Wall Worm Forums

In VMF export dialog there is an option called "Vertices precision", which, in theory, should change the number of decimal places (after dot), but what it does is changes the number of non-zero digits which is allowed to use for verticies positions when exporting a VMF. Therefore, if I have a vertex with position (12345.55646, 0.00031315646, 10.3352462) in Max and the vertex precision set to "4", I will get (1234, 0.0003131, 10.33) in my VMF. This is not convenient, because the further the vertex is from the origin, the less precision it becomes. What I should get is (12345.5565, 0, 10.3352), where it rounds the values to 4 decimal places.  Not sure if it's an issue or is it designed this way, but it doesn't seem to be convenient the way it works at the moment. It would also be cool if vertex precision could be set to 0, and if so, rounded coordinates of vertices to integers. Thanks.

EDIT:
Seems like this is float type presicion of some kind, but if so, I don't see any good use for it. I think it would be great to have additional option that does what I described above, or to change the behaviour of the existing one.

Thanks a lot!

I'll try to be clear on this one. Basically I have a model which has 8 body groups with 3 variants each and 9 animations (including idle). Whenever I want to export it, I have to wait untill all the SMDs for all bodygroups are compiled. That's where the fun story begins. First of all, I don't want to wait for all bodygroups SMDs to recompile when any changes are made, but I'm absolutely unable to export only root model SMD or export it without re-exporting bodygroups. Actually it wouldn't be so much of a problem, if the exporter did not export all sequence SMDs for all bodygroups as well, which are not used when the root model is compiled to MDL. So what I get in reality (instead of 8x3 = 24 bodygroups SMDs exports on each root model compilation, which in fact, would be not so bad) is 8x3x9 = 216 SMDs for all bodygroups variants and for all animations of root model for each of them, and only 24 of those (+1 for root model SMD +9 for it's animations = 34 in total) are actually used. But I get like 300+ files compilation of which takes pretty lolg time (my PC is not so powerful) even though models' geometry is really basic. In previous versions of WWMT I linked all BG helpers to root model WWMT helper, exported the QC for it, made necessary changes to it and locked QC of the root model. After that I unlinked them back from the root model to avoid exporting them every time, exported them in portions by hand using WWMT -> Exporters -> WWMT to Source Models to avoid memory overuse and long lag, after that I used .bat file to export the root model. Now I'm unable to do this, because BG mechanics was changed (to a better one, but this F#$@y way doesn't work with it). So the point is, I think it would make sense to allow either not only "Export SMDs" button to export 100000 SMDs of all related models, but some option to export only root model SMDs as well, or at least not compile sequences for bodygroups as long as they're not needed, which would reduce export time (actually almost divide it by the number of animations in your model). So I think some optimization must be done, there are some better ways to go for sure. There is the scene I'm struggling with, maybe it will make some things more clear. Thanks.

Thanks. I hope you will have a good luck to fit it all together and work fast and stable, then it would be just an awesome piece of software for all kinds of usage.

Maybe I haven't payed enough attention to what was happening recently, but I wanted to find some detailed information about what features of mdl browsing and viewing are planned to be added in WWMT mdl support. The things I'm worried about are mainly related to sequences support, so the question is: Will MDL functionality in WWMT be capable of importing and viewing sequences of actual MDLs? Because there are some problems related to this, first of all, you would need to lay all the animations across the timeline in 3ds Max somehow so that it wouldn't be a problem to see animations for different models in complex scenes with many MDLs loaded, vmf levels particularly. Are you guys planning to come up with some solution for this, or do you already have any good ideas? I would prefer using WWMT mdl capabilities for viewing compiled models to give up using hlvm.exe, which is really f***ed up in many ways. Will this be ever posible or will mdl support be just good enough to see props around the level without having them decompiled and loaded the long way? Thanks.

Yes, makes sense. Well, I (and probably other people as well) have got what was needed, so thank you again. It works fine and I no longer have to edit the QC manually to get around, yay  8)

Checked these out, that's just the thing I meant. Except the actual blank bodygroup, I think the current solution is usable but not perfect as long as you don't have any indication of wether your BG uses blank model or not, so you have to click these buttons again when you're not sure. Here's an example of how it could be organized a bit more convenient

Checked, now it saves the height and reuses it properly.

So as I understand, bodygroups are still always re-exported as smds when the model is exported, but they don't get compiled to mdls themselves, which is good. Even though WW Pro smd exporter is very fast, for heavy models like characters with interchangable heads and clothes, it would still be good to have an option to pass bodygroups exporting (but yet it should always recompile bodygroups by default, for most models and computers it's not a big cost. But not for all).  ::)

Oh, I just realized that the provided screenshot was taken before (found it to avoid repeating the compilation process and just show you what I mean), so I guesd in beta it should work fine. I just didn't check beta and therefore did't notice it's fixed. I'm sure my installation is correct so I guess the problem is now gone. Thank you for being a step ahead again  :)

I will reinstall it again when I get home and check once more. Will let you know in a few hours

Good to know, I hope I will no longer have to change these positions and dimensions of windows in scripts manually  :)

Looks like we've got the same idea once again  :). Good to know, seems like that big update is gonna be a good one.

Yes, absolutely  :D

Every time you export a model with bodygroups, it recompiles those before compiling the model itself. Generally that's not a bad thing, but when you  have large amount of bodygroups which you don't really change between exports, you don't want to slow down your work and wait untill they are all recompiled to exact same files over and over again. You could have a checkbox in export scroll (or a new "bodygroups" scroll, which I proposed in another thread) which would decide wheter to compile the bodyparts or not. You don't have to recompile the whole thing over and over again when making small changes to the main model or some specifc bodygroups (which you can recompile manually pretty quickly after changing them).