Building Interiors with Maya?...

#1 Export as a dts and use the built in polysoup. I don't know if there is a dif exporter for maya.

#2 Thanks Mike... Uhhh, whats Polysoup...? <:)

#3 If you are using tgea, then in the inspector, there is a checkbox near the bottom to make your object collideable using polysoup collision detection.
video.aol.com/video-detail/loading-and-configuring-polysoup-models-in-tgea-17-be...

www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/13709

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl--48f_65U

#4 Here is a Maya82Map exporter. I'm not sure how well it works, but presumably you will have to model according to CSG guidelines to have it create valid geometry. I've never used it so I have no idea how it works.

#5 You won't really get any decent results using Maya to make DIFs. CSG modeling relies on convex brush-based modeling. It's like building with Legos, if there were no convex lego pieces.

Valve's Hammer is your best bet for making DIFs in my opinion. There are lots of other apps that will also work just fine, that's just my choice.

There are several major advantages to DIF -- collision performance, portal rendering, and shadow maps.

Collision performance is less of an issue than it used to be with polysoup built into the engine. Portal rendering can still be very useful for controlling which parts of your interiors and the objects in them are rendered, but it's only really useful for large, complex interiors like the kinds you see in traditional FPS games.

As far as I know, though, the shadow maps used for all static objects aren't rendered onto static DTS objects. I definitely haven't tested this lately, but I'd assume it's still true.

Now, if you're planning to move to T3D, there will be a new, completely dynamic (no pre-rendered shadow maps) lighting system which makes this a non-issue.

#6 @Henry: if you import DTS shapes into Constructor and embed them inside a DIF they'll get lightmaps.