I’ve been playing with Max 9 as some of the new features like Animation Layers really appeal to me – very useful for doing player model anims in Source.
However, seems none of the existing Max SMD utilities work with Max 9. Cannonfodder’s plug-ins don’t work at all and seeing as he’s vanished off the face of the planet, it’s unlikely he’ll update them. Also, speaking to the guys over at Wavelength, they’ve lost the source code to their version. :o(
So, stuck with no other choice, I’ve written my own SMD exporter from scratch and it seems to work pretty well so far. I’m releasing it as a Beta though as I’m sure my workflow is different to yours so you may turn up something I’ve missed.
Quick list of what it can do…
- Written for Max 9, 32-bit from scratch using the 3DXI interface.
- Exports either all visible objects or selection only (via Export Selected).
- Supports Standard and Multi/Sub-Object Materials.
- Works with Editable Mesh or Editable Poly geometry.
- Works with Skin or Physique modifiers.
- Supports using helper nodes such as Dummies or Points as bones with the Skin modifier. These are useful for things like weapons or machines where you may need translation movement on a linked bone as well as rotation.
- Exports reference and sequence SMD’s.
- Optional exporting of a sub-range of the animation.
- Optional exporting of the animation reversed.
I’m releasing it as a Beta version because my workflow is different to everyone elses so I can’t test for every situation. If you come across any problems, let me know.
- 3DSMax 9 SMD Export Plug-in version 0.1b
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Responses to “3DS Max 9 SMD Exporter Beta”
Sweet lord! 🙂
I’ll test that as soon as I figure out how to model, nice one…
Nice to see this have been finally done! Great work, however I encountered several problems:
-3dsmax crashes if you export while having something hidden (using export, not export selected)
-During compilation process it stops on first .smd saying MdlError 1 0,000000 -0,000000 0,000000 1,570796 -0,000000 0,000000.
Hmm ok. Thanks for reporting that. You’ll have to send me your SMD because that format of MdlError message doesn’t appear anywhere in the StudioMDL source code so I can’t find it to debug the error.
Can you confirm exactly what the error message is?
Wow, this is great. Thanks Jed for actually helping us modders out here. I hope someone at least codes new programs for us. Cannonfodder’s needs some updating.
Well I tend to write them for myself first and foremost but as I’m not the only one who does Source modding it makes sense to give them away.
I had planned to make some other Max 9 stuff in time but obviously its not that easy. I want to do an SMD importer too but reading SMDs isn’t as easy as writing them. :o(
The 3DS Max 9 SMD Exporter archive is invalid, can you fix that soon please? Thanks 🙂
Well if your trying to download 0.1b forget it – it’s now 0.4b and the link for that works fine.
That’s a great news!
I’ll test that one as soon as possible and let you know if I have issues..
Posted by Loke.be
Thu, February 15th, 2007 @ 16:32