New Dark Industries 3ds Max 7 & 8 Exporters

There's a post about these new tools over at Tim's blog: www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=10894

Matt Summers made this snazzy-looking new tool, and he suggested we put feedback into this forum. So this is a place to post feedback, bugs and questions.

Here's what I've found:

First off, it's really slick, and I got a kick out of the few features I had a chance to play with. Specifically the rollout that can crank out collision meshes (and corresponding LOScol meshes) at the push of a button. However, on the subject of:

Collision Meshes: I have lately been making DTS files that have more than the old limit of 8 collision meshes, so the fact that the rollout only seemed equipped for 8 seemed limiting. That aside, I've only been able to export up to 20 collision meshes. According to David Michael, the coder I'm working with, there should be no limit on the number of meshes at DTS can use, but the exporters - the Dark Industries exporter, and the GarageGames Max 5 and 7 exporters as well - won't let me export more than 20. The nice thing about the DI exporter is that when I try to export too many COL objects it just gives an assert, whereas the GG tools crash Max.

Auto-Billboards; Another thing I've been interested in is billboards as a low detail level. I only recently learned that Torque can produce billboard textures automatically. I discovered this looking Bravetree's Tree Pack files, specifically FTree02_BB. There's a LOD marker named BB::detail2, and no corresponding object mesh. This marker auto-generates a billboard. However, I've only ever been able to get this to work when exporting from Max 5 using the GG exporters. Billboards, auto-generated or otherwise, don't work for me when exported from Max 7.

I see the DI exporter has an "Auto Billboard" setting, but I couldn't get it to work, at least when using the files from the tree pack. I tried both files that were already set up to auto generate a BB already, and files that weren't.

In both the GG and the DI Max 7 exporters, trying to export FTree02_BB - the file with an auto-billboard marker already set up - produces a "crossed detail levels" error, which says that the error can be turned off. With the old Max 7 exporter I can see where to turn it off, under Error Control > Allow Crossed Details. In the DI exporter, however, I don't see where to turn it off. Just as well perhaps. If I check Allow Crossed Details when exporting from FTree02, Max 7 crashes. Max 5 exports this file just fine with "Allow Crossed Details," though, and the auto-billboards show up in game.

EDIT: At the time I originally made this post, I had both the Dark Industries exporter and the exporter from the GarageGames Artist Page installed. Turns out this causes all sorts of problems. I revisited the auto-billboard test after fixing this, and now it at least exports the BraveTree file. However, when I look at it in ShowTool Pro, the billboard is visible at all times, at all detail levels, overlaid on the higher detail meshes. And when I try to place the exported DTS in my game, the game crashes. That could very well be a problem with the app, of course, and there's always the chance there's a problem with the Max file. Though I think of the BraveTree files as the benchmark for proper Max file setup.

Material Settings: The only other problem I can think of off-hand is that, in the DI exporter, I tried to change some material settings in a multi-sub object material. It showed the name of the multi-sub, but all the settings were grayed out. The names of the sub-materials didn't show up in the list, so I couldn't change them there.

All in all the Dark Industries exporter is a nice looking product, and just from my experience with the Collision Manager, I get the sense that it'll be a very powerful tool. It looks like it might take some unlearning of the old ways of doing things to make the most of it, but that's what it takes to make these kinds of leaps ahead.