3ds Max Plugin Upgrades

Announcements and discussion regarding any projects related to Cyan Worlds' Plasma Engine including (but not limited to) CyanWorlds.com Engine, Drizzle, OfflineKI, PyPRP, and libHSPlasma.

3ds Max Plugin Upgrades

Postby TheMagician » Wed Apr 27, 2011 5:28 am

Only today have I read the news about the Plasma engine and 3D Max Plugin now being open sourced. Great news indeed!
I must admit that I haven't read the whole thread but just a few pages. Still I want to contribute my thoughts and suggestions.

1) The thread refers to "the developers". Are there official numbers of how many members of the GoW currently work on developing the CWE?

2) I'm very euphoric about the release of the 3D Max Plugin's source because I use 3D Max as my main modeling program. Sadly I can undertand that I'm part of a minority. A simple comparison of the post counts in the Blender and 3D Max sub-forums show that Blender has the far bigger user base which is understable because Blender is a free program and the development of PyPRP has come a long way.

3) Nevertheless I'd love to see the following improvements/fixes for the 3D Max Plugin:
-Making the plugin compatible with newer versions of 3D Max. This must be the top priority because it's the only way to get a larger number of people to use the plugin.
-Proper documentation for some features of the plugin that are useless right now because we don't know how to use them properly (we don't know the inner working of the plugin), e.g. Illumination Baking or Water/Reflections.
-Adding support for sceletal and/or procedural animations. Right now every animation has to be baked into keyframes which is a very tedious process.
Of course I would also love new features as requested by other members, e.g. support for bump and normal maps and a new dynamic lighting system but I understand that this is very unlikely to happen as most focus is on the development of PyPRP

4) I just want to mention that many users here might be able to get a free version of 3D Studio Max because Autodesk has an extensive educational program. Teachers of all kinds of schools as well as students can register and download free versions of the program. I have made use of this service.

To sum things up I'm very happy about the OSing of Myst Online's tools. However, I fear that most of the future developments will focus on CWE and PyPRP and leave me behind because I love working with 3D Max and would love creating ages for URU but I cannot see myself switching to Blender.

Mod Note: Split from this thread.
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Re: What do you want from the developers moving forward?

Postby N. Sigismund » Wed Apr 27, 2011 6:22 am

Hey, it's TheMagician! Welcome back! Your video tutorials made my life so much easier when I was starting Max development. :)

Just to go through your Max suggestions:

-Making the plugin compatible with newer versions of 3D Max. This must be the top priority because it's the only way to get a larger number of people to use the plugin.

Hoikas has already managed to do this. The plugin works on Max 2011, certainly. :) It's still not got quite the same functionality as the 7/8 plugin, but it's getting there. You'll still need to rebuild the age in Max 7 if you want to make it be able to be plonked on MOULa, though. Cyan builds using Max 7 and so they need Max 7 files. :P

-Proper documentation for some features of the plugin that are useless right now because we don't know how to use them properly (we don't know the inner working of the plugin), e.g. Illumination Baking or Water/Reflections.

Andy Legate's been posting tutorials throughout the last year about Max. You can find them here: http://dusty.homeunix.net/wiki/Andy%27s_Max_Tutorials

I'm not sure if he went over baking, but he's certainly done waveset stuff. :P

-Adding support for sceletal and/or procedural animations. Right now every animation has to be baked into keyframes which is a very tedious process.

This would be very nice.
:P
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What do you want from the developers moving forward?

Postby tachzusamm » Wed Apr 27, 2011 6:44 am

TheMagician wrote:-Proper documentation for some features of the plugin that are useless right now because we don't know how to use them properly (we don't know the inner working of the plugin), e.g. Illumination Baking or Water/Reflections.

For water and reflections, this article http://developer.download.nvidia.com/bo ... _ch01.html written by Mark Finch, who developed the wavesets (or was part of the dev. team) for Cyan Worlds, is still a good source to understand the parameters and to get an idea how they are implemented.
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Re: What do you want from the developers moving forward?

Postby J'Kla » Wed Apr 27, 2011 8:54 am

Another way to get more people to use the 3dMax route would be a release of version 7 or 8 at a price that would be in the buget range of the average user. Even if said version was limited in some way ie It was restricted to age development in some way. I can't see it happening so I'll keep using Blender.
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Re: What do you want from the developers moving forward?

Postby Aloys » Wed Apr 27, 2011 9:28 am

It's too bad Gmax was canned, it was a neat idea..
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Re: What do you want from the developers moving forward?

Postby Branan » Wed Apr 27, 2011 10:33 am

tachzusamm wrote:
TheMagician wrote:-Proper documentation for some features of the plugin that are useless right now because we don't know how to use them properly (we don't know the inner working of the plugin), e.g. Illumination Baking or Water/Reflections.

For water and reflections, this article http://developer.download.nvidia.com/bo ... _ch01.html written by Mark Finch, who developed the wavesets (or was part of the dev. team) for Cyan Worlds, is still a good source to understand the parameters and to get an idea how they are implemented.


The wavesets were entirely Mark Finch AFAIK. Basically anything in the graphics code that's absolutely crazy but works brilliantly was him.

J'Kla wrote:Another way to get more people to use the 3dMax route would be a release of version 7 or 8 at a price that would be in the buget range of the average user. Even if said version was limited in some way ie It was restricted to age development in some way. I can't see it happening so I'll keep using Blender.


Yeah, not gonna happen :(

If someone wants to buy me an XSI mod tool development license, I'll write a plugin for that, though. Should only be a few thousand dollars :P

In the end, working on making the Blender plugin better is probably the best option.
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Re: What do you want from the developers moving forward?

Postby Tsar Hoikas » Wed Apr 27, 2011 10:49 am

J'Kla wrote:Another way to get more people to use the 3dMax route would be a release of version 7 or 8 at a price that would be in the buget range of the average user. Even if said version was limited in some way ie It was restricted to age development in some way. I can't see it happening so I'll keep using Blender.


There is a program that Autodesk offers for students (K12 and above) and educators... Autodesk Education. Nice way to get free Autodesk stuff (and a nice way to get your money once you graduate). Fortunately, the "educator" bit ensures that I get free Autodesk stuff for as long as I want... unless they kill the program.
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Re: What do you want from the developers moving forward?

Postby TheMagician » Wed Apr 27, 2011 2:32 pm

Hey, it's TheMagician! Welcome back!

Thank you for the warm welcome and the nice words :)

Thanks also for commenting on my suggestions/thoughts.

The plugin works on Max 2011, certainly.

Programming Python is one thing but figuring out this C++ plugin code AND understanding what you have to change to adapt it to the newer version is totally beyond me. Great to see that someone did that!

You'll still need to rebuild the age in Max 7 if you want to make it be able to be plonked on MOULa

Help me with this point please. I have to be careful not to mix different things up. Now that CWE is open source what exactly is my workflow as an age builder who wants to test an age? Up until now I used Max 7 and saved my file there. I loaded it into Drizzle an converted it into an age/prp file. Then I used my offline version of URU Complete Chronicles + Offline KI to link to that age.
What do I have to do now?
I didn't realize that only Max 7 files can be imported/converted into URU files. That of course makes all this Max 2011 business pretty much obsolete for me. Why would I create and model an age in one program and then completely rebuild it another program?

Andy Legate's been posting tutorials throughout the last year about Max

WOW What a great list of tutorials! Thanks for that link. They are all very well written and he has some VERY interesting stuff in there like Subworlds. Last thing I remember is that they were not possible due to an incompability in Drizzle. Things seem to have developed very well during the last year.
There's even a tutorial where Andy uses bones to animate a cloth and DOESN'T have to bake it to keyframes - I'll definitely have to check that out.
However, nothing on illumination baking. And lighting is such a crucial part of creating atmosphere in an age.

There is a program that Autodesk offers for students (K12 and above) and educators

Yes, that's the program I was refering to in which I also take part.

Thanks for all the comments guys. I feel at home right away again :) I have several projects files that are waiting to be turned into tutorials which have rested on my hard drive since last year. One on all kinds of particles including fire. Another one using Havok in Max 7 to create a physics simulation for your age. I always thought that development of age creation in Max 7 was not advancing because Cyan didn't release the plugin's source but Andy's tutorials prove that there has been constant progress.
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Re: What do you want from the developers moving forward?

Postby Branan » Wed Apr 27, 2011 2:38 pm

Regarding max file versions: You can use any version of max you want now, so long as someone has compiled the plugin for it. It's rumored that if you want your age on /Cyan's/ MOULagain server, you'll need to give them a max 7 file. If all you care about is fan-run servers, you can export the age and share it with the shard admin with no issues.

Testing is something we're working on. It needs to be easy to setup a local server for development on the CWE engines. Give us a bit more time on that one :)
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Re: What do you want from the developers moving forward?

Postby TheMagician » Wed Apr 27, 2011 3:09 pm

I'm still having problems with the technical aspects of this process: as I understand it the Plasma Plugin converts the 3D geometry and all the things that are in the age into one big file (along with some files for textures and such).
I also understand that the export part of the plugin is not being changed but only the code to make it compatible with newer version of Max. So technically speaking: how should Cyan be able to tell which Max version the age was created with as long as the output of the plugin is always the same?
Does Cyan really think about accepting fan created ages for the official MOULa server? I didn't know this and I'm pretty sure that's not something I'll target in the near future ;)

And about testing on a local server: after the long wait for MOUL becoming open source I'll give you all the time you need. I have so much respect for you guys. Without capable people like you the whole open source project would be worthless.

As I see it this means that I'll stay with my Drizzle workflow for the time being and wait for other solutions to be developed.
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