Update: check my latest posts below...

Outdated info about the first version, left for historical reasons: This is an importer that imports MD5 files into 3ds max4, 5, 6, 7 and gmax. It's currently version 0.9, and doesn't read md5anims. Also I've encountered a strange hole in the mesh for the vagary.md5mesh. I investigated that for hours today but couldn't find the bug. But since it's not suposed to be the final version, and since I need more feedback anyway, it should be ok for the time being.

Next I'll update the md5 exporter so we can actually put this importer to any use.

http://home.mnet-online.de/der/3dsmax-md5importer.zip (whopping 5 kb)

I haven't tried all the models yet, but the guardian and cyber demon seem to work fine. I played with the guardian's skeleton a little bit, and the only odd thing I noticed was if you move the bone in one of his horns, there seems to be a stray vertice in the other horn that moves with it. It might be something Id did on purpose since it seems to be the same with both horns...

Importing Sabaoth and Maledict, however, crashed Max after they appeared in the viewport.

Great job, though! Definitely making progress. And I can't wait for your exporter

bullet wrote:

Importing Sabaoth and Maledict, however, crashed Max after they appeared in the viewport.

Hmm... too bad I can't look at them yet, don't want to spoil the game. I guess that's a good excuse for playing the game some more now.

Awesome, der.

BTW, I couldn't get the Sabaoth model to crash gmax after import. There is a small bug with one or more of its verts it seems. I would post a screenie, but I don't want to ruin it for der_ton

der_ton wrote:

bullet wrote:

Importing Sabaoth and Maledict, however, crashed Max after they appeared in the viewport.

too bad I can't look at them yet, don't want to spoil the game.

Greetings.

This is great, it imports with the skeleton and skin modifier, I couldnt ask for more.
We just need a new exporter now, becuase the game asks for "version 10" of the md5mesh.
So close to having my Imp with a round head

Thanks to your awesome plugin I know have this cool ass avatar.

Excellent work der_ton, thank you very much.

Where do you install this plugin? Im not that familiar with 3dsmax, but im trying to learn. Could someone tell me?

You don't install it. In the MaxScript menu you select Open Script... and browse your way to the script, and open it. Then you press Ctrl-E to start it.

Hey der check this out its some script im not sure if it can help u but check it out its for .md5

http://bane.servebeer.com/programming/b ... d5-0.21.py

here is the original website

http://bane.servebeer.com/programming/blender/

Yep I know this one. Check out the Blender subforum here, and see that I made a post about that some months ago.

It's not too functional at the moment, no skeleton import, no weighting, and not the final MD5 format.
But thanks anyway, I'll rather get updated twice on stuff I already know than miss out stuff I don't know because someone assumes that I already know.

this need to be STICKY

It's updated to v0.91, I added an option so that the importer does not reorganize the bone orientations. This looks kinda ugly in max, because the original bone orientations stored in the md5 are maya-style, which means bones extend along their y axis, versus z axis in max.
But now that (when the option is off) the original orientations are preserved, the exported mesh will work with original md5anims.
Even though the bone layout may look stupid, it works, it's not a hack, and the parenting in the skeleton structure does not depend on bones forming a physical chain with their children. Animating it is not really harder. Only selection of bones might be harder, because you can get confused more easily with some bones having unintuitive layout.

This is kinda shoved out in a hurry since I'm gone for the next two days. Let's see if I fucked up anything. Couldn't really test it much.

Edit: no I won't be away this weekend, plans changed.

Here is V0.92, I added md5camera import.

http://home.tiscali.de/der_ton/3dsmax-md5importer.zip (6 kb)

http://home.tiscali.de/der_ton/3dsmax-md5scripts.zip (14 kb, includes importer and exporter)

It seems the new importer zip is corrupt. The combined one is fine though.

Quote:

Even though the bone layout may look stupid, it works, it's not a hack, and the parenting in the skeleton structure does not depend on bones forming a physical chain with their children. Animating it is not really harder. Only selection of bones might be harder, because you can get confused more easily with some bones having unintuitive layout.

I think this is fine since you can switch off the bones all together and just view the "links" which would make perfect sense.

Thanks obihb, I reuploaded the zip, it's fixed now.

Another word about the camera import usage:
If the "import to selected camera" checkbox is checked, then the animation will be written to the selected camera. If not, a new camera with the name of the md5camera file will be generated.
The "Import at frame #" input is used to move the imported anim to that frame. This makes it easy to append camera animations. That's useful because Doom3 sometimes uses several md5camera files for a scene.

Ive got some funk going on:

Half the time when I try to import, it says there's a MaxScript error but it can't give details. Othertimes, the mesh will import but it is unbelievably skewed, beyond recognition, and any attempt to alter any form of it (even some camera movements) causes a plethora of problems, often resulting in Max shutting itself down.

I've never had any problems with Max before, just using this importer. I'm using Max 6.

What md5mesh are you trying to import when the problem occurs?
Did you open the MaxScript listener (F11) and read the error?

Update: check my latest posts below...

Outdated info about the first version, left for historical reasons: This is an importer that imports MD5 files into 3ds max4, 5, 6, 7 and gmax. It's currently version 0.9, and doesn't read md5anims. Also I've encountered a strange hole in the mesh for the vagary.md5mesh. I investigated that for hours today but couldn't find the bug. But since it's not suposed to be the final version, and since I need more feedback anyway, it should be ok for the time being.

Next I'll update the md5 exporter so we can actually put this importer to any use.

http://home.mnet-online.de/der/3dsmax-md5importer.zip (whopping 5 kb)

I haven't tried all the models yet, but the guardian and cyber demon seem to work fine. I played with the guardian's skeleton a little bit, and the only odd thing I noticed was if you move the bone in one of his horns, there seems to be a stray vertice in the other horn that moves with it. It might be something Id did on purpose since it seems to be the same with both horns...

Importing Sabaoth and Maledict, however, crashed Max after they appeared in the viewport.

Great job, though! Definitely making progress. And I can't wait for your exporter

bullet wrote:

Importing Sabaoth and Maledict, however, crashed Max after they appeared in the viewport.

Hmm... too bad I can't look at them yet, don't want to spoil the game. I guess that's a good excuse for playing the game some more now.

Awesome, der.

BTW, I couldn't get the Sabaoth model to crash gmax after import. There is a small bug with one or more of its verts it seems. I would post a screenie, but I don't want to ruin it for der_ton

der_ton wrote:

bullet wrote:

Importing Sabaoth and Maledict, however, crashed Max after they appeared in the viewport.

too bad I can't look at them yet, don't want to spoil the game.

Greetings.

This is great, it imports with the skeleton and skin modifier, I couldnt ask for more.
We just need a new exporter now, becuase the game asks for "version 10" of the md5mesh.
So close to having my Imp with a round head

Thanks to your awesome plugin I know have this cool ass avatar.

Excellent work der_ton, thank you very much.

Where do you install this plugin? Im not that familiar with 3dsmax, but im trying to learn. Could someone tell me?

You don't install it. In the MaxScript menu you select Open Script... and browse your way to the script, and open it. Then you press Ctrl-E to start it.

Hey der check this out its some script im not sure if it can help u but check it out its for .md5

http://bane.servebeer.com/programming/b ... d5-0.21.py

here is the original website

http://bane.servebeer.com/programming/blender/

Yep I know this one. Check out the Blender subforum here, and see that I made a post about that some months ago.

It's not too functional at the moment, no skeleton import, no weighting, and not the final MD5 format.
But thanks anyway, I'll rather get updated twice on stuff I already know than miss out stuff I don't know because someone assumes that I already know.

this need to be STICKY

It's updated to v0.91, I added an option so that the importer does not reorganize the bone orientations. This looks kinda ugly in max, because the original bone orientations stored in the md5 are maya-style, which means bones extend along their y axis, versus z axis in max.
But now that (when the option is off) the original orientations are preserved, the exported mesh will work with original md5anims.
Even though the bone layout may look stupid, it works, it's not a hack, and the parenting in the skeleton structure does not depend on bones forming a physical chain with their children. Animating it is not really harder. Only selection of bones might be harder, because you can get confused more easily with some bones having unintuitive layout.

This is kinda shoved out in a hurry since I'm gone for the next two days. Let's see if I fucked up anything. Couldn't really test it much.

Edit: no I won't be away this weekend, plans changed.

Here is V0.92, I added md5camera import.

http://home.tiscali.de/der_ton/3dsmax-md5importer.zip (6 kb)

http://home.tiscali.de/der_ton/3dsmax-md5scripts.zip (14 kb, includes importer and exporter)

It seems the new importer zip is corrupt. The combined one is fine though.

Quote:

Even though the bone layout may look stupid, it works, it's not a hack, and the parenting in the skeleton structure does not depend on bones forming a physical chain with their children. Animating it is not really harder. Only selection of bones might be harder, because you can get confused more easily with some bones having unintuitive layout.

I think this is fine since you can switch off the bones all together and just view the "links" which would make perfect sense.

Thanks obihb, I reuploaded the zip, it's fixed now.

Another word about the camera import usage:
If the "import to selected camera" checkbox is checked, then the animation will be written to the selected camera. If not, a new camera with the name of the md5camera file will be generated.
The "Import at frame #" input is used to move the imported anim to that frame. This makes it easy to append camera animations. That's useful because Doom3 sometimes uses several md5camera files for a scene.

Ive got some funk going on:

Half the time when I try to import, it says there's a MaxScript error but it can't give details. Othertimes, the mesh will import but it is unbelievably skewed, beyond recognition, and any attempt to alter any form of it (even some camera movements) causes a plethora of problems, often resulting in Max shutting itself down.

I've never had any problems with Max before, just using this importer. I'm using Max 6.

What md5mesh are you trying to import when the problem occurs?
Did you open the MaxScript listener (F11) and read the error?

The importer is updated, I fixed a little glitch that occured with some models, and I added md5anim import, but it shows some weird bone-scaling in many cases. I checked and couldn't find anything that would cause that on the script side. Maybe it's a bug in Max4? I would be thankful for feedback from users, and especially thankful if the programmers here could take a look at what I'm doing there. I'm out of ideas, but the solution may be obvious to some other programmer.

http://home.tiscali.de/der_ton/3dsmax-md5importer.zip (7k)

how can i install it?

Just unzip the .ms file from the zip package, and in Max, go to the MaxScript menu and choose "open script...", choose the .ms and press CTRL-E. Or choose "run script..." and it'll run directly after you select the .ms file.

The errors aren't always the same, they seem to differ depending on which model I import. Here's one for the archvile.

-- read the submeshes
.....
(
line = readline md5file
linetokens = filterstring line " \t"
if (linetokens[1]=="shader") then

Cyberdemon gave me this as the error:
skiptostring linestream "("

I'm very familiar with Max, but not with MaxScripts, everything else is working fine. The script also causes Max to crash, which otherwise very rarely happens

You have to close the script and restart it when you want to import a new model. Does that work? I always do that and it never crashed on me.
But thanks for the info, I see if I can modify it so you don't have to close it inbetween two imports.

From what I have seen in the MD5 to Max and Max to MD5, the import/export have been written in Maxscript.

Is anyone looking to code them into C++ plugins once they are fully functional and stable ?

I don't know if coding a C++ plugin involves a lisence or something.

Except for a speedup, I don't see a big gain for writing this kind of thing as a plugin. Script languages are elegant and it's alot quicker to do stuff. Plus the compiled plugin would either not be open source, or with released source, people would have to go through more trouble to change something (setting up the project and compiling it).

And a huge plus for Maxscript is that it's compatible through all versions, while you would have to compile it separately for each max version as a plugin. What a mess.

der_ton wrote:

Except for a speedup, I don't see a big gain for writing this kind of thing as a plugin. Script languages are elegant and it's alot quicker to do stuff. Plus the compiled plugin would either not be open source, or with released source, people would have to go through more trouble to change something (setting up the project and compiling it).

And a huge plus for Maxscript is that it's compatible through all versions, while you would have to compile it separately for each max version as a plugin. What a mess.

Thx for the info.

Hi der_ton

did you or anyone else ever encounter problems with md5anim files ? When I import them to the corresponding md5mesh weird things are happening. As soon as I run the animation the whole model explodes. Seems as if the bones are going to different directions than the model itself. Already tried to use the "reorient bones" option but no good either.

What may I have forgotten ? Any ideas ?

Im using 3dsmax5

Found the threat .. Questions answered...

Excellent work on the importers/exporters, however ive run into some bugs some of which are mentioned earlier in the posts.

Ive got them down to a recreatable situations should you want to test these yourself.

I am using max 6

Bug 1:script error "attempt to access deleted scene object."

Quote:

-Run the importer max script
-click import MD5
-select models\md5\Items\PDA_View\Idle.md5mesh
-click okay
- with this mesh still selected in the max window, hit delete on the keyboard.
-press import again and select any other md5 mesh

max script will now complain about "attempt to access deleted scene object.", The importer will no longer work during this max session. (you will hear a beeping)
if you decide to exit max at this point it has a serious application error and will fall over.

Bug 2: inside out mesh.

Quote:

If you import a md5 mesh, without orient bones to mesh,then load a corresponding animation. The animation will load in correctly, but the bones will be facing in the wrong direction.

If you import a md5 mesh, with orient bones to mesh, the corresponding animations will cause the mesh to flip inside out and skew horribly.

this may or may not be an issue unless you want to change something about and existing animation.

hope these help

*edit read post up there about closing down the script window between imports. i guess that will sort problem 1

Yep, problem 1 is fixed in my current version here, but not uploaded.

Problem 2 is not really about an "inside out mesh", but just "distorted mesh", and it doesn't relate to the animations, but to the import method of the skeleton. A basic description is in my post on page one, from 2004-08-20. With "Reorient Bones" enabled, the script changes the local coordinate spaces of bones, so that they are aligned and point to their children. Ofcourse the orientations loaded from an animation do not correspond to the original bindpose anymore, so it naturally looks wrong when an animation is loaded onto a model that was imported with "Reorient Bones" enabled. I didn't mention that but now I think I should have.
So problem 2 is not a bug but a known limitation.
BTW, Obihb had a tip on how you can get better display of the bones in max, it's on page one of this thread, too.

the script works well..

but how can i choose the right texture for diffuse map or bump map ??

And what are *_local.tga texture use for ??

thanks :lol:

For the material thing in 3dsmax:
http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=5154

Here is an explanation of bumpmapping with normalmaps (that's what the _local.tga files are):
http://www.delphi3d.net/articles/viewar ... apping.htm
There's lots of info on that also in our texture creation section here.

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewto ... 7594#57594

doomkid3000 wrote:

this is offtopic but has to do with the bones importing on the MD5 meshes on der_tons importer just for so you guys know the importers are fine now the reason you get bones that scretch out is normal especialy when you import the animation, so ive found out to fix this its very easy all you have to do is select all the bones and right click the properties in and turn off the bone alignment option then the bones will be fixed and they will no longer have streching areas were for instince the head on the doom marines go inside out lol, and for you 3dsmax users to turn off the bones just go into your charactor tab and click on bone tools and click under object properties and that will have were you can turn off the bone alignment options so now when you import md5 anims your bones wont be messed up i hope this helps all you guys and that the importers are fine you just have to select some bones and turn off there alignment so they will work on importing md5 animations, when you do your own then you have them leave the bone alignment turned on. unless your wanting to scretch or move a specific bone around like the joints on the commando zombies tentacle then that works. so i thank der_ton for telling me how to do this expecialy when i wanted to position the shotgun on the marine so now you know how to get those bones fixed when there screching out.

Great, thanks! With that hint I fixed the problem in the script and you don't have to manually turn off bones. I'm sure it's better this way, and if you need the alignment help you could always turn it back on again (and have that stretching error in rare cases, which is really like just a display glitch).

http://home.tiscali.de/der_ton/3dsmax-md5importer.zip

Nice work on the script.

Unfortunately, my problem, which no one else will probably ever run into, is that I cannot import multiple md5meshes without the bone heirarchy getting all messed up. Sometimes, I am able to fix this by adjusting the bones accordingly, but it's a real bear of a problem.

Do you have a fix planned for this, or do you think that I am doing something wrong?

That worked; thanks! This makes things easier to handle.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

i think its better to import the md5mesh and md5anim first and then save that as a maxfile and do the other md5mesh like save that and open the other max file and just merge em so you dont mess up the bones so you can see for example attach a head to the body to see the head animations. or the hellknight throwing the hazmat guy animation. :lol:

When I try to import a md5mesh of something like an imp, the some of the bones are disconnected from each other. For expample, heres the imp skeleton when I imported the imp.md5mesh. I checked the reorient bones option on this one.

Anyone know whats going on?

This is what the imp bones look like when I import the imp.md5mesh without checking the reorient bones option.

Does it look like this for anyone else?

Yeah I get a similar problem with both gmax and Max. Oddly enough, Blender doesn't do that.. go figure.!

The bones may look disconnected, but they are parented properly. Just rotate one and see its children follow the rotation.

The orientations are exactly the same as stored in the md5mesh, and they don't necessarily have to line up nicely so that the end of a bone touches the beginning of one of its child.

I had to register just to say thanks for this awesome script. I only see two problems that could be fixed: the bones aren't linked properly (they detach when you try dragging them, which of course defeats the purpose of IK), and the leaf bones aren't oriented properly; they seem to be pointing sideways, undoubtedly a side effect of the original format.

Excellent job, and thanks again for the hard work.

Awesome scripts. Got a small feature request though : would it be possible to add an option to *not* combine the submeshes to one big mesh when importing?
I'm asking because I've added a Bloodrayne BFM->MD5 option to my toolset, but the game requires separate models for gibbing purposes, so I can't just re-export to md5 again and convert back to BFM at the moment.

Thanks for the kind words.

Turfster: Hmm, you can work around the problem by separating the object into its parts with the tools in Max. It should be really easy.

OmegaThree: Yes the skeleton is a bit unwieldy but that's because there's only the most necessary information in the md5 files.
But I got another request that I'm gonna try out, using dummy objects to represent the bones. In the meantime you should be able to get there by foot: Link dummy empties with the bones, then hide the bones and handle the animation by moving the dummy objects.

der_ton wrote:

Thanks for the kind words.

Turfster: Hmm, you can work around the problem by separating the object into its parts with the tools in Max. It should be really easy.

OmegaThree: Yes the skeleton is a bit unwieldy but that's because there's only the most necessary information in the md5 files.
But I got another request that I'm gonna try out, using dummy objects to represent the bones. In the meantime you should be able to get there by foot: Link dummy empties with the bones, then hide the bones and handle the animation by moving the dummy objects.

I recently made a Ouija board. 17 faces, two bones, animated to spell "DIE". At first I had to select the ORIGIN bone and go to CHARACTER\BONE TOOLS and turn off the respective checkboxes to allow the OUIJA POINTER bone to be animated without moving the ORIGIN also. It worked fine. Afterwards, I tried the same set up except I used one bone for the ORIGIN with a DUMMY linked to it. The DUMMY was used to animatd the OUIJA POINTER and free-floated, not affecting the ORIGIN at all, but still had the necessary hierarchy. No messing with the BONE TOOLS was required. The model (17 faces, one ORIGIN bone, one DUMMY) exported with der_ton's MD5 3ds Max exporter and works great.

http://trepaning.com/ouija/ouija.pk4

I made that in class last week for my first day as a guest instructor for game design!

nice board game!

Umm what file extension is .ms? Is this a stand alone importer or does it need 3DS, if it does then I'm fucked.

It's a Max Script file. You need 3D Studio to run it.

You can also use it with GMax which is a free program based from 3D Studio.

I have created macroscripts using der_ton's max importer & exporter.
There are no functional changes to the scripts themselves, all I did was
convert them to macros and create (ugly) icons for them. This means
that with this package you can easily add the scripts into your MAX UI,
either as toolbar buttons or as hotkeys.

You can get them from here:
http://www.nerurkar.de/doom3/3dsmax_doom3tools.zip
(Package contains both importer and exporter)

Feedback appreciated in here:
http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewto ... 371#130371

Thank You for this awesome script!!! I know, I am very noob, I don't even know what "mesh" means yet

Anyway, great work!! Thanks again for this and rest of useful scripts!

The download links are broken.

This one works though:

http://www.nerurkar.de/doom3/3dsmax_doom3tools.zip

How's that "let's host all the essential tools" thing going BNA? :lol:

* I'm just ribbing you bro. *

May I complain about importer a little? Don't get me wrong - I was able to export one working model to the game(q4) and I am thankful for der_ton's import/export scripts, but...

Model's left hand always looks weird after importing af_pose.md5anim. No matter if Reorient Bones(RB) option is checked or not. Actually with RB on, whole model is screwed after importing animation.

My lacmus paper is the r_wrist and l_wrist bones.
Import player.md5mesh (RB off) - wrists is pointing in different directions. I mean one is sticking inward the palm and other outward. Now if you import animation, left arm will be twisted. Results is only getting worst with RB on.

Thanks.

Thanks for the feedback!

I looked at q4base\models\characters\player\player.md5mesh and a few of its animations, including af_pose.md5anim, and I couldn't see that problem you're reporting about the left wrist. Can you give me a more detailed description or include screenshots? Maybe something looks wrong to you because the player.md5mesh is in a certain pose that is meant to be like that (the hands are holding an imaginary weapon that is not included in the model).

The reorient bones option only makes sense at all if you don't need the model to be compatible with any existing animations. This also counts for importing animations on this reoriented skeleton in 3dsmax. They will give strange results, as the md5anim is interpreted to be relative to an unchanged (not reoriented) set of bones. Sorry for the inconvenience. I should warn about the very limited use of that option in the readme even more.

Ok, get home and took some screenies.

Import player.md5mesh
http://dimwalker.com/temp/wrists.gif

Import af_pose.md5anim
http://dimwalker.com/temp/wrists2.gif
Here you can clearly see both wrists pointing in a different direction(and I guess they both wrong

) , oh and also note the thumb on the left hand (l_thumb_03).

You see, I need to tweak the skeleton to fit female character mesh(looks really ugly vise versa ), but still have awfully distorted model in game. This problems is probably more related to raven modeling pipe-line, but maybe you can give me some tips on exporter-friendly bones scaling?

I would try to create brand new skeleton, but it gives even more questions - which bones is crucial for MP, how it all will work with IK links, how to create a proper rig with all this handy dummies and helpers, and export w/o trashing the animation files with it etc etc etc.

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

Thanks for the effort, now with those screenshots I understand what you mean.
The fact that the bones point in funny directions shouldn't irritate you, it's not a bug. In a md5mesh file there are no real bones stored, only a hierarchy of coordinate systems, which is the most basic information that a skeleton has to contain if it is going to be used to animate a mesh. The importer sets up a bone object with that position and orientation that it reads from the md5, and that doesn't always look pretty, but prettyness is irrelevant for it to just work.

For convenience and efficiency while animating, if you might rather work with other objects, you can create any object that you want as a bone, position it nicely and then bind it to a bone so that animating the object will result in animating its corresponding bone. You can then hide the bones and work with your helper objects. I remember obihb had another trick, involving empty helper objects or something, I don't quite remember. A search might help you, maybe it's even in this thread, but I gotta get some sleep now.

Update: check my latest posts below...

Outdated info about the first version, left for historical reasons: This is an importer that imports MD5 files into 3ds max4, 5, 6, 7 and gmax. It's currently version 0.9, and doesn't read md5anims. Also I've encountered a strange hole in the mesh for the vagary.md5mesh. I investigated that for hours today but couldn't find the bug. But since it's not suposed to be the final version, and since I need more feedback anyway, it should be ok for the time being.

Next I'll update the md5 exporter so we can actually put this importer to any use.

http://home.mnet-online.de/der/3dsmax-md5importer.zip (whopping 5 kb)

I haven't tried all the models yet, but the guardian and cyber demon seem to work fine. I played with the guardian's skeleton a little bit, and the only odd thing I noticed was if you move the bone in one of his horns, there seems to be a stray vertice in the other horn that moves with it. It might be something Id did on purpose since it seems to be the same with both horns...

Importing Sabaoth and Maledict, however, crashed Max after they appeared in the viewport.

Great job, though! Definitely making progress. And I can't wait for your exporter

bullet wrote:

Importing Sabaoth and Maledict, however, crashed Max after they appeared in the viewport.

Hmm... too bad I can't look at them yet, don't want to spoil the game. I guess that's a good excuse for playing the game some more now.

Awesome, der.

BTW, I couldn't get the Sabaoth model to crash gmax after import. There is a small bug with one or more of its verts it seems. I would post a screenie, but I don't want to ruin it for der_ton

der_ton wrote:

bullet wrote:

Importing Sabaoth and Maledict, however, crashed Max after they appeared in the viewport.

too bad I can't look at them yet, don't want to spoil the game.

Greetings.

This is great, it imports with the skeleton and skin modifier, I couldnt ask for more.
We just need a new exporter now, becuase the game asks for "version 10" of the md5mesh.
So close to having my Imp with a round head

Thanks to your awesome plugin I know have this cool ass avatar.

Excellent work der_ton, thank you very much.

Where do you install this plugin? Im not that familiar with 3dsmax, but im trying to learn. Could someone tell me?

You don't install it. In the MaxScript menu you select Open Script... and browse your way to the script, and open it. Then you press Ctrl-E to start it.

Hey der check this out its some script im not sure if it can help u but check it out its for .md5

http://bane.servebeer.com/programming/b ... d5-0.21.py

here is the original website

http://bane.servebeer.com/programming/blender/

Yep I know this one. Check out the Blender subforum here, and see that I made a post about that some months ago.

It's not too functional at the moment, no skeleton import, no weighting, and not the final MD5 format.
But thanks anyway, I'll rather get updated twice on stuff I already know than miss out stuff I don't know because someone assumes that I already know.

this need to be STICKY

It's updated to v0.91, I added an option so that the importer does not reorganize the bone orientations. This looks kinda ugly in max, because the original bone orientations stored in the md5 are maya-style, which means bones extend along their y axis, versus z axis in max.
But now that (when the option is off) the original orientations are preserved, the exported mesh will work with original md5anims.
Even though the bone layout may look stupid, it works, it's not a hack, and the parenting in the skeleton structure does not depend on bones forming a physical chain with their children. Animating it is not really harder. Only selection of bones might be harder, because you can get confused more easily with some bones having unintuitive layout.

This is kinda shoved out in a hurry since I'm gone for the next two days. Let's see if I fucked up anything. Couldn't really test it much.

Edit: no I won't be away this weekend, plans changed.

Here is V0.92, I added md5camera import.

http://home.tiscali.de/der_ton/3dsmax-md5importer.zip (6 kb)

http://home.tiscali.de/der_ton/3dsmax-md5scripts.zip (14 kb, includes importer and exporter)

It seems the new importer zip is corrupt. The combined one is fine though.

Quote:

Even though the bone layout may look stupid, it works, it's not a hack, and the parenting in the skeleton structure does not depend on bones forming a physical chain with their children. Animating it is not really harder. Only selection of bones might be harder, because you can get confused more easily with some bones having unintuitive layout.

I think this is fine since you can switch off the bones all together and just view the "links" which would make perfect sense.

Thanks obihb, I reuploaded the zip, it's fixed now.

Another word about the camera import usage:
If the "import to selected camera" checkbox is checked, then the animation will be written to the selected camera. If not, a new camera with the name of the md5camera file will be generated.
The "Import at frame #" input is used to move the imported anim to that frame. This makes it easy to append camera animations. That's useful because Doom3 sometimes uses several md5camera files for a scene.

Ive got some funk going on:

Half the time when I try to import, it says there's a MaxScript error but it can't give details. Othertimes, the mesh will import but it is unbelievably skewed, beyond recognition, and any attempt to alter any form of it (even some camera movements) causes a plethora of problems, often resulting in Max shutting itself down.

I've never had any problems with Max before, just using this importer. I'm using Max 6.

What md5mesh are you trying to import when the problem occurs?
Did you open the MaxScript listener (F11) and read the error?