Setting up 3dsMax and Gmax for NWN
From NWN1 Custom Content Guide
Contents |
[edit] Overview
There are a few common problems that newbies to NWN modelling happen to encounter. One of the most basic problems is the basic setup of either 3D Studio Max or gMax.
[edit] Units Setup
Neverwinter Nights, being made by Bioware in Canada, uses the metric scale for the models. Therefore, units are centimeters, so you should use cm units in your models as well, else you'll encounter problems with scaling.
| Image:Max units.png | In Max:
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In gMax:
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The display units in Customize - Units Setup can be either in Meters or Centimeters, it's just a matter of personal preference if you want the various measurement fields to show a meter as 1.0m or 1000cm. A good idea would be to change it to reflex the scale of the object you're building - Such as using meters for tiles, and centimeters for weapons. Changing it allows for better precision when modeling.
[edit] Controller Setup
NWN is limited to linear controllers only. It's best you set up your controllers to default to linear settings.
| Image:Max setup controller.jpg | To do this, select any item in your scene, go to the 'motion' tab on the righthand menu. That's the little wheel icon.
Then open the 'Assign Controller' rollout. You'll be presented with a tree showing your controllers on the selected object. Select position : <somecontroller> and hit the small '?' that is above the box. In the menu showing up select Linear position , then press Make Default. You can then double click Linear Position to assign it to your object. Do the same with rotation and scale. So in the end you should have...
Make sure to make each your default controller to save you trouble. Note: There's a tool 'Reset Controllers' in the NWmax Utils Rollout that will set your controllers on selected objects to linear. This is useful if you created objects before you set your controllers to default to linear. |
[edit] Export Dir
This one is not a neccessary setting, but will ease your life. Save yourself some trouble and set your default export directory to the NWN override dir. Gather all resources of your .HAK in there while you work on it. Once you are done with creating, pack the contents of your override in a .HAK and remove the items from override.
NWMax will automatically use this export directory value for the model's default export path as well, so it eases a lot of the setup of the AuroraBase.
This saves you from having to recreate a .HAK everytime you do a change to your files.
Main_Page | Setting up 3dsMax and Gmax for NWN
[edit] Different Scripts and Compatibility
At this time there exist three ways to create and export models for NWN.
- NWmax (Gmax / 3dsMax)
- Bioware's Export Scripts, aka AuraExport (3dsMax)
- MDL-Suite (3dsMax)
You may encounter problems when having multiple export scriptsets installed, especially NWmax and AuraExport cannot be installed in the same Max installation, as they share internal resource names and conflict with each other. MDL suite can be installed with both, though.
Note that objects from one exporter aren't compatible with another, so you can't use 'MDL-Trimesh properties' and export it with NWmax (well you can, I guess, but it won't give you the expected results) .
