3d studio max entity placer

r-type · Post by **r-type** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 2:09 am

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone knows a plugin/script for max with which you can place game entity placeholders and export their data (type,position,rotation,parameters etc.) in a seperate file.

This way it would be unlinked to a 3d mesh data format.

luckymutt · Post by **luckymutt** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 3:56 am

I don't quite get what you are asking or understand what it would do, but its enough to make me curious.
Can you explain a little further?
Maybe describe a real-world example?

afecelis · Post by **afecelis** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 4:51 am

I think he means entities; such as player start, special lights, movers (doors-elevators), weapons, special zones, triggers, etc.

this way if he can grab their pos directly from the model he creates in max it will be much easier to code stuff for them in Irrlicht. (specially the pos of each entity (in Irr=node))

r-type · Post by **r-type** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 11:42 am

exactly afecelis! unfortunately i don't know any maxscript or how to code plugins for max. Ofcourse I could dive in and try... or maybe someone likes the idea and likes to help ?

My idea would be a bit as follows:

- load an entity description file somewhere ( similar or the same as .fgd for Q2)
- put in a helper type of object for which you can choose the type and parameters accordingly (boundingbox will be shown according to type of entity)
- export the data

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 4:25 pm

This would be useful (also for placing particles etc).. keep us updated if you find/make something

afecelis · Post by **afecelis** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 8:13 pm

there once was this brazilian 3d engine called Fly3d. They did something similar to what you need. You created your geometry in max and labeled it in a special way, also the lights. You had to use special characters to identify their names, then when exporting, their info would be kept to run in their runtime. There are still some links to them around, but sadly their main site is dead now. Let me see if I can find it and link you to a copy of it.

now, a bit more on topic, one problem would be (for coordinates) that 3dsmax coordinate system is XY for 2d and Z for the vertical; and Irrlicht is XZ for 2d and Y for the vertical so info might get a bit messed up in the exporting process. So if you got your entities defined in 3dsmax with position, etc, then they'll go nuts when loading them into Irrlicht; or better said they won't remain the same.

And, someone was trying to create an xml reader to grab some basic info from a Q3 map file. This could be a similar case for max. Let me dig the forums to see if I run into it

afecelis · Post by **afecelis** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 8:25 pm

Fly3d is now supported by Fabio Policarpo (its creator) and it's open source. find it here:
http://fabio.policarpo.nom.br/fly3d/

r-type · Post by **r-type** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 8:41 pm

thanks afecelis i will check it out. Ofcourse my idea would only support point entities, unless a 3d format would support seperate meshes.

etcaptor · Post by **etcaptor** » Mon Feb 13, 2006 4:24 pm

You can take a look on my3d loader created by ZDimitor. It is possibly to add some additional code in loader to take position of particles or other stuffs from 3dmax.
Here is small discusion about it:

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... ght=#36814