What program does Battlefront use to make their 3D models?

[ChrisND]

Just curious.

[John Kettler]

Normal Dude,

Maya? If so, it's all illusion!

Regards,

John Kettler

[Battlefront.com]

3D Studio Max is the tool of choice!

Steve

[ChrisND]

I figured it was either that or Maya.

[Gpig]

I noticed there is a free 30 day product trial for StudioMax. I think I'll take it out for a spin!

I work with Maya these days, and it's OK. I'm curious if 3ds Max is any better/worse.

Gpig

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[Battlefront.com]

What a surprise to see Gpig contributing to this thread, though sadly the topic doesn't lend itself very well to a custom drawn cartoon

Steve

[missinginreality]

Gpig -have you used Blender? It takes a bit of getting used too but having used Max, Viz, FormZ, Architrion and Lightscape I'd certainly rate Blender up there with the best of them as far as modelling and animation goes. And best of all, it's free

[Scipio]

3D Studio Max? Mh...I have once tried to load models and/or animation with the 3DSM Test version, but without success. But I'm no 3D buff, maybe I have made somthing wrong?

Steve, BTW, can animations be modded, and if no, why not? I know and understand your thoughts about modding unit table/stats and all this stuff - but what about the 3D models and animations? Even if somebody would for example remodel a T-72 to a T-34, it wouldn't make much sense, since all the weapon and defensive moddeling is hardcoded anyway.

[ChrisND]

I'd like to at least be able to mod gear on the troops. No game-play implications that I could see.

[Flanker15]

What would BFC say too people making models and textures for the small accessory things that are missing 3d models at the moment? Things like aircraft weapons and certain AT rockets.

[missinginreality]

3D Studio Max? Mh...I have once tried to load models and/or animation with the 3DSM Test version, but without success. But I'm no 3D buff, maybe I have made somthing wrong?

Scipio, the .max format is the most picky unfriendly 3d format IMHO. Unless you have the exact version it was made in plus all the plug-ins that were used there's no way to open the file. Added to that one can't convert MAX format files without the entire installation makes it a very unfriendly piece of software. But seeing as it's autodesk that's no suprise.

I'd like to at least be able to mod gear on the troops. No game-play implications that I could see.

Apart from poly count though ND - given things are slowing down for some people in places, one would need to be aware of the impact of higher poly models that may come from adding extra gear/extra polys onto troops.

What would BFC say too people making models and textures for the small accessory things that are missing 3d models at the moment? Things like aircraft weapons and certain AT rockets.

This would be a very neat thing to be able to do indeed and would be great to be able to create new flavour objects

[MikeyD]

"Steve, BTW, can animations be modded"

Not that I know what I'm talking about, but if when you Rezexplode the game you find discrete animation files in an exe that you recognize, and if you're actually clever enough to construct replacement animations, then I'd guess dropping your mods into a 'Z' mods folder in Data might work. But that's a lot of ifs. I know I'm not half clever enough.

[Scipio]

MikeyD, yep, I've found those *.ani files! But I have no idea about working with 3D files & animations.

missingreality, I guess part of the problem seems that the CM animation and model files doesn't use the right suffix. Models use the suffix *.mdr & *.mds, animations are named *.ani. I have no idea what is expected. Unfortunatly I have already deleted the 3D Studio Max demo - it's was 1GB DL, IIRC.

Well well...but now we have a hint where to apply the lever, as we say here...

[missinginreality]

I believe an ani file is a standard animated cursor file, edited by things like Microangelo and such like, might be worth a look see? They're kind of like a wrap for animated frames.

The fact that the models are in mdr/mds format seems to lead to the fact that BF have sensibly written a custom export plug-in for MAX to export models in an in-house format so they can't be re-used elsewhere.

[Scipio]

Yep, and *.ani is ussualy an animated cursor for Windows, what the CM-files are obviously not . That's why I believe that they simply use other names.

Your thought about the export plug-in sounds logic. I hope a BFC official will comment to that issue.

[missinginreality]

Yes indeedy BF officials seem conspicuous by their absence on this point

[Gpig]

missingreality wrote:

"Gpig -have you used Blender? It takes a bit of getting used too but having used Max, Viz, FormZ, Architrion and Lightscape I'd certainly rate Blender up there with the best of them as far as modelling and animation goes. And best of all, it's free"

No, I have not heard of Blender. Looks interesting. I'll check it out! Steve, I'm always looking for opportunities to post custom doodles to the forum, but your game looks damn good these days. It steels some of the thunder from my drawings.

Thanks,

Gpig

[Redwolf]

Blender is hard. My venture into 3D modeling was torpedoed pretty badly by it.

I have no doubt the UI is very powerful but oh boy is it hard.

[Battlefront.com]

When we made CMBO I did almost all of the 3D models for it and a fair number of those in CMBB and CMAK. I used a very simple, easy to use program that was already a dead product at the time. It was an excellent tool for a 3D novice artist to make fairly low resolution models. The program also cost only $125 IIRC

The drawback of having far more complex models, with tons of specially coded moving parts, is that you also need to have a very powerful 3D program to generate them. Since the 3D modeling programs out there believe that the only way this can happen is by having an ungodly complex and finicky environment, well... I got squeezed out of the production end of things. It was fun while it lasted.

It's not just that the models are a lot more difficult to construct, it's also that there are a ton of things that the modeler has to do to make them work correctly within the game. It's not just how the textures map and which bits move which ways, like CMx1, but it's also things like seating arrangements, surfaces with armor characteristics, special things like ERA, etc. All of these things must be defined in order for the game to understand what the vehicle does and which bits do what. This is why when an AT-4 hits a specific block of ERA that block blows off, for example. It's also how CM's game guts know that a hit to the front of a tank has x chance of killing the driver if there is a penetration and y chance of the commander, etc. It's incredibly complex stuff.

Animations are made in MAX and are also custom exported.

No chance of using customer made objects in the game for things like equipment and aircraft. Why not? Because it's not the artwork that's holding features like that back; it's coding. In order to have soldiers with different configurations of equipment the game system has to understand and support different configurations. The artwork itself would take only a couple of hours for Dan to do, which is well within our ability to do. Aircraft models are far more complex, obviously, but so too are the game mechanics necessary to have aircraft work within the game. There are no physics for this yet, nor are there any combat engagement rules for ground to air.

Steve

[Scipio]

... No chance of using customer made objects in the game for things like equipment and aircraft. ...

Steve

Does this mean: chance for everything else like doodads, buildings etc??

[missinginreality]

Thanks for the clarification Steve; as Scipio offered though-be nice to add flavour objects

[missinginreality]

Blender is hard. My venture into 3D modeling was torpedoed pretty badly by it.

I have no doubt the UI is very powerful but oh boy is it hard.

Boy oh boy indeed The absence of offline help makes it harder too, but then again the access to online help is HUGE and has really helped my progress with it. It certainly is a different beast to most 3D modellers and animation systems out there but for an open-source product i have found it truly outstanding.

[Battlefront.com]

Flavor objects would be easier to support, however that also requires significant coding. Not nearly as much as other things, true enough, but too much for us to contemplate in the short run. It would also open up a security hole into our proprietary model import/compile system, so Charles would have to code something slightly different for flavor objects or there'd be a risk of people hacking in all kinds of other models. For reasons I've explained a couple of hundred times, that's not something we can afford to allow.

Steve

[Flanker15]

I wasn't meaning aircraft but aircraft weapons, right now bombs, rockets and missiles are yellow lines. I only ment that we could make models for anything that is missing a 3d model but is already fully coded into the game.