Wall Worm Forums

Welcome to the forums.

Yes, you can export models you bring in from Maya. There are some things you may want to read regarding normals from Maya to Max here. Unfortunately, we had a server crash a month or two back and most of that thread is lost to the abyss... but I retrieved and reposted some of it.

There is a beta version of the upcoming Wunderboy SMD Exporter available upon request if you are having problems with your normals. (If you would like to test it, I have it for Max 2012 in 64bit and I think maybe 2010/2011 32bit)

You may want to direct any specific questions to our resident Maya expert MR. Kevinlongtime.

Right now the Displacement Tool does not honor any uvw mapping. It's a flaw that several have asked about.

Right now I am investigating how to get UVW mapping to export properly. I have already started the process and in my local tests have gotten at least closer to doing this. THe problem has been my flemsy understanding of the technical aspects of UVW Mapping and vertices/faces.

So for those of you wanting this, be happy to know that I am studying the problem.

One of the problems is that, to my knowledge, you cannot apply per-face UVW onto a face in a Source Displacement. Each Source Displacement gets its single UVW coordinates from the underlying brush face... and all of the UVW of the displacement tris comes from the position they started from on that original brush face. If that is confusing to you, that is fine. But if it is not confusing to you and you have any understanding of MAXScript, please feel free to contact me with any input on fleshing out the UVW of displacements.

I think I have the proper tiling code ready locally. But I do not have the correct rotation and UVW Plain orientation code for complex UVW rules... as the version I'm working on assumes that all UVW orientation are aligned wth the underlying brush. But what I'm trying to do is make it so that you can arbitrarily apply a Planar UVW (or Box) to an arbitrary set of Displacements and move, rotate and scale the UVWs with the UVW gizmos and have that mapping export into Source.

This release was going to be a few days from now... but I learned that the current release broke the displacement tool's VMF Exporter (the exporter had the export code commented out). So i released this version... which also auto-generates Flexcontrollers with morphed models/VTAs.

So if you have played with the VTA exporter... you may have been confused since the flex controllers are not visible in faceposer upon export. As of 1.744 you must still add the flexcontroller data into the QC manually.

I have already added automation of flexcontrollers from the morpher into the next release. That means that you will be able to edit in Faceposer directly upon exporting. At the moment I am trying to tidy up a couple things but hope to have that update in the next couple of days.

Also... just a reminder... Wunderboy has been working on updates to his SMD/VTA exporters that improve performance/results and add functionality. Please consider sending him a thank you in the form of a donation in the name of yourself and Wall Worm. I will share news when he has released these new versions.

New WWMT version is out. Has a few new settings in the settings floater. Also fixed a Morph-O-Matic to VTA/flex bug.

See the changelog for full details.

Also added a new docs page on how to export the facial animations (morphers to VTA/flex).

The docs I linked assume you already have a model assigned to the WWMT helper that you can export normally.

What I would do is first familiarize yourself with how WWMT assigns meshes to the WWMT helper and export the model. Once you can get it to export, then take the steps to add the $jigglebone support with the docs above.

I will try to fill out the complete process in the docs soon so it will be more clear. Hopefully I can get around to that this week when I'm writing some other docs.

For the moment, the best docs for $jigglebones in WWMT are here. When I get time I will expound on it more... Hopefully that helps get you started.

So you may have wondered how you can make a tileable, seamless texture from your photo. If you are using an image editor like Photoshop, you've probably found some information on doing that online. But what if you want to do it inside 3ds Max?

Here is a video that shows you how to do that. You can also read instructions here.

Quote from: ROMOAS on December 06, 2011, 02:16:17 PM
got it fixed.

is it normal for me to have to reset the root folders each time i start 3Ds max ?

No, it isn't. Anything you set inside the Settings window is remembered forever. If you aren't getting the settings between each time opening the WWMT UI, you can set your default model and material path inside the settings floater to set the default for new models.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Quote from: DillonBarba on December 04, 2011, 12:29:12 AM
got this little beauty still (AppFramework : Unable to load module p4lib.dll!)

That is always in the compile window... you can ignore it :)

Otherwise did you get the compile to work?

Welcome back, Dillon. We lost your contributions with a server crash a month or so back...

Anyway, I haven't seen that one before. My first guess is to restart Steam. Sometimes there are odd errors after a Steam update. If a restart doesn't fix it... try loading the Mod... then opening SDK for your mod... and opening a file for it (in Hammer or model viewer)... then try to recompile. Hopefully that fixes it.

I would suggest removing the map from the Ambient slot of the material. Right-click the ambient slot in the material editor and then choose clear. Then re-export the texture.

Oops... looks like I loaded 1.73 again last night when I loaded the update. The download should now be the correct 1.74 version.

Sorry about that.

I have released WWMT 1.74. This version adds a RES File maker (which you need if you want people to download custom assets like models and materials) from a server running your custom maps. You can package your assets into your map's BSP with a commandline tool in SOurce... but that is inconvenient; a common tool has been PakRat... but that program stopped packaging materials in my projects some time ago...

So that is one reason I made this tool. It is just an efficiency tool... as you will still need to manually add any sound files, text files, scripts and other files to your RES file that this tool doesn't consider (it only adds models and materials that are inside the current scene when you run the tool).

I also added a couple new Proxy tools inside the WWMT UI. I had added Proxies in a recent update to the displacement tool... but now you can make them inside WWMT. Also, you can collect skins from your proxies.

See the changelog for other additions/changes.

Quote from: ROMOAS on December 02, 2011, 04:31:41 PM
i do have one more question.
there is a button in the WWMT that you did not cover its the Default Map Folder is this to not be set or do i set it to my:

local Disk (C:) - program files (x86)- steam- steamapps- common- left4dead2- sdk_content- mapsrc
folder ?

Correct. That setting is used with the displacement tool when exporting a VMF containing displacements and model placement.

Quote from: ROMOAS on December 02, 2011, 04:31:41 PM
thank you for all your help.

You are welcome. Please share samples of your projects here so we can all see what you are doing.  :)