3dsMax instead of Worldcraft?
by Christopher Smith · in Artist Corner · 09/03/2001 (6:30 am) · 2 replies
I have been mapping in Ued for a few years now with the advent of new features in the Warfare engine I am using 3dsMax a lot. My question is, is it possible to use 3dsMax instead of Wroldcraft to construct buidlings/ect for mapping in V12/Tribes2? I have enough on my plate with learning new Ued features and 3dsmax...having to learn Worldcraft would not really be feasable.
Thanks,
Chris
Thanks,
Chris
#2
It works really well except that the engine is still at an early stage and lacks a lot of high end features like multi texturing and dynamic LOD.
If anyone knows of an engine that had this kind of functionality thats readily avaliable with cuting edge technology, I"d love to hear about it.
I personally can't think of a better way to work except direct from the 3D app, this gives you a lot more control of the geometry and texturing than you could ever have in a general editor. Allthough it also comes at a price with a difficult learning curve but far more powerfull features. I think one of the problems in the past was that you couldn't get a true idea of what your game would look like represented in the max viewports.
With max 4 viewports have been vastly improved and textures are not such a great speed issue as they were before. Not only that but you have transparencey, vertex colours and even vertex/pixel shaders in viewports and direct DX8 representation, along with openGL.
Previously computers running software like max weren't powerfull enough to create in game levels easily without grinding to a halt when you have say 20,000 polygons in your viewport, not to mention memory leaks etc.
much of this has changed, with Fast gaming 3D cards and ghz+ processors.
anyway thats my 5 cents. At the end of the day both have their advantages and disadvantages. I like the flexibility of a application like max, particularly if your engine imports bones etc, it makes it very easy to set triggers and import looping or event driven animation built directly into your scenes.
Anyway I have to get off the computer :(
AD
09/03/2001 (7:41 pm)
I haven't used an editor like worldcraft as I have been fortunate enough to use an engine at work, where everything can be done in 3ds, along with custom object atributes for setting triggers, sound triggers with radius and 3D fading, particle effects and texture coordinate animation and in out portal technology.It works really well except that the engine is still at an early stage and lacks a lot of high end features like multi texturing and dynamic LOD.
If anyone knows of an engine that had this kind of functionality thats readily avaliable with cuting edge technology, I"d love to hear about it.
I personally can't think of a better way to work except direct from the 3D app, this gives you a lot more control of the geometry and texturing than you could ever have in a general editor. Allthough it also comes at a price with a difficult learning curve but far more powerfull features. I think one of the problems in the past was that you couldn't get a true idea of what your game would look like represented in the max viewports.
With max 4 viewports have been vastly improved and textures are not such a great speed issue as they were before. Not only that but you have transparencey, vertex colours and even vertex/pixel shaders in viewports and direct DX8 representation, along with openGL.
Previously computers running software like max weren't powerfull enough to create in game levels easily without grinding to a halt when you have say 20,000 polygons in your viewport, not to mention memory leaks etc.
much of this has changed, with Fast gaming 3D cards and ghz+ processors.
anyway thats my 5 cents. At the end of the day both have their advantages and disadvantages. I like the flexibility of a application like max, particularly if your engine imports bones etc, it makes it very easy to set triggers and import looping or event driven animation built directly into your scenes.
Anyway I have to get off the computer :(
AD
Brendan Rogers
you can apparently export .map files from 3dsmax and possible load them into worldcraft (havnt tried it)
but im guessing it would be more time consuming.
for things like hint brushes, doors etc you are going to have to load worldcraft anyway.
just take the time to learn it, its not that hard. if you can use 3dsmax then you will have no worries.