3D Studio Max BAT Version 2 Released !!

[Caliban 2]

I have also had a number of errors with a variety of error numbers, but in general it works fine for me.

The first time I tried with nightlights it was always erroring but then I found a nightlight had mysteriously acquired a multiplier of 867 (I probably had it selected when I typed something else). Correcting this removed the problems for most exports.

I'm mainly working with a model of over a million polygons, bump mapping, 20 plus night lights and the great new night library feature.

The new tools for processing and replacing the fsh files are great btw

The addition I would most like to see is a night preview.

[RalphaelNinja 244]

I will admit that I haven't done any work on the scripts since the V2 release, possibly due to the lack of feedback

 

There should be about 60 3dsMax designers out there.... how is each of you fairing with the BatforMax?

[ak-ak-adak 0]

Sorry ralphael,

I haven't been able to test your script. I'm in the process of purchasing an AMD 64 bit computer @ the moment. I'm in the store as I write, killing time while it's being prepared. I am seriously consiering the purchase of an intermediate level workstation graphics card. once this happens,look out! stay tuned...

[Vlakhaas 13]

I certainly hope that you are bying the AMD 64 for other reasons than to speed up your Renders ... because if that is what you are expecting ... expect to be seriously disappointed. The 3.4 P4 Prescott runs rings around that AMD 64 with stuff like Autocad and 3dsMax ... even the P4 2.8 is faster through the mentioned applications ...

 

Just some thoughts.

 

[ak-ak-adak 0]

No Vlakhaas,

I didn't buy the 64 bit AMD to improve rendering time. But thanks for the info, though.

A workstation CAD graphics card, in part, is required to improve rendering time. As I mentioned already, I'm seriously considering the purchase of an intermediate level workstation CAD graphics card, like a PNY Quadro Video Card 128MB DDR.

I was told that the combination of processor/motherboard (bus speed, etc) & the type of video card, amongst other things, determines the performance of various tools, such as rendering, within a CAD program like 3D max.

[+Guest]

Date: 7/7/2004 7:45:08 PM
Author:
No Vlakhaas,


I didn't buy the 64 bit AMD to improve rendering time. But thanks for the info, though.


A workstation CAD graphics card, in part, is required to improve rendering time. As I mentioned already, I'm seriously considering the purchase of an intermediate level workstation CAD graphics card, like a PNY Quadro Video Card 128MB DDR.


I was told that the combination of processor/motherboard (bus speed, etc) & the type of video card, amongst other things, determines the performance of various tools, such as rendering, within a CAD program like 3D max.

quote>


The speed of your CPU, graphics card, and RAM affect the speed of 99% of your computer, really.

[RalphaelNinja 244]

Save some money ak-ak-adak and go with a P4-3.4 FSB 800, 1gig or more ram, and either Nvidia or ATI, SATA Most of the render time is much more CPU intensive then Video.

 

A PNY card is good if you are planning to do Commercials and/or animation graphics, but for most 3DS work, the top of the line Nvidia is good enough. Plus a PNY card may not be compatible with most games which may be a factor.

 

Ralphael

 

[+Guest]

Last I checked (which, albeit, was a while ago), the 3.4's were more expensive than the 64's........

[RalphaelNinja 244]

Date: 7/7/2004 8:46:24 PM
Author:
Last I checked (which, albeit, was a while ago), the 3.4's were more expensive than the 64's........

quote>

Over here in Canada, the prices are:
AMD Athlon 64 3400 = $589
Intel P4 3.4C = $595
The PNY Quadro4 FXX2000 goes for $1729, intermediate one about $799.
A nice Asus card GFX-5950 goes for about $579. Directx 9 compatible etc.

I meant saving more on the graphics card itself however the cpu prices are pretty close together. With the Intel, the hyperthreading helps quite a bit with 3dsmax.

Ralphael

[ak-ak-adak 0]

Thanks for the info Ralphael. I already commited. Maybe I should have consulted with u guys b4 purchasing. Here's what I bought:

Antec Performance II Series SX1040BII case
200gig hard drive with SATA connection (very fast transfer)
AMD Athlon 3200 (64bit)
Asus K8V SE Deluxe motherboard

Add to that what I already had:
1 gig of 2100 DDR RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro video card
Acom Series 160 gig External hard drive

Ralpael, would the ATI 9800 be sufficient? Also, when u mentioned top of the line Nvidia, I'm assuming u don't mean the Quadro series, do u?

Thanks for the info guys.

[RalphaelNinja 244]

Date: 7/8/2004 6:38:57 AM
Author:
Ralpael, would the ATI 9800 be sufficient? Also, when u mentioned 'top of the line Nvidia', I'm assuming u don't mean the Quadro series, do u?

Thanks for the info guys.

quote>

No quadro

At least it doesn't sound like an arm and a leg and the AMD 3200 is a good price for a 64bit system. At this time the 9800 is more then adequate as there isn't any need to go quadro.

You might want to spring for two sticks of PC3200 512 to bring the mem speed up to 400. Don't fill up the 3rd mem slot as that will bring the mem speed down on your K8V SE (just something that I read).

Now that you got your computer, see if you can do some quick 3ds testing to bring this thread back to a 3ds discussion

Ralphael

[ak-ak-adak 0]

Raphael,

I was going to spend $500+ (but not over $1,000) on a workstation video card. I may buy a 1 or 2 gig Ram stick. The place where I bought my computer sells them.
1 gig sticks range from 2700s to 4400s. 2 gig sticks are 3200s & 3700s, with the latter priced @ about $1,000.

As for testing, I'm going to try & test a Wendy's site lot dwg I've been working on (building and parking lot), this weekend. I may get a 1 or 2 gig Ram stick tomorrow.

[ak-ak-adak 0]

YEAH!!! HURRAY!!! Thumb's up! Right on!!

Rapheal et al,

The 3D MaxBat Ver 2 worked in 3D Max!

I test-rendered an unfinished/untextured Wendy's restaurant building & site plan. Total rendering time in 3D Max was 0.880467 minutes (almost 1 1/2 minutes). Very fast.

By the way, does anybody have the deltree for Windows XP or knows where it is located? I'm unable to make other renderings cause I keep getting a message to place deltree.exe in the Bat folder.

Here are some pics.

(note: I assumed the drawing corner is placed @ coordinate 0,0 but that doesn't seem correct because it was off. Based on how it turned out in the final rendering & in the lot editor, I'm assuming that the drawing's center should be placed @ coordiante 0,0)

[RalphaelNinja 244]

Good work ak-ak....

Deltree.zip is included with the release and will work with XP for both FAT32 and NTFS, just unzip and copy it into the gamepack directory.

Ralphael

[ak-ak-adak 0]

Raphael,

I tested my Houston arena model. When I imported the LODs in gmax then tried to export, it would freeze @ 13%. That's disapointing. Is there a solution to this freeze @ 13% problem?

The LOD cube (or whatever u call the cube that represents the drawings's volume) is rather large.

Would further development of the 3D MaxBat towards complete independence from gmax fix this problem for larger models?

[RalphaelNinja 244]

Date: 7/9/2004 10:31:53 PM
Author:
Raphael,

I tested my Houston arena model. When I imported the LODs in gmax then tried to export, it would freeze @ 13%. That's disapointing. Is there a solution to this 'freeze @ 13%' problem?

The LOD cube (or whatever u call the cube that represents the drawings's volume) is rather large.

Would further development of the 3D MaxBat towards complete independence from gmax fix this problem for larger models?

quote>

Make sure you refit the LODS and export the 3ds file again.... check your virtual memory increasing it to the max size.

Check out this thread Freezing while rendering to see if anything in it helps..

ilive is checking into it for generating the SD3 files from the LODS, but don't hold your breath yet...

Ralphael

[ak-ak-adak 0]

Ralphael,

Nothing worked. I refited the LODS and exported the 3ds file again. My virtual memory is set @ the following for 1gig RAM : Initial size = 1536, Max size = 3072.

What about if I increased my ram to 2 gig? I could either buy another 512mb of
2100 RAM or buy a 2 gig stick, although the former is the cheaper avenue & would increae my ram to 1.5mb.

Is the problem with gmax program itself?

[Caliban 2]

Well as you asked for feedback and progress shots I thought I'd show you what I've been working on. This is the over a million poly model I have mentioned before. I have exported it many, many times with the BATforMax exporter in Max 6 with very few problems (just the odd BAT error every so often)
It uses bump mapping and a few procedural textures, as well as CycleDoggs wonderful night library feature.
With no nightlighting the export takes about 8 minutes, with the nightlighting this is increased significantly to 50 minutes, with much of that time used for behind the scenes stuff.

[RalphaelNinja 244]

 

Date:7/10/2004 9:30:26 AM
Author:Caliban

It uses bump mapping and a few procedural textures, as well as CycleDoggs wonderful night library feature.
With no nightlighting the export takes about 8 minutes, with the nightlighting this is increased significantly to 50 minutes, with much of that time used for behind the scenes stuff.

quote>

 

Caliban, thanks so much on the feedback. That is simply breathtaking.... bump maps and procedural textures really makes a lot of difference . 

 

ak-ak-adak, I've pm you on sending the LOD files over and I'll give it a try. I'll reserve judgement on AMD until I try it  

 

Ralphael

[Caliban 2]

Thanks , heres a night shot.

[frogface 354]

ooh the bump maps make it look twice as better at night!

 

 

[RalphaelNinja 244]

Reminiscence of the excitement of the first BAT building  

 

now we can look at the details of bump mapping and wonder if you poly it or bumped it  

 

Good work Caliban...

 

Ralphael

[RalphaelNinja 244]

Date:7/10/2004 8:49:29 AM
Author:ak-ak-adak

Ralphael,

Nothing worked. I refited the LODS and exported the 3ds file again. My virtual memory is set @ the following for 1gig RAM : Initial size = 1536, Max size = 3072.

What about if I increased my ram to 2 gig? I could either buy another 512mb of
2100 RAM or buy a 2 gig stick, although the former is the cheaper avenue & would increae my ram to 1.5mb.

Is the problem with gmax program itself?

quote>

Okay, got your LODS and I figure it is best to answer the problem here, rather then an email. (and its not because it is an AMD )

The first thing I noticed is that it is very large. It has a footprint of 12x12x3 tiles (188x188x38 meters). I think the BAT (not gmax) has a fix limit on the size (w x h) of the building that it can render..... alternatively it might be just very very very slow (even on my 3ghz Hyperthreaded PC). Since we are rendering LODS only, we are unable to see the progress.

With a bit of fiddling, it seem to be rendering abeit slowly. I deleted two of the imported LODS and renamed the last LOD to BOX. Then re-fited the LODS (which generates poly boxes). I deleted the BOX and selected one of the LODS and cloned it into a BOX. Selecting Draft mode (which I believe should be okay since all we are interested is the poly s3d shells), I then proceeded to export the box and LODS. Since we are now rendering a box (which gets deleted later on anyways) we can see the painful scanline progress. (13 minutes export time: draft mode)

Give the above a try and post back here with your success or failure...

Ralphael

[Caliban 2]

I export my LODs from gMax in Draft mode and haven't had any quality problems.

[ak-ak-adak 0]

Rapahel,

The arena is almost an exact size as the actual arena in Houston, since I used actual arch drawings as reference. Oh well.

Caliban, I even tried exporting in draft mode & it still froze @ 13% & it showed a not responding in the Windows Task Manager.

Ralphy, I'll give it try.

[Vlakhaas 13]

Once a render has started ... the Taskmanager will always reports that process as not responding ... even while you can see the resource useage is active on that process.

[builderman 3]

That's beautiful Caliban. Amazing! I'll have to get the trial max and figure out how to circumvent the 30 day thing to use this. (And then I have to learn how to BAT )

[couchpotato 8]

If you're interested in purchasing 3ds Max try this:

 

edit: this is a pirate site address as explained below. Sorry about that couchpotato...

 

$80 for 3ds Max 5.1 - no manual - DSL/Cable connection required

 

Doesn't mean we'll all be able to create incredible objects like Caliban though

[RalphaelNinja 244]

Date:7/11/2004 9:19:37 AM
Author:couchpotato

If you're interested in purchasing 3ds Max try this:

 

edit: this is a pirate site address as explained below. Sorry about that couchpotato...

 

$80 for 3ds Max 5.1 - no manual - DSL/Cable connection required

 

Doesn't mean we'll all be able to create incredible objects like Caliban though

quote>

Taking a deeper look at the site (which looks very legitimate) we discover the following disclaimer:

We also only give out downloads, you will not be able to receive a CD copy in the mail. ....Our products can not be registered with the software company however this will not effect the use of the program in any way. If you are needing some support, we recommend you buy some cheap tutorials off of sites such as ebay, they will usually run around $20.00

How are they doing it?
They are selling you a backup copy based on a paragraph from a legal document.

If anything on this site is illegal in any way, shape, or form, then we are unaware of it. Neither us nor our host will be responsible for it. All backup devices are for personal use and should only be used in a legal way. Our company follows all legal issues. We follow all the guidelines of the software companies that we distribute for. If you have any concerns about exactly what we are selling this site explains the legal issues of this matter well.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/117.html

Looking up the legal doc... we find...
Sec. 117. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs

(b) Lease, Sale, or Other Transfer of Additional Copy or Adaptation. -

Any exact copies prepared in accordance with the provisions of this section may be leased, sold, or otherwise transferred, along with the copy from which such copies were prepared, only as part of the lease, sale, or other transfer of all rights in the program. Adaptations so prepared may be transferred only with the authorization of the copyright owner.

Ralphael

 

[ak-ak-adak 0]

Here's an update:

 

First of all, I had to reformat my HD & reinstall the programs.

 

Good news,
the Houston arena took 14 minutes to export all the LODs from gmax. Thanks for the info on this thread Vlakhaas. I waited for any changes to take place& they happened.

 

Bad news,
Once the arena was rendered in 3D Max, I placed the SC4Model file in the prop section of the Plug-in Manager. Then I opened the Lot editor, sized a lot to 14X14, retrieved the arena prop & placed it on the lot, but it doesn't even show on the lot. It's blank. I even re-did my Wendy's model & placed it in the Lot editor & the same thing happened, a complete blank. See below. Anyone have a solution?  Could it be due to the model placement in 3D Max?

 

Thanks guys.