Hey Guys,

I am wondering what software/plugins people use to make levels creates in MDL format? I note that SPHERE requires people to make levels out of MDLS, and I have found that I get the best quality when I use MDLs. (As levels, I mean MDLs as rooms, doors, bridges, doorframes etc).

I would be interested to know how people manage this.

PS: Is anyone aware of a way I can export multi/sub object materials from Max into MDL?

Cheers,

Static

I use MED to do it. However, MED, as of 6.40.5, is full of limitations, bugs, and annoyances that's still keeping me from doing anything with my 3D project. I do it using calculations and planning (along with some other tools like my mind game, Excel, and Windows calculator).



This graph shows how many polygons are being rendered per seconds with each given polygon count and number of objects (duplicated ones). From 2000 to 5000 is where the peak performance is thus keep your models between 2000 and 5000 polygons each for the most detail and best performance.

Render to Texture - at least in Max 6 is not optimised. This means that models with the skin shown 4 times (say on the four walls around a room) comes up as 4 separate images (I recognise that this is because they could be effected by lighting). This means that the quality of the maps is not high. Realisically for game design I would want a render to texture which incorporated tiling of the textures and ignored lighting effects.

Static.

You can do this using Maya or Max + Ventilator's MDL splitter:

1. Export your file from max/maya/whatever as you like. You can output clean .ase files from max/maya using actorX, then convert it to .3ds with deep exploration.
2. Import the .3ds/.x/etc file into Med 6.40 (-not- older versions)
3. Save the file from MED into an MDL file.
4. Drag that MDL file into Ventilator's Mdl_splitter app. (search forum to find it)
5. A wmp is created by Ventilator's app, with all the MDL's in proper places and ready for use in WED.

It's kind of odd that you have to import multi-object files into MED then bust them open with Vent's great little app. MED really should offer the ability to crack open a multi-object MDL into a WMP anyway. Note that MED will -not- retain the names of the multiple objects, so after steps 3 and 4, the models will all lose their unique names.

Assigning actions to those objects from within Maya or Max is another matter. I've been working on a little java app to modify Vent's wmp files by looking through the .ase file I used to create the MDL and then automatically modifying the names and actions in the wmp file. It's still a bit of a pain but works. I can make this little java app thing available if interested. It'll only work if you start with .ase instead of .x files.