I need some people to test this for me, see if it freaks out on you or not.

Its a plugin for 3DS Max 6 that imports Milkshape3D ASCII format files for whatever purpose you so desire.

At the moment I havent finished the bone system so this just imports the meshes, UV Maps and materials but I still need people to test it and see if it breaks or not.

Quick note on a couple of "knowns" - first of all, Milkshape stores all its paths to the texture files as relative. Max doesn't like this in many cases although it will work. Best way to get around it is to browse to the texture files in the material library to update them or add your texture path to the search paths list.

Second, alpha channels in textures aren't used as you would expect. As per the Max documentation, the alpha channel is set as the opacity map. If the Milkshape material has an alpha map set it will use it otherwise it wont add one.

Oh and yes, the plugin honours smoothing groups and I will re-compile it for Max 5 if theres enough demand when the rest of the plugin is done.

Since I haven't gotten around to reinstalling XSI to try out the plugin, export, plugin, export, import, etc I will be all over this.

(just after I scan 1200 slides or so)

is it a possiblity that you compile it for
max 4 ??

I suppose so if I had 4 or the SDK for 4.

The model imported fine with smoothing and such, but only showed up in the perspective box. The other 3 boxes did not show the model. TGKB said it showed up for him, not me though. Max 6 in both cases. Also the textures loaded up fine for me 1st try but not for TGKB. Odd.

Looking forward to some bones.

not to stress u jed
but how is it going ??

Not so great. The MAX SDK mentioned nothing about how the bone system works with regards to creating new bones :( Plenty of info on bone methods but nothing on their actual creation and my post of the discreet developer forums sits unanswered.

I'm probably going to re-write it as MAXScript which is something I wanted to avoid but at least it should work in Max 5 & 6 without any need for conversion.

Going through MaxScript would be helpful to get bone information?

Yeah, there actually a "BoneSystem" object which is very clean and logical for creating bones and animating them so its not rocket scienece.

I personally prefer going the "pure" C++ plug-in route for the sake of speed and flexibility buts its a case of whatevers easiest this time.

this maybe a all-n00b question
but cant u combind the plugin with a max script ??
i mean the plugin is a pice of a program
so can u make the plugin import the model
and start up a maxscript ??
if u are able to do this i guess it will take a lot of coding

Nah, it doesnt work like that mixed. Its a lot more complicated.

Its easier to do it one way or the other.

OK

LOL -> :dog:

hope you get this done :D

do you expect to put out a max 5 version also?

OK. I've ported what I've done so far over to MaxScript so it should work in Max 4, 5, 6 and GMAX but I need to finish some stuff up before I release a beta.

The animation keyframing is giving me some headaches plus the issue of converting from Milkshapes co-ordinate space to Max's space.

wish i could help you jed but i cant :(

LOL. Trust me, i'm beyond help. I so wish I payed attention in math class when we did matrix rotations :(

sounds very good, looking forward to trying it out.

edit: you polish headache.

lol :carrot: Need sleep.... Been up all night re-coding that darn AMXX voice plugin. Bleh.

is there any chance that you could release
what you have now and then release
the rest with the bone stuff later ??

OK. This isn't 100% perfect as I'm still having some wierd freaking problems with MaxScript. I'm starting to think its bug riddled because its behaviour sometimes is completely random...

Anyway...

From the attached zip, place the .mzp file somewhere on your hard disk or if your really brave, in your Max/GMax scripts/startup folder.

If you then go to the utilities tab, select MaxScript and then Run Script and select the .mzp file. If you then click on the drop down and select the importer you should see the options and button come out.

If you put it in start-up, it should be there automatically but you'll still need to click the drop down and select it.

It doesn't import the animation just yet but it does import the bones and attatch the mesh too it so if you animate the bones the mesh will move with it. Also, although it doesnt do any IK stuff, you cant stretch a bone as you could in Milkshape so you might find animating a bit easier as you cant distort the skeleton so much.

Lastly, if your using transparent textures and want alpha channels, make a greyscale image representing the alpha and set it as the alpha texture in Milkshapes material tab. Max will then use it as the alpha mask for the texture.

As I said, its still a bit flakey and Im trying to iron out some of the bugs but it seems to work most of the time.

nice :D

EDIT*

10 minutes later ...
damn it doesnt work ..
i tryed opening it from a random dir.
and i tryed placeing it in my script dir,

pic.

this is what it gives me in the max window
Welcome to MAXScript.

-- Error occurred during fileIn in <File:C:\DOCUME~1\SRENNR~1\LOKALE~1\Temp\mzptmp27\M S3DImporter.mse>

maybe i gave up too soon im gonna try again

EDIT*
i have max 4.2

Crap. GMAX is giving me the same error.
I'll look into it.

O.K Try this version.

I know what the error is - its "falling off the end" in Gmax/4.2 when its reading the bone information. I just havent had a chance to track down the exact line the bug is on but I'll do it when I get back after the weekend.

In the meantime, just un-check the "bones and animation" checkbox if its crashing for you. It seems to work ok in Max6 for some reason - I guess theirs subtle differences in the Max 4.2 and 6.0 MaxScript engine.

ok
now i can start 3dmax
and the script runs great
one bug
i tryed to open a .ms3d file with
then it came up with a error
and then i cant run the script again
before i restarted max

Errrr go back and read what the importer is again, lol.

Its an ASCII format importer - you need to use the export menu in Milkshape and export the file as Milkshape ASCII before you can import it. :)

hehe yea
i have found out :rolleyes: