Feature Request: Max studio import

[RanBK]

There must be an easy way to do this...import a scene from Max studio so that it renders exactly the same as it does in Max studio...

Create -> Export -> Load

I'm spending most of my time trying to get content into Irrlicht, which is a major waste of development time.

Please tell me something is in the works on this...

[JP]

I don't think it's legal to write a loader for 3ds max as it's protected by copyright (i guess so you can only use 3ds max to produce 3ds max files rather than some cheaper/free knock off).

[hybrid]

Well, you'd just need a scene exporter into some supported scene format of Irrlicht. Such as collada or .irr (the latter has to be implemented by someone, the formaer might already exist). But maybe it's easier to just export meshes and use irrEdit to create the scene?

[RanBK]

I don't think it's legal to write a loader for 3ds max as it's protected by copyright (i guess so you can only use 3ds max to produce 3ds max files rather than some cheaper/free knock off).

A loader is perfectly legal. Reverse engineering for the purposes of inter-operability is legally protected.

As long as you didn't steal AutoDesk's actual code, you are able to write a parser that extracts the necessary info.

Well, you'd just need a scene exporter into some supported scene format of Irrlicht. Such as collada or .irr (the latter has to be implemented by someone, the formaer might already exist). But maybe it's easier to just export meshes and use irrEdit to create the scene?

For professional developers, using irrEdit as part of the tool chain is simply not an option. A direct WYSIWYG path from Max to irrLicht is required.

It saves so much time and effort.

[hybrid]

Well, a direct .max import won't be made, because the formats lacks almost all documentation. So you have to check the other ways from Max to Irrlicht, i.e. using another scene format. I don't know which export options are available, but I guess there are some formats which would support scenes.

[vermeer]

for scenery B3d would be a nice option, but maybe the existing plugin is not anymore working in modern max versions...

of those which are native in max, ASE, which is an ASCII format, and is documented, includes camera, lights, vertex colors info. Still, getting a bit old.

probably collada is the best shot for that. In irrlicht , I dont know the state of the loader, but there's a free max exporter, and I expect it to be very good.

I already saw a quite featured level , even lightmapped, and exported as b3d out of Max, if I am not wrong, loaded into irrlicht. So grab the plugin... http://www.onigirl.com/pipeline/

Readme says it works till Max 6...I often used plugins that kept working in way modern Maxes, so...

Try collada also.

For animation, I'd recommend b3d, I hope someday irrlicht will have also md5, is pretty pwoerful for animation, and very light. You could allways try to fight with x and panda exporter, but then grab mview.exe from MS DX 8.x SDK and dig very well this forum....

[RanBK]

Well, I am fast running out of options. I have tried every format Irrlicht has to offer and it either fails outright to load, or it corrupts the display of the textures.

The majority of the time it is tiling and blending issues. I've only found a single way to import a blended texture terrain from 3ds Max and that was to bake a map. The result was a very low resolution version of the terrain. All the fine detail was gone and it looked similar to a smudged water colour drawing.

Its a pity because the engine would have no issues rendering the high detail.

A solution is required ASAP, has anyone considered Kaydara FBX???

[FuzzYspo0N]

A loader is perfectly legal.

not really, its a proprietry format meaning u pay to use it. meaning u have to pay for irrlicht(not gonna happen, cos irrlicht is free)

i tried using max, its not allowed unless u pay for each distributed thing.

[RanBK]

not really, its a proprietry format meaning u pay to use it. meaning u have to pay for irrlicht(not gonna happen, cos irrlicht is free)

i tried using max, its not allowed unless u pay for each distributed thing.

You're being lied to.

A format, in itself, cannot be legally protected. It is not a method, or process that is protected by law. Unlike formats such as mp3, there is no associated algorythm that is protected by patent (e.g. a codec) that is required to access the format. Even with mp3, if you write your own codec, that does not use patent protected code, there are no legal issues with your final product.

It is the method or process used to access that format which is protected, not the format itself.

A developer is quite free to write his/her own version of a parser that can both read and write to the format. The same process is used by Office products such OpenOffice to read and save in other formats, or open-source .pdf readers.

Bottom line, if the parser and renderer is your own code, you're free to do what you like.


Additonal note: I tried the b3d format...sorry, but no luck either. I'm getting an error message in regards to the blend material. I'm being told the 'Object...has invalid material'.

If anyone is interested, here is a tutorial on how to create a blend in 3ds max:

http://www.delta3d.org/article.php?stor ... =tutorials

[hybrid]

We don't need tutorials, but the meshes you exported, and a screenshot of how it should look like. Then we could help. BTW: 3ds tiling has been fixed recently, many others should already work if exported correctly. But you can also manually edit the tiling.

[FuzzYspo0N]

You're being lied to.

It was actually a few YEARS back come to think of it, its probably why they might have thought its cool to say u can use the format and owuldnt release the specification, although u might read through the licence u arent really allowed to dissasemble any part of the program by law( i dont know if that includes the file format) but either way, its not something im gonna do lol... i wud rather work on a max exporter. its much much easier, and u can make it export to the native irr format.

[RanBK]

We don't need tutorials, but the meshes you exported, and a screenshot of how it should look like. Then we could help. BTW: 3ds tiling has been fixed recently, many others should already work if exported correctly. But you can also manually edit the tiling.

I just followed that tutorial. The only difference is that I set my units to 1 = 1m. The mesh is 10,000 units and its square.

That's it, should take you 15mins if you've got Max. I've kept it simple for debugging purposes, just two blended textures using different heightmaps.

Here are the screenshots:








Here are the files:

http://files-upload.com/files/687100/terrain.zip

i wud rather work on a max exporter. its much much easier, and u can make it export to the native irr format.

Is irr a format??? I got the impression it was just like an XML wrapper or something similiar that also embedded the original files within it.

If it allows WYSIWYG transfer from 3ds Max, then I'm all for it.

[bitplane]

Is irr a format??? I got the impression it was just like an XML wrapper or something similiar that also embedded the original files within it.

If it allows WYSIWYG transfer from 3ds Max, then I'm all for it.

I'd like to see something like scene loaders in addition to mesh loaders, possibly scene writers too. We could then eventually have loaders for other scene formats like VRML etc, the quake map loader could be a scene loader instead, while collada could be both a scene and mesh loader. Pluggable scene importers would make it easy to get to the inner parts of any type of scene, and exporters would make IrrEdit a very powerful scene editor for all kinds of games.
I'm not volunteering to make this though, perhaps the idea may inspire someone to take up the challenge

[hybrid]

The contained 3ds file is not UV wrapped. It does not load any textures. You can see the terrain, but it's just vertex colored. I think you have to tweak your exporter options, or do some steps in MAX in advance. I thin kthe tutorial laso adviced to do so.
BTW: You won't have success with this type of material. The blending is defined by the heightmap. But the heightmap is not part of the material anymore. The only thing you could do is to encode the height value into the alpha value of the vertex color. Then you can use the SOLID_2_LAYER material. Don't know which other ways are typically used for this kind of texture blending (besides shaders).

[RanBK]

The contained 3ds file is not UV wrapped. It does not load any textures. You can see the terrain, but it's just vertex colored. I think you have to tweak your exporter options, or do some steps in MAX in advance. I thin kthe tutorial laso adviced to do so.

Actually, it has a planer UVW map, Irrlicht just doesn't see it, nor can it see the materials.

The second part of that tutorial shows you how to bake a map and UV wrap it. That's what we're trying to avoid.

BTW: You won't have success with this type of material. The blending is defined by the heightmap. But the heightmap is not part of the material anymore. The only thing you could do is to encode the height value into the alpha value of the vertex color. Then you can use the SOLID_2_LAYER material. Don't know which other ways are typically used for this kind of texture blending (besides shaders).

None of the exporters can properly export a blended material made this way. The only way to replicate Max's method, is to repeat it within the engine. That is, when loading a mesh, the heighmaps are processed and textures are blended.

This would make things very easy and lead to some very stunning detail in large environments.