OpenZone : Export your scene from 3DSMax/Gmax to OpenZone

[KhaN]

Export your scene from 3DSMax to OpenZone


Author : Shaminator

Requirement :
- OpenZone
- 3D Modeling Basic Knowledge

Comment
Despite being a killer application, Openzone is a pain to work with if you dont model your own objects/meshes, because OpenZone dont come with a library of premade models (or at least a small one, thanks to WindCatcher).
- Structure your work : try to think what will happen when you'll export, don't put the exterior and interior of a house in a same object, divide them.
- You don't have to bother with collision detection. It's all done magically. That also means all zones are like PoA in the end, just a big ground mesh flying in the middle of nothing.
- Polygons : hard to tell which are the limits, we didn't do much testing in game. To get some reference, post-luclin trees are like 1100 faces (press "7" key to activate faces counter in 3dsmax).
Don't forget there's fog in EQ... So if your zone is large enough and things not too close from each other, poly count shouldn't be a big problem.
That makes me think : did they make zones for the netcode or because of the graphics engine ? both? I guess we can try to do it a little bigger than Verant did.
- Textures : we need more testing to get a precise idea of the limits. What we know, tho, is that textures are all loaded when zoning, keep that in mind and don't go texture frenzy. Ok we discovered how to put 4096*4096 textures in game, but that doesn't mean every little rock around should have its own.
We need to test if it's possible to have few (2 or 3 max) very big textures for the ground, like a satelite map, it could result in very detailed ground, with perfectly integrated paths, small (flat Sad ) flowers, etc, and of course NO TILING!
- Place everything in 3dsmax. 3DS files are supposed to remember the absolute location of the objects, so you should be able to import things seperatly in openzone and they should still be at their spot.

2. Export your zone to OZ
- Make sure everything is in "editable poly" state : NURBS, patches and all won't work.
- Export the whole scene or just the selection. (file > export).
Choose a location (not really important)
- Have all your textures converted to size of 2 texture (You can only use size of 16, 32, 64, 128, 512, 1024, 2048, ...) and put them in the Openzone\library\textures folder.
- Start Openzone, file > import 3DS, select your mesh and wait.
1. Sunny day scenario : all your zone appears in openzone, everything is properly textured, you can skip the rest and export to s3d.
2. It crashes : make sure you use the latest version of openzone. Your 3DS file maybe contains some stuff not understood by openzone, verifiy that all your objects are simple editable poly and al faces/polys are textured.
3. Some objects appear in white : no panic, some of your textures aren't properly named or in the wrong folder or in the wrong format or size.
4. Some items are transparent (wireframe) : no panic, i had the same problem with the textures produced with some programs, openzone seems to have problems (on my comp at least) with bmp's.
5. Some items aren't where you placed them in max, or/and in a bad orientation or/and with a wrong scale. Panic my friend, because this is major pain. Had the same problem, still quite not resolved. You can use 'attach' instead of 'group' in max with all the problematic objects, but this has screwed my uv mapping and crashes when exporting to s3d.

OK time to export now, it's easy, file > export to S3D and if no crash happens it will create all the files you need in the zones folder.
Note you can't rename the zone files afterwoods, so choose right and contact your server admin before (he can't use them if he has to rename them).

Don't hesitate to post your experience here, how you worked around bugs and things like that, what we need right now is knowledge.

[Sakrateri]

ok , placed the mesh from 3ds max into the mesh folder in open zone , created a zone and then imported the mesh made with 3ds max , No problem , then trying to export as zonename.s3d it crashes at creating polygon entries everytime , I have tried several different meshes I made and same thing everytime , any idea what to do ? Oh and where or how do I convert textures toi a size of two? mabey thats teh problem

[GeorgeS]

paint shop pro - resize textures to any ratio of n^2
Use 256x256 or 512x256 etc..

GeorgeS

[Sakrateri]

ok , so i have to import teh 3DS file into paintshop pro?

[KhaN]

Texture not being in size of two shouldnt be the problem, if your texture is not correctly sized, OZ wont crash, you will just see a milky white shinning color instead of your texture.

If after making your zone with 3DSmax, you see it loaded in OZ (textured, with all meshes), then, OZ dont find any errors RIGHT NOW (And it will mean that your texture are correctly sized), but it doesnt mean your zone is out of errors, if you compile the zone to S2D and you have errors, it mean you have done something wrong.

From my own OZ experience (see point 2 in my tuturial), i can say that most of the time, if i have an error during "creating polygon entry", its because i have one tri/quad/poly untextured, so you should check them in max, 99% of the time it will solve the problem.

If you want to resize your texture in power of 2, use whatever image software (PaintShop Pro, Photoshop, ...).

Hope that will help, and check your poly

[Sakrateri]

how do i get them into the other program to resize them? into paintshop ? I cant seem to import a 3DS file into it

[KhaN]

3ds are meshes
bmp, png, dds are texture/images, its those files you need to load into an image editing software.

But if OZ crash during creating polygon entry, its not because your textures are not in power of 2 (OZ dont go read the image to check if its in power of 2 or not, it just do the association and apply the texture if the texture is correct or make your tri white if its wrong).

EDIT : It can also be an UVM problem.

[Sakrateri]

Sorry Khan , I have been using OpenZone for a bit now and wanted to be able to do a little more , So i just started using 3DS max today , umm whats UVM?

[KhaN]

UVM and Mapping are way to apply a texture to a surface (poly/mesh/tri), you should have a look at cgtalk (www.cgtalk.com) if you are learning 3DSMax, its full of 3DSMax and other modeler tutorial and talented 3D modelers are willing to help and give tips.

I googled quickly mapping method, and this tutorial sounded nice http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/newsfeed.asp?nid=1523 it will explain you how to map a texture to a surface (and later you could learn to UVM).

[Sakrateri]

Ok , thanks alot

[Windcatcher]

If importing your .3DS mesh into OpenZone is causing the program to crash, could you post your .3DS somewhere so I can test it? It's the only way I might be able to find the problem and fix it.

[Sakrateri]

WC im sure its just me , Ive only just started using the program 3Ds max with no prior knowledge of any 3d programs , I will continue to experiment with it and learn pretty fast. I dont want you to have to try to fix something that is more then likely my fault. I was actually trying to export a couple of the things that are in the tutorial (one was a rather large house ) and I did get them into open zone and could walk around and such in them but trying to export the scene to a zone was the problem. So beings I didnt even make the objects no telling what was all wrong lol, just experimenting at this point to try to learn some. Thanks though and Im sure I will have some more questions in the near future.

[Sakrateri]

Ok , i have made a couple objects with 3dsmax and got them to work in my zone thanks alot guys this is awsome !

[KhaN]

Happy that you figured it
Show us some shots when you will have something viewable :p

[Docs]

Hate to review old topics, is 3d studio max the best used utility out there for graphics? I know combined with Photoshops etc..