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Converting Lightwave 8.2 for use in TGE/TSE

by Alan H · in Torque Game Engine · 01/10/2006 (10:46 am) · 6 replies

Hey all,

I need to convert a very large Lightwave 8.2 file for use in TSE/TGE (I have both). I'm having trouble finding what program can do this. I figured the route was LW to Max to Torque, or am I wrong on this?

Thanks!

- Alan
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Employee David Montgomery-Blake
David MontgomeryBlake
#1
01/10/2006 (11:16 am)
Well, it depends on exactly what you're trying to do...

GnomeTech Lightwave exporter.

LW 2 MAP

You will most likely have to reconfigure much of your modelling process to use lw2map, though. Brush modeling and polysoup modeling are different beasts.

Torque Owner Alan H
#2
01/10/2006 (1:52 pm)
Thanks David.

Basically I'm trying to move the model out of Lightwave (which the artist used) and into a modeling program I use so I can either import it unaltered into Torque or modify it myself further. I own gamespace 1.6 and Milkshape but I don't know if they would do the conversion or not.

Employee David Montgomery-Blake
David MontgomeryBlake
#3
01/10/2006 (7:00 pm)
What is the model? Poly count? Complexity? Is it designed to be an interior or a model?

Torque Owner Alan H
#4
01/11/2006 (5:41 am)
Very high poly count and very complex but also very large and sprawling. It is designed as an exterior model. I'm trying an experiment of converting a city scape with no interiors in to a terrain model in TSE. The artist doesn't want to rework it but doesn't care if I modify it. I figured I'd experiment with it and see how much of it I can load without bottoming out the frame rate. I'll chop it up if I need to but I'm trying to see how far I can push the engine. I figure that if the buillding shapes were actually part of the land scape it would not tax TSE as much but that is just my theory. The idea for the experiment comes from a post I saw about a year ago of someone with a city scape of "48 square miles" in TGE and from another post where somone integrated their buildings into the terrain mesh.

Employee David Montgomery-Blake
David MontgomeryBlake
#5
01/11/2006 (7:43 am)
Well, for practical purposes you'll want to chunk it up simply so that the entire thing is not loaded into memory at one time if it is a huge model. That way it can be paged in and out correctly without trying to keep a huge raw model resident.

Torque Owner Alan H
#6
01/11/2006 (9:43 am)
Gotcha. I'll definetly try and cut it up along logical breaks. Considering that if it's scaled correctly it would cover about 15 square miles.

So, would attempting to turn it into a terrain mesh aleviate the poly issue? Of course, then how would I skin it properly.

Break out the axes - time to start chopin!