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.