Using Gmax, advice, tips and feedback.

[twoleftturns 0]

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On 10/10/2003 11:13:41 PM Screwballl wrote:

sounds like a good time for someone to put together a tutorial of sorts of all the info Brian has given us and will continue to give us....

 

the only question and i probably missed it was, what is the scale of say each square in the viewport pertaining to bitmaps... so what size should a wall be to properly fit the 256x256 bitmaps without distortion but also still be able to see the actual texture?

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Yea, good idea....I made some notes with Word; However, its over 18 pages and not very concise.

It would be great if someone could make a video tutorial.

[MaxisBrian 6]

Twoleftturns,

I know it's frustrating to work without the benefit of a renderer, but for the moment you'll just need to satisfy yourself with what you can see in the viewport. We're now working on a renderer.

As for seeing the textures manifest in the viewport, I neglected to mention that you may need to check the "Make Visible" option in the material editor for each material you want to have show up. They would show up in a render, but not necessarily in the viewport. It slows things down if you have all the textures checked visible, so you could toggle this on/off to keep things humming along.

But if you follow all the steps outlined above concerning texture mapping, you shouldn't have a problem.

[golfbunny 7]

Oo...One with the official comment brian  Maxis working on a renderer...Now..If I can stop my buildings looking like coffee cups.

[mikeyb66 30]

Like those textures Brian but can you explain what a bump is please. You said about textures not showing up but I'm still have a problem.

I apply a texture and the object turns grey in the viewport. If i then click show texture it turns to a different shade of grey but no texture displays. Any suggestions?

Screwball-I've started to set up a thread of brian@s tutorials.

Nice cabin rubik.

[oppie 487]

In the gMax scale, how big is a standard SC4 grid tile? Let's say I want to create a building that fits on a 3x3 lot; what are the maximum dimensions I can use?

[mikeyb66 30]

Each SC4 tile is 16m x 16m.

[kruegersc4 0]

Sorry I'm a little clueless, but where do you get the gMax and is it free?

[GouRou 2]

Perhaps this thread Where to get GMAX would be of use to you, you might have noticed it in the threads list

[BarbulaM1 38]

my frist attempt at gMax. i don't know how to use textures yet.

[twoleftturns 0]

How did you capture that picture?....can you please tell me, I would like to show my humble creation... Thanks!

[BarbulaM1 38]

I used Quick Screen Capture. You can find it at www.download.com

[mntoes 270]

You can download Gmax from WWW.discreet.com. It's free although you do have to register to obtain a code.

[mntoes 270]

MaxisBrian. Are we free to edit/amend all of the textures etc from SC4 without the worries about copyright?

[MaxisBrian 6]

mntoes,

 

Sure, don't worry about that. Go ahead and use them as you please.

[CycleDogg 130]

Thanks for all the great info and textures.

 

Below are a couple buildings I made in AutoCAD.  (I hope we'll be able to import our autocad creations into the new BAT).

 

I have a question: will the BAT be able to render procedural textures such as stucco, noise and brick?

 

Also, Rubik, your log house is great.  I'd love to see a bunch of log houses in my city.  (There is actually a large concentration of log home builders near where I live.)

 

 

 

[rubik3 116]

I love that second one cycle...It could use a little more detail in some places but I love the design.  I like the first one too but I'm not sure if I like the wallpaper look of the exterior walls.  The first one also makes me think that there really needs to be a southern building tileset with stucco structures as you have done.

 

BTW is that rendered with Autocad?  If so thats a damn fine job with the limited tools it has.

 

http://galileo.spaceports.com/~pzds2/resources/multi_imp_gmax.zip

Just found this script for gmax.  Allows for importing of 3ds, dxf, and obj files while supposedly retaining some of the unique properties of each format.  I haven't tested it yet so someone else will have to be the lab rat

[6459978. 106]

Nice work, CycleDogg. Do I smell a Gaudi influence?

[CycleDogg 130]

I did the modelling in autocad and the rendering in 3d studio.  I haven't messed around with the renderer in autocad too much, but from what I've seen it doesn't seem worth messing with if you have access to 3d studio.

I definitely agree that the second one (casita Gaudi) could use more detail, especially the eaves.  Some stains running down the roof and down the walls and deck stone would improve the realism too.  I could go on and on adding more detail to improve the realism, but I get bored quickly doing that sort of thing.  I think I'll try adding a chimney though.

 

Also, I saw someplace (probably at simtropolis or freeland) that there was a way to "convert" files back and forth between max and gmax.  I downloaded some files for doing this but haven't tested it yet.  If I can find the stuff I'll try it out and report back.

[ApathyNinja 17]

Procedural textures! That's what those are called. Dare I say they're quite handy too.

[6459978. 106]

Procedural textures, eh... I don't know quite what they are, but can I venture a guess (with naivete as my excuse) that they used those to make buildings look abandonned?

[Yellowlab 11]

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On 9/23/2003 6:28:02 PM MaxisBrian wrote:

What you could then do is select all the first floor windows and array them up along Y, with the spacing set to 4 meters. Now you've got the front wall and windows delineated as splines, and you can go ahead and attach all of the splines as one. You may need to colapse the first one to Editable Spline if you don't see the Attach button. Avoid colapsing to Editable Mesh, though you may want to put an Edit Mesh modifier on the wall later on.

Don't be discouraged if much of this didn't make sense; I'll be happy to clarify any problem issues if I can. Let me know what you come up with!

-Brian

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I don't get this part...all my windows stack up on each other when I use the Y arraying.  Any tips?  I'm a total newbie in this...Hayly had to inform me on what a spline is.  Some of these buildings look GREAT, yall, keep up the fantastic work.  My building appears to currently be just a colorless wall.

[rubik3 116]

"I don't get this part...all my windows stack up on each other when I use the Y arraying.  Any tips?"

 

Well this is going off of my 3D studio knowledge but it should be close to the same in GMax.  When you choose array a dialog box should come up with 9 sets of 0.0 numbers.  There will 3 sets of 3 for the x,y,z of the movement, rotation, and scale of the array.  Now assuming your in the world UCS, (x and y being parallel to the ground plane with z going skyward) and you are trying to copy the window upward, you want to mess around with the Z-movement in the array dialog.  If you are trying to copy it along the wall you want to either use X or Y depending on which axis the wall is situated along.  Most of the time you want this number to be the heighth or width of the window plus the spacing you want.  Let me know if this helps.  If GMax's array is different then what I've outlined, post a screen of the dialog and I'll do what I can.

[DarkMatter 21]

CycleDog, those are some great buildings!! I'm looking forward to seeing the results of your exploits with the BAT!

[Del Sol 0]

All this technobabble.
I'm confused.

[MaxisBrian 6]

Sorry guys, I was out of town for most of last week so I haven't been good about checking in.

CycleDogg, nice looking buildings you posted. These show a lot of imagination, in addition to a good understanding of how to implement your vision. To answer your question about procedural textures, gmax doesn't make this easy. It's more geared to the use of bitmaps. It would be good to have Noise and Brick, as we use these regularly, but not in gmax unfortunately.

Yellowlab, the array tool can be very perplexing until you get the hang of it. Basically you use the Incremental column on the left if you want to copy/move objects along an axis, like perhaps a row of columns or balusters, in set increments, like 1 meter or whatever seems appropriate. If you want to instead array to fill out a total distance, you want the Totals column to the right, and you would enter the distance for the last copy from the original into the appropriate field, with the number of object copies in between entered into the Count field under Array Dimensions. If you play around with it, not trying to work with your scene at first, you'll get it before long. You mentioned the windows all stack up on each other along Y, so you may want to set the Incremental copies at 4 meters (enter 4 into the Y field) and enter the number of copies you want (how many floors are there) into the Count field under Array Dimensions.

Del Sol, "technobabble" still confuses me too, and that's after ten years in the games business!

[DuskTrooper 314]

This BAT is going to be great!!!!

[Woulfe 1]

This was an interesting test of my gmax know how, i've come a long way from makein' simple boxes way back when

Woulfe
* Surprized he could follow all the tech talk so well *

[ZipZapZop 2]

I haven't downloaded Gmax yet, and it's already looking confusing and hard. But the results are great! With the old BAP you can't build curves like that. Maxis Brian, is there a brief overall tutorial? Maybe a manual kind of thing? Can you replace buildings in SC4?

[couchpotato 8]

 

CycleDogg's CasaSencilla building can be found at the following link

http://couchspuds.homestead.com/Fourlandindex.html

 

A GMax tutorial using MaxisBrian's wall building technique can be found here

http://couchspuds.homestead.com/files/gmaxbasic.htm

 

Other 3ds Max tutorials can be found here

http://couchspuds.homestead.com/Library4.html

 

Hope to follow along with MaxisBrian's instructions and write pictorial tuts for windows, door, roofs, etc.   Really appreciate all the great information MaxisBrian. 

 

[MaxisBrian 6]

I'm glad you are making progress with gMax. I have been formalizing the tutorials for making walls and windows, and would be happy to email the Word docs to anyone interested. They have embedded graphics and aren't conducive to posting here in the forum. Your feedback was helpful in crafting them, thanks.

If interested, please send me a private message with your email and I'll get them off to you as soon as I can manage.