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[ARSoftware]

Hi all, I'm new to WME and I've been trying to render and export a room from 3d Studio Max 8.

I created a basic scene and created a single camera 'Camera01' and a single omni light. Rendered the scene, and then exported out the same scene as a .3ds file.

After importing the background graphic, I edited the scene and went to the 3D tab. Located the 3ds file (saved to desktop) and hit Open. WME paused briefly (presumably to load the data), and then nothing happened. The camera drop down is empty and no geometry is shown over the background (with checkbox on).

Am I doing something wrong in Max 8? Am I supposed to use a plugin to extend the 3ds export?

Thanks for any help in advance.

[Stucki]

hello and welcome.

no there is no plugin needed...
but you have to name the objects in 3ds max in some special way ...

walk_*xxx for the walking plane
shadow_*xxx for the geometry where shadows should be cast on.

and you have to define a *.geometry file for wme

GEOMETRY
{
  NODE
  {
    NAME = "shadow_*"
    RECEIVE_SHADOWS = TRUE
  }

  NODE
  {
    NAME = "walk_floor"
    WALKPLANE = TRUE
    RECEIVE_SHADOWS = TRUE
  }
 
  NODE
  {
    NAME = "blk_*"
    BLOCKED = TRUE
  }

  NODE
  {
    NAME = "wpt_*"
    WAYPOINT = TRUE
  }
}

there is more about this in the documentation that comes with wme.

about the missing camera i have no idea ?? maybe some grouped objects in max ?? with the camera i had no problems ..

if you can select a camera and still dont see the mesh it sometimes helps changing the clipping planes values.
in my scenes the first value has to be 1 and the second -1 . if i choose -1 and 1 my char is not in the right perspective ...

you say you export the whole scene. i think this is not the best solution for it takes long and renders slow ...

i usualy export only the meshes where shadow should be cast on, the walkpane the lights and the cameras. so think about from where the light shines and you know which meshes you need ..
if possible i reduce the polycount of the geometry for faster loading and faster rendering. the fewer polygons the faster the rendering [ i think ]

hope this helps !!

[ARSoftware]

Thanks for the quick response.

The scene was made up of two walls (basic blocks), a floor and a cube (just for testing).

Nothing is grouped and the camera is a free pointing camera moved to point at the scene how I would like it. Do I need a .geometry file before I load in the 3ds hidden geometry file?

[ARSoftware]

Oddly, I just tried the max file from the help documentation and that exported out the cameras correctly. It looked as though they had 2 cameras, a free one and a pointing one. Importing an exported 3ds of this file worked.

So, I went back to my basic max file and added a second target camera, and exported again. This time WME recognised the target camera (Camera2), but still doesn't show Camera1.

Target cameras are probably a better way to go anyway.

[Nihil]

Does Max perhaps have something like "director cameras" that many other programs have? These are standard cams that are only used for setting up scenes and not used like real cameras (can't be used for rendering for example). Just a guess, I have never used 3ds Max.

[ARSoftware]

Not that I'm aware of. But atleast I have a camera working now