanks in advance :)
#22
I have used 3dsmax and Glb2.2 myself and have found it very fast for blocking in the main components of a map. Its great being able to use the array tool in max to make numerous styles of staircases.
Glb works great if you a floor plan type drawing design of your map to use as reference. You merely draw the lines of the map and hit a button or 2 to create your walls (NB*be warned Glb is not an intuitive tool to learn, it works good and is simple but read the manual). There is a tool for making tubes out of convex geometry in Glb2.2 using a spline line and a button (insta tunnel anyone).
Max, though riskier is so much quicker at knocking out Levels compared to any map editor i have personally used.
I found i had to use another program to add textures im afraid though... but besides that as long as i remembered the 180 degree bsp rule i was fine.
I am really interested to know if there is a way to texture .map or .dif levels in max....
05/28/2005 (8:08 pm)
To Jedive, case your still listening.I have used 3dsmax and Glb2.2 myself and have found it very fast for blocking in the main components of a map. Its great being able to use the array tool in max to make numerous styles of staircases.
Glb works great if you a floor plan type drawing design of your map to use as reference. You merely draw the lines of the map and hit a button or 2 to create your walls (NB*be warned Glb is not an intuitive tool to learn, it works good and is simple but read the manual). There is a tool for making tubes out of convex geometry in Glb2.2 using a spline line and a button (insta tunnel anyone).
Max, though riskier is so much quicker at knocking out Levels compared to any map editor i have personally used.
I found i had to use another program to add textures im afraid though... but besides that as long as i remembered the 180 degree bsp rule i was fine.
I am really interested to know if there is a way to texture .map or .dif levels in max....
#23
The team leader is the artist of the game. He has also worked on commercial games (worked on Commandos 2: http://www.eidosinteractive.com/gss/legacy/commandos2/main.html and now he is working on War Leaders: http://www.warleaders-game.com/home2.html). That's why Century is on hold right now, and I am working on another indie game. Currently, he pretends to use Cipher to make the game, as it has a seamlessly integration with 3DS Max. But, as I am the lead coder of the game, I have the last word choosing the engine, as long as the artflow for it is approved by the lead artist.
I already have CShop4. His creator, Josh Klint, is a friend of mine. I really like that map eidtor, as I am a coder, not an artist, and have no idea of using Max. But my teammate is very good with Max and, although tools like CShop look very easy to use for him, he says that he can get much better visual results with Max. Check this screenshots of early prototypes of the game. The first two are rendered in Cipher, the third one in OGRE:
I am sure we'll find a way to do it. The outdoor parts of the game (which are a lot of them), like the ones in those screenshots, are not much of a problem. The terrain can be done with the builtin Torque editor (my artist tried it and really liked it, he says he doesn't care about making all the terrain modelling and building placement in that editor instead of Max); all the trees may (and should) be exported as .dts shapes, removing the problems of using Max. And for the buildings, which is the stuff that should be exported to .dif format, we have three options:
1) Use GLB. The pay-for version of GLB (3.0) seems to habe a tool to convert any Max mesh to a map-compliant model. Using this tool and manually correcting the resultant geometry later is a good option. The artpath would be something like Max / GLB (modelling) -> Quark (texturing) -> Dif.
2) Use the artpath Max / GLB (modelling) -> CShop (texturing) -> Dif.
3) Use Adrian's new pipeline.
05/29/2005 (6:13 am)
Thanks for your comments, Tom, Adrian, and Ten.The team leader is the artist of the game. He has also worked on commercial games (worked on Commandos 2: http://www.eidosinteractive.com/gss/legacy/commandos2/main.html and now he is working on War Leaders: http://www.warleaders-game.com/home2.html). That's why Century is on hold right now, and I am working on another indie game. Currently, he pretends to use Cipher to make the game, as it has a seamlessly integration with 3DS Max. But, as I am the lead coder of the game, I have the last word choosing the engine, as long as the artflow for it is approved by the lead artist.
I already have CShop4. His creator, Josh Klint, is a friend of mine. I really like that map eidtor, as I am a coder, not an artist, and have no idea of using Max. But my teammate is very good with Max and, although tools like CShop look very easy to use for him, he says that he can get much better visual results with Max. Check this screenshots of early prototypes of the game. The first two are rendered in Cipher, the third one in OGRE:
I am sure we'll find a way to do it. The outdoor parts of the game (which are a lot of them), like the ones in those screenshots, are not much of a problem. The terrain can be done with the builtin Torque editor (my artist tried it and really liked it, he says he doesn't care about making all the terrain modelling and building placement in that editor instead of Max); all the trees may (and should) be exported as .dts shapes, removing the problems of using Max. And for the buildings, which is the stuff that should be exported to .dif format, we have three options:
1) Use GLB. The pay-for version of GLB (3.0) seems to habe a tool to convert any Max mesh to a map-compliant model. Using this tool and manually correcting the resultant geometry later is a good option. The artpath would be something like Max / GLB (modelling) -> Quark (texturing) -> Dif.
2) Use the artpath Max / GLB (modelling) -> CShop (texturing) -> Dif.
3) Use Adrian's new pipeline.
#26
Little offtop:
Cool looking Inspector Tree - is it custom created or I can patch TGE for such feature?
05/29/2005 (7:00 am)
AdrianLittle offtop:
Cool looking Inspector Tree - is it custom created or I can patch TGE for such feature?
#27
05/29/2005 (11:38 am)
@Viktor - I think that's the new inspector tree from 1.4.
#28
Sorry for offtop again.
05/30/2005 (12:11 pm)
Thank Tom, yesterday I get a Lighting Pack snd compiled only 1.3 version, today will compile 1.3.5Sorry for offtop again.
#29
Another side effect is you can bake the shadows onto the textures in max and get static raytracing.
05/30/2005 (12:44 pm)
Another way of modelling buildings in torque which I didn't see mentioned in the top half of this thread is to make everything a dts. DTS objects can only have 8 collision meshes so what you need to do is split your building into chunks. You can make one DTS that is the entire building. Then make others that are just groups of 8 collision meshes. If they all have the same pivot point then you can just place them at the same XYZ coord and it will look and act like a building.Another side effect is you can bake the shadows onto the textures in max and get static raytracing.
#30
But, what about textures, do I need to store all structure textures in one file like skin, if I use dts.
Maybe it is possible to make some changes to source code and make more than 8 collision meshes for dts.
06/07/2005 (3:54 am)
NeilBut, what about textures, do I need to store all structure textures in one file like skin, if I use dts.
Maybe it is possible to make some changes to source code and make more than 8 collision meshes for dts.
#31
I'm sure you could increase the collision meshes or you could model a rough version of it with convex hulls and export that as an invisible dif that you lay overtop.
06/07/2005 (6:13 am)
You can use as many textures as you want as far as I know. In Max you can just use a multi-sub material and apply them to the model that way. If you bake the shadows then max will try to arrange all the textures into one file by itself (It's not always the most efficent so you have to mess with it).I'm sure you could increase the collision meshes or you could model a rough version of it with convex hulls and export that as an invisible dif that you lay overtop.
#32
Grass to dirt, grass to sand, gras to rock etc using a greyscale mask texture kind of like photoshop.
Or you can mask between a shiny mud texture and a non shiny texture but that requires multipass rendering which doubles the triangles. But then you can have masked shinyness like a specular map without using pixel shaders in regular TGE.
Other nice things are modulate2X blendmode, which gives you a rich er lighting kind of like Prince of persia if you combine it with a lightmap. And you can do other effects by mixing shinyness with modulate2X on shiny textures. Things like really nice metals.
So with ours there would be a lot more creative freedom than with DTS (in TGE at least) plus extra UV's that you can use to multitexture between 8 texture layers per material.
Basicaly you can do just about anything you can do on the PS2 plus a little more even on older cards like Geforce 2.
06/07/2005 (10:49 am)
With our path which currently is like using DTS but with enhanced materialsyou can use as many textures as you wish too, plus you can have shiny materials, and multipass between meshes and their blend modes to get more effects. You can do masking without doubling geometry so you can mask in certain ways.Grass to dirt, grass to sand, gras to rock etc using a greyscale mask texture kind of like photoshop.
Or you can mask between a shiny mud texture and a non shiny texture but that requires multipass rendering which doubles the triangles. But then you can have masked shinyness like a specular map without using pixel shaders in regular TGE.
Other nice things are modulate2X blendmode, which gives you a rich er lighting kind of like Prince of persia if you combine it with a lightmap. And you can do other effects by mixing shinyness with modulate2X on shiny textures. Things like really nice metals.
So with ours there would be a lot more creative freedom than with DTS (in TGE at least) plus extra UV's that you can use to multitexture between 8 texture layers per material.
Basicaly you can do just about anything you can do on the PS2 plus a little more even on older cards like Geforce 2.
#33
Im a max 7 user
Surge
06/07/2005 (11:55 am)
Adrian this sounds really good. Need anyone to help beta Test it.Im a max 7 user
Surge
#34
06/07/2005 (12:47 pm)
Still a bit early for beta testing, the loader from the exporter is mostly done, but there's still torque extensions for all the level and environment building. I think we will need beta testers once we get quite far with the 3dsmax extensions for torque.
#35
As i know now 1.4 ver of TGE can hold more than 8 collision boxes, so i can create shadows on terrain.
But, what about self shadowing, and shadow resolution for dts object?
If i create lightmap in Max or in Gile(s) how i can attach it to my dts house?
Sunflare shines throw walls...
Here is screens of house, it is some over-lighten and textures not picked up good, but in any matter it looks shitty!
Maybe need to advance on TSE, but it has no shadows at all. Or need to implement own object format, like someone maded for 3ds.
07/12/2005 (7:47 am)
House was modelled in Archicad, than exported in Max, textured, and exported to dts. As i know now 1.4 ver of TGE can hold more than 8 collision boxes, so i can create shadows on terrain.
But, what about self shadowing, and shadow resolution for dts object?
If i create lightmap in Max or in Gile(s) how i can attach it to my dts house?
Sunflare shines throw walls...
Here is screens of house, it is some over-lighten and textures not picked up good, but in any matter it looks shitty!
Maybe need to advance on TSE, but it has no shadows at all. Or need to implement own object format, like someone maded for 3ds.
#36
07/12/2005 (8:14 am)
The light pack MIGHT add the low res blocky shadows to the DTS so you may want to look into that. As for good shadows, I dunno. 
#37
Sounds like a very bad attitude for game development. Tool preference is good, but refusing to use a tool if it can save dev time is simply a bad attitude. In this industry you need to be able to learn and adapt, what happens if theres a tool that gets some game dev attention that gives you more power than Max. Game Dev's don't have the luxury of being so picky usually.
I've used GLB 2 and Max, have exported a few things with it then textured with quark, etc. Not a bad process. I'm definately looking forward to Constructor.
07/12/2005 (8:16 am)
Quote: the 3D artist refuses to use those BSP-like crappy editors
Sounds like a very bad attitude for game development. Tool preference is good, but refusing to use a tool if it can save dev time is simply a bad attitude. In this industry you need to be able to learn and adapt, what happens if theres a tool that gets some game dev attention that gives you more power than Max. Game Dev's don't have the luxury of being so picky usually.
I've used GLB 2 and Max, have exported a few things with it then textured with quark, etc. Not a bad process. I'm definately looking forward to Constructor.
#38
In the last week poly soup collisions were implemented and look promising as an alternative to convex hulls and DIF.
Still a fair way to go, but it is along far enough that I started working on a playable tech demo. And my old blitz3D game art assets port to TGE easily. Plan to have something to show at IGC.
07/12/2005 (8:50 am)
The solution I'm working on with a couple of other people lets you create your own lightmaps on a second UV channel. It's a few months off being ready for a possible release but it will allow you to use max and other 3D apps in a poly soup way and have things look good. In the last week poly soup collisions were implemented and look promising as an alternative to convex hulls and DIF.
Still a fair way to go, but it is along far enough that I started working on a playable tech demo. And my old blitz3D game art assets port to TGE easily. Plan to have something to show at IGC.
#39
I already use LP, but it make shadows form collision boxes, for this house, collision boxes will be almost all geometry that can produce shadow.
Matthew
Agree with you. But GLB can't export such house, because it consist of not-convex geometry. Such house can be created in one day using Archicad. How much time needed to create it in Quark?
I already modelled house in CShop demo, even if i have more exp, it takes much more time than modeling in Archicad or 3DMax. IMHO.
07/12/2005 (9:01 am)
GenesisI already use LP, but it make shadows form collision boxes, for this house, collision boxes will be almost all geometry that can produce shadow.
Matthew
Agree with you. But GLB can't export such house, because it consist of not-convex geometry. Such house can be created in one day using Archicad. How much time needed to create it in Quark?
I already modelled house in CShop demo, even if i have more exp, it takes much more time than modeling in Archicad or 3DMax. IMHO.
#40
You also have to take BSP convex geometry into consideration. If your going for the collsion enhancements it has then you simply can't compare creating a house in a polysoup tool to a BSP tool.
Look at the stuff in Tim Aste's content pack. Look at the wonderful .dif buildings he's created using different tools. It may take a little extra time to learn how to use the tools for it, but if you want that gain of using interiors in quark then you will need to do so :)
07/12/2005 (9:05 am)
Usually experience in a tool is what weighs how long it will take to create something. Obviously the more time you spend with a tool the better and faster you will get. You also have to take BSP convex geometry into consideration. If your going for the collsion enhancements it has then you simply can't compare creating a house in a polysoup tool to a BSP tool.
Look at the stuff in Tim Aste's content pack. Look at the wonderful .dif buildings he's created using different tools. It may take a little extra time to learn how to use the tools for it, but if you want that gain of using interiors in quark then you will need to do so :)
Torque Owner Adrian Tysoe
Tom, you're right about the immediate solutions... and what I'm doing is some way off getting released. So I don't think anyone should start counting on it being a valid solution to current art path problems until its released, and the way our schedules are it's likely to be months rather than weeks.
In the future the pipeline might be of help to Jedive, I don't know for sure. Creating DIF proxy collisions for your levels that gameplay interacts with, and having DTS or our format for visuals only is a solution, and does give artists a lot of freedom in areas that often interest them the most.
I only really posted the above in part because I was looking for a recent 3dsmax specific thread to mention my current project in. I've also known Jedive as an aquaintance for possibly a year or so, were both migrating from another popular indie platform which has a good art path, but doesn't offer the same benefits to torque on the engine and quick gameplay implementation side of things.