Meshing Question GMAX textures look washed out/barely visible

[Zop]

Hi there...

I have a problem with my imported model from gmax...all textures are barely visible or look like washed out extremely.In gmax it looks good,after exporting the model i barely can see my textures.
If i export my model with anim8tor textures look fine,but the model is not as smooth as with gmax.
Am i doing something wrong with exporting from gmax?
Please help ...so that i can move on to the next model

 

[Mindblast]

Hard to tell just from your description. Maybe some problem with the materials.. do you have some images ? What do the material definitions in gmax look like ?

 

[Zop]

Here ate screenshots...i did a shot of the material for the hull aswell...

GMAX:

Orbiter:

and the material for the hull as example:

hope this helps...btw...i also have a problem using max2msh 1.29b,so im using 1.2...
model is exported way too small...

 

[Mindblast]

Hmm my guess is that the ambient color of the material is too bright. Maybe try how it looks when you click away the Ambient-Diffuse link in gmax and set Ambient to Black or a very dark grey. Probably ambient light in gmax is set to black so it looks good there.

hope this helps...btw...i also have a problem using max2msh 1.29b,so im using 1.2...
model is exported way too small...

Yes the scaling i introduced in 1.29b is kinda screwed. Back then i hadn't realised that you could set the units and system units in gmax/3dsmax freely so a scaling is completely unnecessary. I have already fixed this locally and also some other minor issues and will probably release this as a 1.3 soon.

 

[Zop]

no sorry lowering the ambient color to black didnt help...

 

[Mindblast]

Hmmmm... too bad..

Errrrm... this might be a stupid question but looking at your image of the model in orbiter.. are there even textures on it at all? Did you convert your textures to .dds and copy them to orbiters textures directory? The script will not do that for you.

 

[Donamy]

...also, open the mesh file with notepad and make sure the textures at the end of the file are .dds extension.

 

[Zop]

yep i did convert the textures and did check the *.dds extension in the *.msh file... i find it strange that some textures show,some dont....and those that show look like an old photograph... i will do a try with the standard checkers texture of gmax on the hull..

 

[Mindblast]

Just a shot in the dark but maybe try setting diffuse and ambient to white also. Looking at a few .msh files here i see a lot of material definitions with just full white ambient and diffuse values for materials that are used with textures.

 

[Zop]

no that wasnt it either...

but i found out im too dumb..... :lol:
i forgot the seperate textures folder for my model and didnt edit the *.msh file accordingly.... :embarrassed:

 

[Mindblast]

Oh well.. **** happens

 

[francisdrake]

Just an idea:
If you put the bitmap textures of your Gmax model into a folder with the same name as the texture sub-folder will be named in Orbiter, Gmax will include this sub-folder path in the data structure, so no manual editing of the msh file is required.

Example:
Your Gmax model "My_addon" is in the folder "My_work".
Create a subfolder "My_work\My_addon\" and put the bitmaps in there, before using them on your model.

After the max2msh export the textures will point correctly to the Orbiter folder "Textures\My_addon\"

 

[Donamy]

Can you use .dds files in Gmax ?

 

[Zop]

*.dds files dont work in gmax as far as i know....

 

[Mindblast]

Just an idea:
If you put the bitmap textures of your Gmax model into a folder with the same name as the texture sub-folder will be named in Orbiter, Gmax will include this sub-folder path in the data structure, so no manual editing of the msh file is required.

Example:
Your Gmax model "My_addon" is in the folder "My_work".
Create a subfolder "My_work\My_addon\" and put the bitmaps in there, before using them on your model.

After the max2msh export the textures will point correctly to the Orbiter folder "Textures\My_addon\"

Good idea..
But i just checked and it seems a maxscript function to determine the path where the current scene is saved is only available from 3DSMax9 upwards.
Maybe some kind of convention could be used instead.. i.e. if there is a directory "texture" somewhere in the path of the texture file in gmax the export will put everything after this directory into the .msh file. If no "texture" directory is there, just the filename is exported, as it is now.

Can you use .dds files in Gmax ?

No gmax doesn't support .dds, 3DSMax does though.

 

[francisdrake]

After the max2msh export the textures will point correctly to the Orbiter folder "Textures\My_addon\"

Good idea..
But i just checked and it seems a maxscript function to determine the path where the current scene is saved is only available from 3DSMax9 upwards.

I did it in Gmax 1.2 (the last version) and it worked.

To clarify the type of texture:
For modelling I put the bmp textures into the "Myaddon" folder.

In Orbiter the "Textures\Myaddon" folder contains dds bitmaps.
The textures have the same name (except for the .dds extension).

Wrong. Correction see below.

 

[Mindblast]

*scratches head*

Are you quite sure this works ? So in the mesh file you would have "Myaddon\xyzwhatever.dds" in the textures part after exporting ?
Actually i don't know how this could be.. looking at the script it should just take the part between the last backslash and the point, append a ".dds" and write that to the msh file.

 

[dansteph]

*.dds files dont work in gmax as far as i know....

In 3dsMax at least it work with a plugin, maybe it work also for Gmax ?
Export to Orbiter is a one click for me, no need to deal with various format.

Dan

 

[francisdrake]

Sorry folks you are right. The export script does not include the path.

How I made the mistake:
Originally I had put the textures into the Orbiter\Textures folder.
After some time I collected them in a Orbiter\Textures\Myaddon folder, but left the original textures in the old place also.

So the mesh file still used the 'old' textures, while I thought it uses those collected in the Myaddon folder. I did not change the textures lately, so no difference was visible, and I did not check the mesh file.

Guess I have to work on my quality assurance

 

[Donamy]

No worries, been there, done that !