Hey Shawn, sorry if this is a somewhat laziness based question on my end; just started working full time and I have less time that I did before to play around with (I did try and install it in 3DSMax2013, but there doesn't seem to be an SMD exporter for 2013 yet), I was just wondering if the Wall worm Model Tools (or an SMD exporter) was stable or supported on Max 2013 before I begin trying everything possible to get it working. I'm on my laptop computer right now, which doesn't have all my old programs on it, but I'm really dying to import some of my new models into Source for the new Source Filmmaker to create some renders!
Well yes WW works in 2013. And it has a built-in SMD exporter now. So it works right out of the box.
I'm still hoping Wunderboy will a release an update to his exporter sometime for 2013 as his exporter works faster than the WW one. But until then, you can still export with WW in 2013. Make sure to update to Product Update 2 for the Hull tools. There is a bug I've found in Product Update 3, however, that messes up DirectX Shaders... which affects the displacements in WW.
Ahh, very cool that the exporter is now built in and working on 2013 :) Thank you sir! Saves me a bit of trial and error knowing this ahead of time lol. It was probably announced or in the docs, but I've just been away from everything computer related for the most part for months (and hadnt done much things model related for even longer), so I've been a bit behind on everything lol.
Well, that's a bummer.
Looks like I'm back to square one with the normals smoothing issue from Maya to Max again like I was having before Wunderboy corrected it in his SMD exporter beta a long time ago for Max 2012. Looks like I need to get ahold of max2012 again.
I must say though, very nice updates since I have used it last! Feels like it got a huge polish in functionality
Well send me an example model and I will see if there is anything I can do to add supoort into the WWMT SMD Exporter.
Alright, example scene sent! Thanks for taking the time to see if you can correct it:)
The example scene I included is straight from Maya to Max via the send function between both programs, which I finally got to work. No in-between exporting and importing to complicate things. After reading Wunderboys responses again, seems it might be the alternative normals route or something along those lines which might need attention because my smoothing is going away completely as he describes here:
The SMD exporter does actually have a "Use alternate normals method" option which uses different code for exporting the smoothing. By default it looks for the auto-generated normals from the smoothing groups but if you've got explicit normals, these don't export and you get a faceted looking model. That's when you should try the alternate normals method. That looks for explicit normals and exports those instead.
http://www.wallworm.net/index.php/topic,100.0.html
So I put some thought into this hoping that I'd have support for it in the next release (that I may put out this weekend)... but it's actually a little more complex than I thought it would be. I sent an email to Wunderboy to see if he's got time to share some input on the calculation... but he has been hard to reach these days.
I will look at it again next week if I haven't heard from him.
Alright, thanks for trying Shawn.
Late reply due to my motherboard finally getting fixed on my laptop after 2 months of no computer lol.
Well at least you're back! :)
I still haven't got the answer to this yet. If I had unlimited time and resources I'd probably have solved it by now. But the little time I seem to have lately has me adding little tidbits here and there that help me in the levels I'm working on. Since I don't use Maya or other apps... the dilemma never pops up for me.
Still... I'll get around to it at some point.
It's understandable, no worries. I'm in no rush as I am focusing on saving up for an apartment for the past few months. Once I get my own place I can then hook up my desktop and use the old version of Max installed on it for this. Once you figure it out or wunderboy replies, I can then use it on here (laptop) as a luxury.
Kevin, please download WWMT 1.87 and see if you can now export models properly you've brought in from Maya. Test raw models. It should just work now...
OK... so 1.87 did not solve this, nor 1.871. But the next version will work. However, I need to speed it up since it is currently very slow. I'll play with is for a bit this morning... I will have it out either today or this weekend.
Sounds great; looking forward to it!
Quote from: KevinLongtime on October 19, 2012, 04:21:47 PM
Sounds great; looking forward to it!
The explicit normal version is very slow. But I have found a way to make it fast... but have a couple other fixes... so expect the update either tonight or this weekend to make it run faster using that method.
Ahh, beautiful!:
(https://www.wallworm.net/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi45.tinypic.com%2F30j44e1.png&hash=0911532d3b4acecc34bbbd22fd94f402b448373e)
Finally working, and working great! A bit slow yeah as you said, but I'm not too worried because I can at atleast get some correct edges exported out now. Once you workout the speed, should be amazing! Thank you sir :D
Download WWMT 1.873 and it should work faster now.
Alrighty, after my gaming binge of being away from my games for 7 months, I've went ahead with setting up and trying out the latest version of WWMT on my main computer and gave it a try with explicit normals option on.
From the time of clicking compile it took about 4 seconds for the whole process to complete. Seems to be very efficient now and I thank you again for your hard work! The [non-painfull] creation process begins :)
Well that's certainly better than the 45 seconds it took before!
Alright, so I have been doing tons of testing and all along the way have been running into some oddities in lighting/shading which at first I thought was due to some sort of limitation in Source and Source Filmmaker.
However, after doing some comparisons of exports of mine done on the same models with Wunderboys SMD exporter and yours, I am finding that the normals coming from your version of the SMD exporter do not seem to be all that accurate (well, in terms of shading that is). The edges themselves look right and arn't smoothed out of proportion like the last version of the tool, but its the shading (and shadowing in more advanced lighting senarios) that is somehow thrown off. For example, a model of mine exported with your exporter would show up very overly dark with ambient occlusion on in Source Filmmaker and there is shadowing even in parts not needing shadowing; but with wunderboys, the crevices and other things that would normally shadow in real life are accurately represented and are not generally overdarkened and light is able to be casted on them properly without acting weird. Another example is if a model in tf2 has a white silhouette highlighting just slightly around the edges, they look fine when exported with wunderboys, but with the built in WWMT exporter, you can see the white highlights happening sort of all around the model even in the front and not just the edges. If you need some pictures to show what I mean I can do that, but for now I was just giving you a heads up incase you might know whats causing it because it is a shame I'm only allowed to use the legacy texturer exporter with wunderboys while the shading is acting up. Since I'm on my main computer now I can just use Wunderboys for the time being again
Send me a couple side-by-side SMD files using the two exporters and I see if I can extrapolate the cause.
do you need just the SMD files or do you want the texture/directory setup aswell?
Please create the simplest scene possible that demonstrates this (even a cube if it shows up that way)... Name the model in WWMT something like WWMTnormals and export; then change exporter to Wunderboy, change model name to Wunderboynormals and export with new name. Then send me the original Max scene along with the SMDs/QCs/batch files created by WW and Wunderboy.
That will help me figure it out.
I'm pretty busy working on a level so probably won't get around to finding a solution immediately unless the answer is obvious right away.