Convexity and Wall Worm

[wallworm]

With the advent of the Wall Worm VMF Exporter, I have had half a dozen emails asking me about Wall Worm and Convexity. As everyone knows here, I've been a long time fan of Convexity. The emails have asked if I am planning for Wall Worm to preclude or circumvent Convexity. I answered that in the first WW blog... but here is a little more.

I want to make it very clear: I am not replacing Convexity! There are really three features I've built into the Wall Worm collection that overlap on the Convexity tools and I do use them exclusively above Convexity--the Material Library Generator, Entities and the VMF Exporter. But these tools were really to accomodate Source Engine-specific needs of my own projects.

If you haven't used Convexity, you wouldn't understand that Convexity has a wide range of tools; the VMF Exporter is only a small aspect of what Convexity is and does. I do not have any intention to try and replicate the array of tools Michael Little has built into Convexity.

Yes, I do have a list of features and bug fixes I'd like to see in Convexity. But I am a huge fan of Michael Little and Convexity (you'll find a link to his work at the bottom of every page of the forum and on the right side of the doc site). And I encourage everyone to go buy a copy of Convexity today!

If you want to take full advantage of what 3ds Max and Wall Worm can do for you, you really need to add Convexity to your bag of tools.

Shawn

[wallworm]

I am modifying the above statement and soon to lock this board.

Convexity has completely stopped development. I had hoped for a couple years to see some of the features that I knew were underway in Convexity would be finished and released. Instead, Max 2015 is around the corner and some features in the current incarnation of Convexity that crash 3ds Max 2014 have not been fixed. I'm doubtful they will be.

As such, I can no longer recommend Convexity to anyone.

I have built my own design plugin called CorVex that does do some of the things Convexity does like make walls from splines. In fact, I'd say CorVex is better at this than Convexity because CorVex is a live plugin instead of script-generated editable meshes. But the wall side-view editor and library shape placement functions in Convexity are not part of CorVex. I cannot currently make any claims about whether or not I will add such things to CorVex.

I've always looked up to and respected Michael Little, the developer of Convexity. That I have started building my own tools that further overlap and surpass some of those in Convexity is not a sign of having lost any of that respect... it is just that my personal goals compel me to continue work in these areas where Michael has walked away from.