Converting ASE/OBJ to LWO

MoP

Does anyone have tried and tested methods for converting files from 3DS Max into .LWO format?

I've tried searching for scripts/plugins, no joy there.
Milkshape almost works, but doesn't support material definitions well enough for what I need.
Wings3D has an LWO plugin, but it doesn't appear to work correctly.
Likewise with the Blender LWO export, it doesn't create a proper object.

Free/cheap apps are preferred. If anyone knows of a working plugin for Wings3D or Blender, that would be great.

kat

Blender 3D.

Export from Max to 3DS (I'm assuing this is a 'static' object), import into Blender, check re-orientate if required, export to LWO (no scripts required as it supports all this natively).

Denpending on which version of Blender you have you can import ASE models directly into it using a script ( on my webbly site in fact )

MoP

Kat: Cheers, I'll give that a try tomorrow (don't have access to relevent models here) ... thing is, I tried out Blender's native LWO export, and it didn't appear to work when I tried taking it into Radiant - are there any export options I need to check? I couldn't seem to find any settings for the exporter.

Lee3dee

did you try using silo? I think that also exports to most formats.

MoP

Lee3dee, thanks for the suggestion, but no, I looked into that already (I use Silo at home for modelling), it doesn't export LWO natively, apparently there were some people working on a 3rd party plugin (saw on the silo forums), but as yet no evidence that one exists.

kat

Can I ask... is there any specific reason why you're not using ASE?

LWO models are notorisouly difficult in other apps, blender included; iirc it's the material name that's used to give us the actual game ready file path that's the problem, Blender has a 19 character limit on that name.

It means you'd need to reference a shader via Blenders 'MA' (or 'ME') material settings like so;

models/c/s/head1

instead of;

models/characters/soldier/head_1

The corrisponding game material would be;

models/c/s/head1
{
[rest of materail/shader]
}

Even doing that it can be tricky to get set up correctly; it's personally why I don't use LWO files prefering ASE instead for static objects.

MoP

Ah well :P
Looks like I might have to go the professional route (Modo or Deep Exploration probably) - thanks for the help though!

And as to your question... well, let's just say I'd like to use ASE, but...

Bryan Cavett

all these solutions still use another app to get to the .lwo format. Wish there was a way to just export to .lwo from max... that would make my life soo much easier right now.

MoP

Yep, me too, Bryan

kat

Just updating this topic with a tutorial link about using Blender to prep LWO models for Doom 3 games. Also covers getting smoothing to work on LWOs as well.

Blaizer

Modo is the key