Sat Oct 29, 2005 7:39 pm
Can anyone help?
I was wondering if it is possible to convert gmax files to the ones used in freelancer. I have made a ship in gmax and have been looking for over a week to find out how to convert it. Someone help plz!!!!
Yes. Use the MD3 converter plugin, which you can download from this site. It's not entirely straightforward- basically, if your ship is scaled too large or you don't read the fairly obvious directions for using the plugin (say, you don't tell GMAX that you're exporting only Frame 1 of the "animation", etc.) then the plugin won't work right.
All of these problems are solvable. However, you should be warned that if you've made use of mirrored geometry a lot, then you will generally end up with inverted parts, which you will have to fix before exporting. Turn off the "draw backfaces" option in MS3D to make sure that you don't export bad CMPs.
Basically... GMAX is an OK tool for making models for FL, but you need to be aware of the limitations of the MD3 exporter, and be prepared to fix any bad geometry that you create. I've converted lots and lots of GMAX models to MS3D and then to CMP (one of my projects involved an art team of modelers, and most of them just used GMAX, and weren't able to fix their models' problems on their own), so I know it can be done... but if you're brand-new to modeling and don't really understand the technical side of things (such things as what constitutes "bad" geometry, how to fix it, etc.) you may find using GMAX more frustrating than useful. Personally, for newbie modelers with low budgets... I'd have to suggest learning how to model with MS3D itself. It's really not that hard to use, and if you build it there, you're not going to have problems.
I use a professional-grade package, Rhino3D 3.0 (which I paid for), and I get much better results than most, but it's hard to argue that the likes of Harrier (who almost exclusively used MS3D for a long time) that MS3D can't be used to make some really nice stuff.
If you just want a free modeler that's good for game models... another suggestion I have is Wings. Wings is very easy to learn, and produces very low polycounts. I don't like its interface style, myself (I'm addicted to "classical" CAD/CAM four-views with lots of widgets and NURBS) but I've seen people build some really amazing stuff with it, and it exports into several formats that can be imported into MS3D and UVMapper Classic or LithUnwrap for skinning.