Units and Biped Question(s) and generic whine for help.
by Ritualistic Popcorn · in Artist Corner · 04/15/2007 (10:46 pm) · 2 replies
I am still browsing this section of the forums so I am sure I'll come across what I need eventually, but I thought I would post just in case there is someone out there itching to give advice.
I have a few semi important stupid questions and potentially unnecessary questions formed from one tiny problem:
( Little background on the situation I got myself into: I volunteered to help some guys out with their school project. The riggers and animators know 3ds max but the group leader insists that milk shape is a superior software for animating and importing character. I have also seen rumors on the internet that milk shape is best. However, I said I would attempt to figure out the process of doing the stuff through max to make things easier of the persons who already are comfortable with max. I have searched, found dead links, and some good info as well here. But I still have some silly things I need clarified before assuming everything I read "is-this-that-or-the-other".)
Providing links to documentation specific with visuals or good verbal descriptions/answers for my questions would b e very helpful as well. I don't have access to torque myself so I am going to attempt to do things correctly the first time so that the files I get as a result of this will work properly with torque when they go to use them. Or will that be possible? I have a feeling I am attempting to make pudding but will end up with jello. o.O
Question 1: UNITS.
If in max I went to Customize> Units Setup...> Display Unit Scale> Metric >Meters
what should I anticipate to happen for someone bringing a character, created in max with these settings, into torque? Will this cause the scale of an object which is represented as 2 meters in max to be "incorrect" in what are Torque units? Or does the display unit scale in 3ds max make much difference? How many units tall in max is a human character that would appear correctly in Torque?
Question 2: Can 3ds max's Biped rigging and animation be used for Torque easily?
What is the most up to date and recent exporter? Where are the best topics, threads, discussions on this subject? It seems I have downloaded several different exporters and I am unsure which is the correct one or the best documentation on the subject.
Where is the best most recent documentation to be found? (I've found what appear to be a few good ones, I am just curious if anyone knows some really REALLY GOOD links)
What are the worst and most excruciatingly painful problems that most commonly occur when using 3ds Max with Torque?
I am hoping this is a perfect world and I am hoping that I can just set things up in max, animate, and use an exporter: type in the necessary settings and whatnots and voila! Perfect on the first try...for whatever it is I am trying.
Thanks. I am sure I will find this all eventually but I have been crunched for time and suffer from slow internet speeds at the moment. Any advice would be extremely wonderful!!!!!
I have a few semi important stupid questions and potentially unnecessary questions formed from one tiny problem:
( Little background on the situation I got myself into: I volunteered to help some guys out with their school project. The riggers and animators know 3ds max but the group leader insists that milk shape is a superior software for animating and importing character. I have also seen rumors on the internet that milk shape is best. However, I said I would attempt to figure out the process of doing the stuff through max to make things easier of the persons who already are comfortable with max. I have searched, found dead links, and some good info as well here. But I still have some silly things I need clarified before assuming everything I read "is-this-that-or-the-other".)
Providing links to documentation specific with visuals or good verbal descriptions/answers for my questions would b e very helpful as well. I don't have access to torque myself so I am going to attempt to do things correctly the first time so that the files I get as a result of this will work properly with torque when they go to use them. Or will that be possible? I have a feeling I am attempting to make pudding but will end up with jello. o.O
Question 1: UNITS.
If in max I went to Customize> Units Setup...> Display Unit Scale> Metric >Meters
what should I anticipate to happen for someone bringing a character, created in max with these settings, into torque? Will this cause the scale of an object which is represented as 2 meters in max to be "incorrect" in what are Torque units? Or does the display unit scale in 3ds max make much difference? How many units tall in max is a human character that would appear correctly in Torque?
Question 2: Can 3ds max's Biped rigging and animation be used for Torque easily?
What is the most up to date and recent exporter? Where are the best topics, threads, discussions on this subject? It seems I have downloaded several different exporters and I am unsure which is the correct one or the best documentation on the subject.
Where is the best most recent documentation to be found? (I've found what appear to be a few good ones, I am just curious if anyone knows some really REALLY GOOD links)
What are the worst and most excruciatingly painful problems that most commonly occur when using 3ds Max with Torque?
I am hoping this is a perfect world and I am hoping that I can just set things up in max, animate, and use an exporter: type in the necessary settings and whatnots and voila! Perfect on the first try...for whatever it is I am trying.
Thanks. I am sure I will find this all eventually but I have been crunched for time and suffer from slow internet speeds at the moment. Any advice would be extremely wonderful!!!!!
About the author
#2
04/16/2007 (8:45 am)
With regards to the exporter, the one from the artists page works fine for the most part. It has a few bugs but nothing show stopping. 
Associate Logan Foster
perPixel Studios
a) The exporting application.
Your project lead is blowing smoke up your ass about Milkshape and IMHO is going to lead you into a wall of hurt and ultimately project failure if you follow his incorrect instructions. So good on you for learning how to get this data out of the native application that its all developed in.
As for why I think this guys is blowing smoke up your ass. The answer is simple. 1) Data does get lost when you use an intermediary format to move from one application to another. Data can also become corrupt or written/read wrong when it is written out or read back in. 2) If you ever need to make changes to the original files you will be increasing the work load because merging those changes from Max into Milkshape and then restoring all your exporter scene data will be a lot of work. Plain and simple to be most productive keep the dammed data native as much as possible and slot in data from there, jumping apps like he is suggesting is a problem even for large AAA studios. 3) The DTS exporters for 3DS Max are far more powerful, versatile and offer more functions than the Milkshape exporters. In fact they are still the best ones available. Anyone who denies this doesn't know Torque.
With regards to documention. Here is the DTS exporter docs that I have been hosting for GG, you should read them very thoroughly and I recommend rereading them 2 or 3 times as stuff will begin to click about how the engine works better.
B) Units
You have two types of units in 3DS Max, system and display.
System units are the base units that the model is built in, think of it like defining a scale like you see on blueprints where 1 unit = something. Torque does not care what unit of measurement that you are using here, all the exporter cares about is that 1 unit in max equates to 1 unit in the game engine (which happens to be metres btw). So when you model 1 unit of anything is 1 metre.
Display units are essentially a visual guide that work with your system units. They are useful if you are working with Centimeters as your system units but have some wacky measurements that are all in inches. What display units does is converts the data that is presented to you to meet the display type that you want to see. It is very important that you do not change your display units around, it should either be set to Generic or be set to a value that matches your System units. If you fail to do this you will end up with models that you think are built to the correct size but will actually come out larger or smaller within the game engine.
C) Biped & Animation
Yes bipeds can be used within torque as can the animations that are applied to the bipeds. In fact most of the DTS exporters are so simplistic that they can read most types of animations that are affecting your model. You could have othe geometric shapes as the bones, you could use bones, biped, or any other rigging system such as CAT or Puppetshop.
The only real catch that you need to be aware of us that if you plan on using an existing set of animation DSQs in the engine, that the bone/biped structure must exactly match in both names and in transform orientation. If they don't the animations either will not load for your model or will do some real wacky shit that will make the animations look awful.
I hope that helps.