Building Sourge Engine Displacements in 3ds Max

shawnolson

I'm working on a new tool for the Source Game Engine to build your displacements inside 3ds Max. Here's a preview of the new Wall Worm Displacement Tool:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMNKi_QylhE[/ame]

Mark Dygert

Hot stuff Shawn! Working with source displacements = teh horrible so this is teh awesome!

Love the sew command I was worried you where going to say snap those together manually so the fact that you have that working is great.

Can you attach them all together into one mesh? Then break them apart before exporting that would get around not being able to use the graphite modeling tools. Of course Autodesk should support instances of Edit poly modifiers on multiple objects in Graphite... but the don't.

IF you're going to break them apart what about working with one piece on a grid and then allowing people to choose the size of the exported displacements, you would then slice them up based on the grid as small as they need them. That might get around having to redo it in smaller chunks? I have no idea how the logistics of that would play out...

Maybe use Composite MAP in a standard material,instead of a Blend material? I'm pretty sure composite maps display correctly in the viewport... Maybe that's just in 2012 though... I'm also not sure if you can drop in a vertex color map into composite map mask slot, you probably can... I just can't try it right now.

shawnolson

Mark Dygert wrote: »

Hot stuff Shawn! Working with source displacements = teh horrible so this is teh awesome!

Thanks for the input Mark.

I'd like to get the viewport texturing out of the way first... then work on ways enhancing the sculpting tools.

I tried a Composite Material but wasn't able to get it to display in realtime with the Vertex Color as a mask. If you find a method, please do share. Over on Interlopers, it was suggested using a Direct X Shader... but none I tried worked the way I wanted (or I simply was doing something wrong). And I don't know how to create my own Direct X Shader FX yet.

PS... can an editor fix my thread title typo? I tried to change it but it didn't propagate to the forum list.

shawnolson

Mark Dygert wrote: »

IF you're going to break them apart what about working with one piece on a grid and then allowing people to choose the size of the exported displacements, you would then slice them up based on the grid as small as they need them. That might get around having to redo it in smaller chunks? I have no idea how the logistics of that would play out...

I've been playing with ideas make it all work on a single mesh. A voxel-like grid of these that fills up a single mesh has been one consideration... in which case all of the "displacement" part is behind the scenes. But that may be for a later version.

PS. I've got the viewport blend texturing figured out so you can preview the texturing in real time now.

.morph3us

well, i havent used it yet, but did you think about Xoliul's Viewport Shaders?
i have no clue of them, so if this is total bullshit just ignore me...

cman2k

interesting stuff man...looking forward to playing with it!

shawnolson

It took me many months to figure out a decent way to make displacements easier to do... anyway, here is the 1.0 release of the Wall Worm Displacement Tool.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RBnX_iULY0"]Wall Worm Displacement Tool 1.0 - YouTube[/ame]

Ace-Angel

Are you a wizard?

shawnolson

Ace-Angel wrote: »

Are you a wizard?

No... but I almost stayed at a Holiday Inn Express once...

I have some more updates to the tool to make it run more quickly, allow copying and have more presets... but it will probably be a couple weeks before I can even think about thinking about it

shawnolson

I have updated the tool today. It is no longer compatible with previous version so it's at version 2.0 now.

I will make a short video giving overview of new features when I get a chance. It works more quickly now, shows realtime walkable faces, adds new presets and various other enhancements (you can now copy displacements instead of being forced to use the ui to make new ones).

Anyway, the full changelog is here http://wallworm.com/projects/utilities/docs/resources/changelog.html . Use the changelog and updated tooltip (hovering over buttons) to augment the docs since I have not updated the displacement tool docs to reflect the new version.

PS. Any chance an admin/moderator can fix the mispelling in this thread title... I seem to be unable to fix that blunder!

Rick_D

this is pretty great work man, good stuff

shawnolson

Updated today to fix some features that were not working in Max 2010 & 2011 (like display walkable).

Also fixed error that was causing tool to fail in Max 2009 and older.

New features and tips:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcCrK46A684"]Wall Worm Displacement Tool 2.1 - YouTube[/ame]

shawnolson

When I loaded this file yesterday it was supposed to fix an error in Max 2009 and older... but in reality I loaded it with the wrong version number to check against. I've updated the files in the latests download... but didn't bother to make any version number changes. Sorry for anyone using older Max and getting the error.

Be aware that alpha blending only exports in Max 2010+.

shawnolson

I updated the tools today that add the ability to control displacement flags (No Phys, No Hull Collision and No Ray Collision).

I also fixes some bugs dealing with hitting Undo in Max after creating displacements--that could cause a crash.

Also, for anyone that missed it, here is a video with the updated UI (though before I added the displacement flags). The video demonstrates a simple scene with displacements and painting the props onto the scene.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCMbEpd0phg"]Wall Worm Proxies - YouTube[/ame]

shawnolson

Added a bunch of tools for working with Displacements this week. Here is a video sharing a bunch of techniques for working with displacements.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xEXz6QPTSI"]Creating and Moving Displacements with Anvil 3.31 - YouTube[/ame]