Unit Setup in 3DS Max

Nekomata

Right so I probably should of done this quite a while ago, but what should I put the unit setup and system units as in 3DS Max so it can be used in game engines?

I have set the Display units as Centimetres but I am not sure what to set the system units to.

Nekomata

Ah. Thank you very much, Luke ^-^

Nekomata

Ummm.. question.. It says that 1 UU = 0.75 inches. Does that mean I should set my system units to 0.75 inches?

Sorry If I am sounding quite.. Silly, but I prefer to sound Silly and actually get it right.

SpeCter

It just states the sizes of Unreal games.For your game it could be completely different because UU is a generic unit which doesn´t really mean anything.

You could make a box and say: "hey this is now 1*1*1 meters/inches whatever" and the UDK shows its 50 UU for example. This would be the scale you want to work with.

The box could be somewhat smaller and you can still say it´s 1*1*1 meters/inches but then the udk says 1m = 20UU.

r_fletch_r

Im pretty sure 1 Generic unit is going to be equal to 1UU. It would be odd to convert it to anything else when you export.

why not export some boxes of known sizes and check out how big they are ingame.

Nekomata

r_fletch_r: Well... because I don't have UDK yet. :poly139:

SpeCter: Yes, I know that but what I want to know is not the display units but the system units. Display units mean nothing if your system units are wrong.

Maybe I am being a bit too vague? I know that the generic units and UU units are probably the same and that it changes from engine to engine and from game to game but what I want to know is if I have my system units set to 1 inch where as 1 UU = 0.75 inches will that mean that my model will be 25% bigger than the next guys?

Sean VanGorder

When I'm working in Unreal, I just keep 3ds Max in generic units and set the grid spacing to 16. 16 generic units in Max equals 1 foot in Unreal.

Mark Dygert

Yep, leave it at default, grid set to 16 or 32.

Nekomata

Okay ^-^ thank you all very muchly.

cw

Sounds like you all have it covered! Max has 2 different scale settings, so it can get a bit confusing, and then unreal having another multiplier - ooh fun!

In case it helps anyone:

max default 'system units' is inches.
max default 'display units' is generic.

Ideally never change system units, and only change display units if you have to! In the office we have many warnings and suchlike to prevent inadvertent fiddling. IT's just easier that way.