Need help understanding art pipeline for MAX

Pipeline
1

Hello all -

My apologize for the ‘newbie’ question here, but I’ve been given the task of researching the art pipeline for a few 3D game engines and unfortunately, I’m not an artist (I’m QA).

I’ve spent some time reading through the posts here, but again, I’m not an artist, so I’m not really sure what to look for.

We use 3DS MAX 8 and 9, and I need to figure out the process of getting our meshes/textures/animations/skins into Panda3D.

Any help is appreciated - even if it’s just links to details rather than all details here -

Dave Navarro

2

panda3d.org/manual/index.php/C … Studio_Max

If you want information about the process itself, well, the EGG format is human-readable (kinda like XML, take a look in the files)
About the max thing, read the source of the exporter / converter.

3

Thanks so much for the link.

The wiki page references Max 5,6,and 7 … does Panda3D have a way to convert 8 and 9 yet?

Thanks,

Dave

4

there is a max8 exporter in the Panda\plugins folder. this is a plugin that goes in the max8 plugins folder. (there are 2 maxxegg8 and maximporter8. both need ot be copied to 3DS Max\plugins folder

note: the exporter does not show up in the FILE>EXPORT menu but rather in the Helpers > Exporters rollout.

5

If you are using 3DS Max 9 and want to export an animated model try exporting to autodesk FBX and importing into 3DS MAX 8 for export to egg.

it is convoluted but the FBX format retains the animations quite well.

if you have trouble exporting the animations from 3DS Max8 > .egg, check to make sure the bones are ‘on’.

select all bones and go to [BONE TOOLS] > bone on checked.