Guild of Writers

Is their a way to open a dwg file in 3D Studio max?
If so is their a way to finish The Relativity age I was working on for Uru CC and Drizzle without using Blender.

The interface (from what little I have seen so far) is more similar to AutoCad then blender is and I really would like to get this wild age off the drawing board and available for Uru Live or even Drizzle distribution, but again I am no expert.

Yes, it's possible. Both 2d and 3d autocad data can be imported to Max (with considerable amount of bugs in case of 3d).

Do you know what kind of bugs I'll be encountering, and do I still hafta use Blender cuz it was always a bit beyond me.

I think by now we've figured out most of the things in 3D Max that you can do in Blender.
If you have a look through the categories of components in the Plasma Plugin for 3D Max you'll see that there's everything you can think of. However, we're still in the proces of figuring out how some of the functions work. But I'd say that it's definitely possible to create a full age using Max and the Plugin.

Karkadann wrote:Do you know what kind of bugs I'll be encountering,

The main problem is face normals. When you import a large complicated object with curvy geometry (boxes will import fine) the face normals turn inward or outward at random (or so it seems). They also can be duplicated (2 faces with opposite normals instead of one). This perhaps won't happen for every object, but from my experience it usually is the case for objects with unorthogonal faces, and it takes hours to tidy up the mesh after such messy import.

This 3D Studio max 7 thing wouldn't happen to be one of those programs thats so old that it comes on 3 CD instead of one DVD would it??

TheMagician wrote:I think by now we've figured out most of the things in 3D Max that you can do in Blender.
If you have a look through the categories of components in the Plasma Plugin for 3D Max you'll see that there's everything you can think of. However, we're still in the proces of figuring out how some of the functions work. But I'd say that it's definitely possible to create a full age using Max and the Plugin.

I can say it's definately doable to convert an already made age in blender to one in 3dsMax. I'm just busy squashing the last bugs with ChloesHoodOffice but I was able to convert it to MOULa compatibility using 3dsMax. (I exported the age using obj format in Blender. Then imported the .obj file into 3dsMax. This saved all the geometry and UV maps of the files, but lost the lights and "empty" objects for avatar oneshots and sounds however. It was then just the process of converting all the meshes to those from blender.

When you export into obj format, the meshes are all stripped down by material, so if you have six materials on one object in blender, you'll get six objects with one material each in 3dsMax. Each object is then given a name, beginging with the prefix of "obj" then the object name, then the mesh name, then the material, then the texture.

So in blender, if you have an object named "Mug" with a material named "Material #1" and a image texture of "mug.jpg" and you created it using a plane mesh in blender, your object in 3ds Max will be named "objMug_Plane_Material_#4_mug.jpg".

Converting an age from blender to 3dsMax while not impossible, is time consuming. Once you get it in there, and apply all the mateirals and strip the names back down, it's relatively easy to recreate. Unfortunately vertex coloring is also lost, but it appears that max lights, though don't provide light to the avatar, bake the meshes with vertex coloring upon export. As ChloesHoodOffice uses two lights, that when placed at their relative lamp object positions in the age, duplicate the same vertex coloring I did by hand in blender.

So if you want to start using 3dsMax rather than blender I'd suggest going for it. (the newest version of Drizzle quickly converts the ages, so they can be tested in the offline version as well). And if you've built in Blender, and are up for the challenge, you can export to the obj format and keep most of what you did in blender and work within 3dsMax.

Karkadann wrote:This 3D Studio max 7 thing wouldn't happen to be one of those programs thats so old that it comes on 3 CD instead of one DVD would it??

Indeed because it's several years old it isn't t being sold anymore. At the time however it was probably sold on CDs.

Chloe: I know it's a pipe dream, but what we really need would be a proper Blender>Max converter.. Converting existing Ages is horribly time consuming.

It'll probably me easier to make a max importer for prp's

Aloys wrote:

Karkadann wrote:This 3D Studio max 7 thing wouldn't happen to be one of those programs thats so old that it comes on 3 CD instead of one DVD would it??

Indeed because it's several years old it isn't t being sold anymore. At the time however it was probably sold on CDs.

Chloe: I know it's a pipe dream, but what we really need would be a proper Blender>Max converter.. Converting existing Ages is horribly time consuming.

Heh, actually I did a search and found a really great new way to convert from blender to max. Fbx Converter You need to download the fbx converter version 2006 11.1 and the fbx plugin for max, same version. Then you export with blender to fbx format, and with the converter, just convert from fbx to fbx and import that file into max. It saves all uvs, materials, emptys and lights. And it doesn't break up the objects it creates the multi-sub materials like it's supposed to. Only issue is you may need to convert the materials to plasma standards if you're using complicated blending. (when you convert be sure to use the export images option of the converter)