As I hinted at in my previous post, I’ve made some changes to my 3DS Max SMD Exporter in collaboration with Shawn Olson and Hunted Cow Studios. This is not a game-changing update but it adds a few features that were specifically asked for.

Here’s a list of what’s new.

  • Fixed issues with the options dialogue and added tool-tips to help explain features.
  • The exporter will use the name of the material applied to the mesh if no diffuse texture is loaded.
  • Meshes flagged as un-renderable will export their node but not their mesh. Useful for CAT rigs.
  • Keyframe only and Bookend modes for specialised animation exports.
  • Re-wrote the MaxScript interface from scratch. Example in the MaxScript folder.

Note: This update does not work with 3DS Max 2012! Support for that version is coming very soon. Promise!.

And with that, I’m off on my holidays. Tootle pip!

Apr. 11, 2011 @ 15:43

So 3DS Max 2012 has been released for about 3 days now and already I’ve had at least a dozen emails pointing out that my SMD plug-ins don’t work with the newest version.

I know.

Almost every other release of 3DS Max changes enough in the plug-in API that compatibility is broken with other versions. That requires a new version of the Max SDK, maybe a new version of Visual Studio and often a good couple of man hours re-writing sections of code to work with any changes. For me it’s often more work still as I have a single code source that cross compiles for all versions and I need to know that a change for one version of Max won’t break the others and of course test them.

When will the plug-ins be updated? Well I don’t work a company with an Autodesk subscription license any more and an upgrade to 3DS Max 2012 + Visual studio will cost me about US $2500 – and who has that sort of money lying around? So we’ll have to wait and see. I would certainly recommend you don’t upgrade to 2012 if you’re doing any Valve based modelling right now and if you try the trial, don’t save over your files as you can’t open a 2012 file in an earlier version.

There will however be an update to one of the SMD plug-ins coming soon but only for Max 2011 and earlier. I’ve been expanding some features to the SMD Exporter on behalf of Shawn Olson and Hunted Cow Studios. For most users the upgrade won’t be necessary unless you want the tidier GUI or unless you’re using Shawn’s excellent Wallworm tool.

As for where I’ve been for a year?

Getting a new job, buying an Xbox, getting a girlfriend, travelling the world, working on other projects and generally getting a life 🙂