GMax

It's 6 years after Discreet discontinued GMax, and ever since the only thing we got is Blender, an excessive gamedesign program that makes people cringe by its counter-intuitive controls, bloated functionalities, poorly organised userinterface and unforgiving lack of support regarding notebooks or input devices other than a 6 buttoned mouse.

But I recently discovered GMax myself, never heard of it before, but it works like a charm! It only has the basics that I need to create models for my games, it's cute and tiny, I can export to .obj using a little script and import in MED flawlessly (spare the upside-down UV map). GMax is great! I forgive the little bugs that show up here and there.

Getting to the point: I put effort in a wiki page and wanted everyone to know about GMax.

Regards,
Joozey

Just to prevent rumors:
- it worked and works without problems on my notebook
- it just uses 2 buttons and a wheel(as a button), makes three buttons - I never got a mouse with more buttons than that.

EDIT:
BTW, you should mention that it has "basic animation rigging and keyframing capabilities" in the wiki as well.

Well, i would just recommend you to try the last Blender version
if you don't like old interface, but the mecanics remain the same.

Once you learned Blender, you feel at ease with it !
Try the last version and you'll see you'll have all the essential tools in hard surface modeling : loop select, loop cut in left menu.
For making bones, weight painting, action editor timeline, once
you have followed a tutorial , after some uses, it becomes so easy and natural.

In fact for Blender the question is : do you have the strengh and motivation for invest yourself learning it step by step ?
Even more ask even on 3DGS forums, people like me will help you

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For Gmax, it is evolving today ? can you use it for your own commercial work ?

No, and No.

ahaha
Loud and clear !
So it's really useless, but perhaps some people keep using it caus they are addicted and feel at home.

Blender really deserves to invest some time leraning it,
it's FREE and so complete !

Sorry, ratchet, did you read Joozey's post? - I don't think so.

The 6-buttoned mouse was overrated . Why I started a flame against Blender is because I would really like to use it, but I just can't. Wherever I search in options, whatever I try, I can not gain complete control over my view and tools, rendering Blender pretty useless for my laptop.

My laptop has no numpad other than under the function key (not very convenient use), no middle mouse which is pretty important in Blender (unless I use an emulator), and no quickly accessible Home/End keys.

In GMax, however, I can make models in no time using my laptop. So why doesn't Blender allow this workflow? Furthermore GMax is very lightweight, Blender not so much. I don't need 90% of what's in Blender, but I use > 60% of GMax' functionalities.

Last complain (which worries me more than it bothers me): the only alternative on the net that is worthy mentioning is GMax. I think that is pretty bad . It is useless for commercial use, as mentioned, but for now I'm releasing my models for free anyway.

Blender shouldn't be the only option.

Ok i got it wrong

I think i understand the need for tiny tools !
I enjoy a lot using fast responsive/smooth tool like silo
when i need standard hard surface modeling.
I like to play with sketchup for fast prototype concept and fun !
And i like a lot also this great japanese little tool :
Metasequoia

I'll try Gmax.

in 2.5x you can both emulate numpad and 3 button mouse. you can also change all hotkeys from the user preferences menu.
--
Also if you feel like coding, you can completely change ui by editing phyton files.

For Gmax:

For Gmax, it is evolving today ? can you use it for your own commercial work ?
No, and No.

That point , specifying you can't use it for commercial is what makes me not trying it ! Even having to register prooves
it's not free at all to use for nay purpose like Blender.

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Yep in Blender 2.5 in any menu you display, just right click
with CTRL key (or Shift?? ?Don't remember) to define a key attached to an action.

Of course it is not really thought to be a free gift. It was a trial to catch some modding people, to get them as new customers for Max. But they gave GMax up. Probably because modders still did not buy a tool that costs more than 5,000 Euros here in Europe. They used scripts to export illegally and they used Warez. So it did not make much sense in the end.

My advice is to not touch any Autodesk product. These tools are reported to be instable, they are expensive and yearly upgrades are expensive as well. Workflow is also not the best in terms of modelling. Our customers often complain that they cannot read FBX files well in Max, while the same FBX files read well in cheap tools like Ultimate Unwrap 3d, in Gamestudio or Unity 3d.

Frank, how would you judge the use of GMax, being officially not supported anymore by Autodesk? Can they theoretically still cause a problem when using export scripts to, say, .obj?

The old license is the one that has to be taken into account. And as far as I know it was only allowed as a modding tool for different supported games.

Can they theoretically still cause a problem when using export scripts to, say, .obj?

If they can find you use it by some hidden things that communicate throught your internet connexion : Indeed they can be very bad with you!

Simple advice forget it and use today more advanced tools.
Why not learning Blender 2.5 and above ?
Or buy silo that is really affordable for hard surface modeling and lot more easy and fast than Gmax i'm sure.

But it's the choice is up to you.

I use it by some hidden things that communicate through my internet connection?
I use it as it was designed for. I run a max script that outputs the vertex and uv positions, and I use that output to manually create a .obj file.

I read their license does allow to export to .md3.
Can't find license details on that format though. If I am able to convert .md3 formats, it should be perfectly fine to convert to .md7, the one MED uses.

Silo also looks pretty extensive. I don't want to pay for all the material stuff, nurbs and whatnot. I just want a tiny sturdy app to create lowpoly models.

The current EULA from the official page doesn't seem to have any restrictions for commercial use. So, why not using it, if it fits with your purposes?

And, ratchet, what are you arguing for? Joozey already showed that it works for him? It doesn't cost anything!

Joozey, considering the nice lowlowpoly models, I would like to see highpoly versions of them, too. But, as long as you are inspired to build these unique little monsters, keep that track, please!

as far as i know, eula does not say anything about commercial use, but talks about you are only allowed to use it for mods. If they had supported source/goldsrc GMAX could be in a different place now.

Modtool is the Softimage equivilent of GMax. Does modelling, animation, the lot. Non-commercial.

www.autodesk.com/modtool



If you need .obj export then use the older 6.5 version, it was removed from the latest 7.5 version for some reason.