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3DS Max Centimeters vs Inches for different characters

by Nmuta Jones · in Artist Corner · 02/25/2010 (6:55 am) · 1 replies

Hey folks....just noticed something that I wanted to share with the community..


I had one character (Hero) in 3ds Max that was built using inches.
Then I had another character (Villain) built using centimeters (I purchased it from a website).

in the villian file, I merged in Hero for scale. Everything was equal. What I did not realize was that Max merged in my Hero character that I was using for scale and converted it to centimeters as well. So they looked equal in Max but they were not.

So when Villian got into game, he was huge. I couldn't figure out why, until I saw the inches vs. centimeters issue.

So, that's just a heads up.....

Character scaling issue.

The fix is just to build the 2nd character in inches (or whatever unit your first character is in) , from the start.
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Associate Logan Foster
perPixel Studios
#1
02/25/2010 (8:13 am)
Yes this is a known item with the exporters that 1 unit in Max (regardless of what you have set your system units to) equates to 1 unit in the game engine.

There are a some common ways to convert your data around if for some reason the file you need to export is sized wrong, such as:
- Merging from a file with incorrect, to correct units will force Max to perform a scale if you allow it to. This won't help you however if your model just wasnt ever sized right to begin with.
- Rescale world units is very handy if you know the % you want to adjust everything to or from. It does a pretty awesome job at adjusting your scene with few problems (and those that do occur are simple fixes)
- You can also try scaling and then fixing all the transforms (via a multitude of methods)