.lwo and 3ds max

[gneale]

Is there a way to export T2 geometry at all into max much like FEO accomplished in terragen .9 ?  We  would just like to be able to get a low poly version of the mesh into max/maya so that we can animate the cameras without having to just guess at where the terrain might be.  That way, when we shoot the camera channel data back into T2 it syncs up.  Exporting the .lwo of the files results in a mesh that we can import, but the coordinates are all out of whack.  Using the emecstudios plugin helps us with the lighting and camera data flows, but we are just spitting in the breeze when it comes to getting any idea of where the terrain might be.  We'd like to use this for a big project we are currently working on.  Any hlep would be appreciated.  Thanks!

-Geoff

[Harvey Birdman]

I've just finished writing a little CSharp app that will take the .lwo output from the exporter and downsample to an arbitrary density grid (well, not quite arbitrary - grid dimensions are 2^n + 1; ie, 17x17, 33x33,65x65, etc). The purpose is creation of chunks of terrain data for use in a real-time rendering engine; the downsampled data, the image rendered while outputing the lwo (base terrain texture), and texture coordinates are then output into a custom file format.

It wouldn't take a whole lot of work for me to re-use the .lwo reader and downsampling code, and export the downsampled grid in .obj format. I could probably put together a program that would give you what you wanted in just a couple of days. Interested?

[Oshyan]

Short of Harvey's application you may be best off just trying to sort out the coordinate issues. That seems relatively minor to deal with as long as you can get the data output correctly. You may need to use another application to convert from LWO to OBJ however.

- Oshyan

[Harvey Birdman]

Check out the screenshot. The grid in upper left shows boundary information of the terrain chunk read in .lwo format; the edit boxes and 're-center' button allow you to move the chunk if you want something other than the actual coordinates, and the converted surface, with textuure, is displayed at right. (The arrow points north, so you're sure you have the chunk oriented correctly.)

[MooseDog]

if you have lw there, check out the scene file that the heightfield to lwo exporter also creates.  all 12(?) chunks of terrain are perfectly matched up.  from there there's a bunch of ways to save the geometry as one giant mesh file.

[gneale]

-Harvey-

Cool looking app.  Unfortunately we are crunched for time so we probably won't be able to go that route.  Looks pretty trick though.

-Oshyan-

Yah, we are basically just re-importing tweaks to get it to work, not ideal, but workable in this case.  Hope the two apps will somewhat talk to each other on the final release.  T2 rocks as a renderer though!

-MooseDog-

Currently we are taking the .lwo into lightwave and shooting a mesh back out as an obj and importing it and then animating the cameras in max or maya from there.   Taking the exported camera channel data back into T2 works quite well, other than the speed bump I've already talked about!

Thanks guys!

-Geoff

[pagan]

HI Harvey
Where can I get your application?

[rcallicotte]

I don't know if Harvey comes around much.

[pagan]

Has anyone else used this tools or knows the link to access it?
Thanks