LightWave DTS Exporter 04-11-16 Released

#1 Great! I'll head over and download it since I get my Mac back tomorrow! As always, thanks for an excellent exporter!

#2 Hey Dave i'm glad you came up to breath. Great news. I will try it out ASAP.

#3 Oh man you make my decision harder. I was about to buy 3d studio but now I have to look at lightwave again.

It's half the price.

#4 Not to mention lightwave has a steller interface. I do not get the Maya or 3DS Max way of an interface, icons icons ICONS!!! STOP THE ICONS.. icons for cut and paste are cool, but when your talking about 16x16 icon for extrude or bevel, well it all comes down to me waiting the second for the tooltip, and even when i know the icon, they are still hard to decipher, for 3k I think they should have a UI design specialist

[end rant]

#5 I am one of the still user of your nice exporter but now i want to say thank you too.
I think there are many still users out there who find your work is amazing.

Keep on going and make a break sometimes.
But not to long :)

I am verry interested in looking glass.

Mathias

#6

#7 Hey Dave!

I just wanted to let you know that I ABSOLUTELY LOVE YOUR DIF EXPORTER! It is amazing the time it has saved me by allowing me to use Lightwave to build my game models as well as the fact that the interface to use your exporter is very clean and easy to use. Awesome job man!

Thanks for such an awesome plugin,
Billy

#8 Can you also export LW objects to .dif format.

I just tryed out the lwtomap exporter from greenbriar.com and can export lw objects as a .map file to worldcraft and than can save it from worldcraft to a true valve220.map format. Then i can import it to Quark and make a real .dif file from an LW object.

Till now there are some texture jaggies and a light problem out of the greenbriar exporter but i have mailed this to David Mathews the maker of the plugin and gave him the informations i have make with the exporter and maybe he will change some things so we can use his exporter directly for quark.

Ok, his exporter is not for free but it is not relly expensive.

So with the plugin from Lightwave Dave and David Methews Lightwave is a real good solution for making Torque games nice and interesting !

Mathias

#9 It is the link for greenbriar, just becouse greenbriar.co something different than any 3d releated stuff... :
http://www.greenbriarstudio.com/3D/GameLW.htm

Matthias , can you show me a few exported examples inside the engine ? Im contacted David some monthes ago when the exporter wasnt ready yet, and i never tried to use it before...The price is 50 dollars which is truly acceptable if its can be a usefull solution for exporting LWO into TGE as interior.

#10 Hi Gabor,

i send you a simple object.
But do not expect to much from a test object.

Mathias

#11 Ok, let's put this:

I build and texturize a environment in LW; how should I export it with DTS exp, to have it working as a *map* in Quark?
I built and textured a chair; how should I export it with DTS exp, to have it working as a *object* in Quark?

And textures are also exported?

In substance: DTS can build anything, from characters to the brushes of a map?

#12 @Marcel

As far as i know you can not export it as .dts to import it then to quark.
You must export it to the .map file format and the best solution was the valve220.map format but i do not know an exporter for LW that can export a valve220.map format.

I use the .map exporter from David Methews (greenbriar).
The problem is that the .map exporter from him is for 3D Game Studio and not for Torque.

But i can export a .map file and then import it to hammer.
There i must delete the light and then can export it to the valve220.map format.
Now i can load it in quark and there i must retexture it becouse the exporter from greenbriar has problems with the texture size together with Torque, not with 3dGS.

I must go this way becouse when i import the .map file that i exported from the greenbriar exporter from LW then even if i delete the light i can not create dif files. I get a failure massage, something like "there must be a / somewhere".

I emailed David Methews with the problems and maybe he will change something in the plugin or make a new plugin for lw and torque in the next year.

The plugin is not a free one but it is not so expensive.

Mathias

#13 This is intended for David Wyand or anyone else that can assist.

I am working on a Torque engine RTS game, and am using your LightWave file converter.

I am working in LightWave 8. My goal is to get alpha working for the purpose of making foliage for trees.

I have simplified my alpha issues down to the following test.

I have a single poly with a texture (.png format) assigned that contains an alpha channel. As per the instruction in the documentation, I have set the LightWave transparency settings to "something above zero" in this case, I have set it to 5.

When I export and load this object into the game, the alpha is non functional, all I get is the solid textured poly.

I have also tried switching to a .jpg format for the texture and then assigning the alpha texture to the object in the transparency option in LightWave.

No luck there either.

I noticed that the documentation talked about using the "TorqueDTS_MaterialAttributes plug-in" in order to use additive or subtractive transparency for the surface. Where can I get this plug-in?

Thanks for you time.

Todd Pickens
www.shapesandlines.com

#14 Well, it seems that I solved the alpha issue listed above.

The instructions said to use a setting "other than zero". Ultimately, 50 did the trick. I assume there are other values that work but damn if I know what they are.