Edit Updated on 2008-12-17

http://home.mnet-online.de/der/3dsmax-md5exporter.zip (9 kb)

OUTDATED INFO:
I´ve written an exporter script that generates md5mesh + anims (for both animated characters and animated cameras).

http://www.doom3world.org/doom3/der_ton ... porter.zip

Read the readme please, and don´t expect it to work if you had some exotic way of animating or organizing your animated character. The animation of the skin-modifier (for skeletal animation) is exported, nothing else. Most importantly, your character has to consist of ONE object only (if you have several objects, use the "attach" function in 3dsmax, your objects will be merged and the resulting object will have a multi/submaterial, which is exactly what my exporter handles).

Camera export is extremely stable, due to extensive testing by oneofthe8devilz, thanks alot dude!
He also included a tutorial text with some more detailed information on how to get the camera-anim into Doom3. There´s a script included for obj-import into 3dsmax, which is needed to have your scenery show up, so you can plan your camera paths exactly.

Post feedback any feedback in this thread, please.

If an error pops up, please tell me the context, that is the output in the maxscript listener window (you may have to open it by selecting it in the maxscript menu).

GMAX:
Exporting to a file doesn´t work with gmax, but actually the output for camera animations would be small enough (in many cases) to output it as text to the maxscript listener window and then the user can copy&paste it into a file. If there´s demand for that, let me know. (Theoretically, md5mesh output can be handled the same way, but meshes are usually alot larger than those 10000 characters that you can copy&paste from the listener window.)
If there are other legal options to make this usable for gmax, tell me.[/b]

Double thumbs up!

Uploaded to the local mirror as mentioned above.

I SMELL FEAARRR ..... lol

not to be mean just wondering how that goes with this thread. BTW, Thanks a bunch for his now i can start my modeling career :lol:

I don't suppose this converter you've made will go the other way, ie. convert .md5 files into usable 3dstudio files? If not would you consider having a pop at it or at least giving me some pointers so's I can have a stab at it...

alexrain wrote:

The answer is very short

:
http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=1946

I feel kinda stupid for having to ask this, but how do I increase the memory allocated to the scripter in Max?

when I run your script to export, I get the error: -- Runtime Error: Out of scripter memory - use options to increase

I'm pretty sure that the model is fine, as I set it up the same way I did the model I used to test the script with, so perhaps if I can just increase this scripter memory it'll work...

Customize->Preferences, there´s a "MAXScript" Panel containing a "Memory" group containing an input field. The default is 7.5 MB I think. You could try 50 MB, if your animation is rather long. If it´s really long (several hundred frames maybe) and if your skeleton/mesh is really complex, don´t be afraid to allocate hundreds of MB... Nope I´m not kidding you. :wink:

heh, I turned it all the way up to 1000, and it still didn't work. so I gave up and cut the poly count in half. it worked beautifully then, though. Thanks a lot, der_ton!

Wow! You sure? How many frames do you export? What´s your polycount and bonecount in the skeleton?

the object isn't animated, and it's about 32,700 polys with one bone.

Det_Ton i've found some kind of trouble with the exporter... when I save a animation file with a long name "nailgun_looongname.MD5anim" i get that two screens:

then the maxscript windows become unestable (it gives an alert sound) and it have to be closed to be ready again....

any idea of how can I save long names (now what I do is save with a short name and the I rename it manually... but it would be great if I could save it directly with the final name....

anyway the maxscript seems to work completely well..

except that I had some kind of trouble with the last model I did, it had some kind of "48 degenerated triangles" that were removed, but the model works ok...

Thanks for the feedback, and thanks for documenting this with the screenshots. But it would be really helpful to see the error message that gets printed in the "maxscript listener" window (open it with a command in the maxscript menu, or F11 if I remember correctly).

It looks like the file dialog that gets invoked by maxscript doesn´t handle the long filename, which is unfortunately not in my hands. But I just tried a quite long filename, too, and there was no problem.

Quote:

except that I had some kind of trouble with the last model I did, it had some kind of "48 degenerated triangles" that were removed, but the model works ok...

I´m almost sure that that´s not due to my exporter, but due to the way you built your model. Did you use boolean operations? Or moved vertices into one another without deleting the superfluous one or welding them properly?

yep, degenerated triangles are my error for sure.... because i did the weapon too fast... maybe I copied some kind of polygons twice.. I did it poly to poly... so it wouldn't be strange I copied some of the faces

when I'll have time I'll post that "maxsctript lsitener" screenshot. oh yep the max I'm using is max 6, I don't think that would be a problem but you said you did the maxscript for max 4 so it may caouse some kind of compatibility problem? well I don't know... anyway I thing it converts the format quite well!

There´s an updated version.
Added features:
-added bounding box output for md5anim
-added support for mirrored bones (lefthanded coordsys)

Still the same URL:
http://www.doom3world.org/doom3/der_ton ... porter.zip

whats that thing about the bunding box? I mean, I know what a bounding box is, but I thought that Doom3 handled the colision per polygons... isn't that for what are the bounding box? for colision detection no?, so what are they doing in the md5 format?...

I cem up with some weir idea... why don't you put together your max script ç(and all the others scripts you did, with the md5 viewer you did? so when you export the md5 to doom3 it's opened directly in the editor so you can see if it worked or not quickly wihout need to do a map, meke the code... and all that stuf... isn't that a good idea in order to improbe the workflow?

The boundingbox is for roughly detecting collisions and visibility. If that rough test fails, then there´s no time wasted on rendering, or per-poly hit detection.

The "bundling" of the tools might be a good idea. I found out that alot of problems that you and others reported could have been investigated easier by just loading the md5s into the viewer instead of going all the way to doom. And the geometry analyzer mode in my viewer would do wonders for some people´s modelling and UV-mapping habits.

If I hadn´t done the viewer first, it would have been really tedious to make the exporters, because I constantly needed to take a look at the generated md5s during script development.

I hope it´s enough to mention the viewer´s existence in the readme files.

hmm. what I wanted to say. is that it would be great if the model viewer open when you export the modle... so you can see instantly if it works well or not...

what do you think about that?

Ah now I getcha.
I don´t think you can start external applications from maxscript.
Well, the simple fact that the modelviewer is script-controlled makes it a short cycle, too. You only have to write the model´s location into the scene.txt and afterwards, whenever you do the export, just start the viewer with the click of a button and it loads your model. I think that´s convenient enough.