Decent Meshing Program

[wedge]

Well, i thought i'd give meshing a try. I've been looking at what you guys have been doing and i was wondering....what do you guys think are decent programs to use?

[zatch]

I use Maya for all of the hardpointing and exporting steps. We're not modeling pretty much anything from scratch (except maybe the extra large guns, if I can't extract them from the client.) We gained permission from CCP under the condition that we don't release anything until it has been approved by CCP (good deal I think.)

[wedge]

lol very good deal, should set you forward a couple of months mebbe?

[zatch]

Yep, leaves just the (sometimes massive amount of) hardpointing as well as setting up the nav-lights, fixing the textures for use in HW2, etc... Takes me an average of 30 minutes to get a ship in the game without any hardpoints. Another 1-1.5 hours for guns and engine trails, and then there are the navlights that I haven't started on yet.

[wedge]

>.< ouch, that's quiet some work...well i got my hands on a copy of Maya 8.0 anyway, it's pretty....complicated

[orangepaint]

Where do you get Maya? Did you have to pay for it from the autodesk website? I'd love a decent modeling program, because all I got was gmax to attempt making custom maps for Halo PC, but I don't know how to use it for anything else.

[zatch]

Max is much easier to use than Maya, in my opinion. The only issue is the lack of an ability to directly export to *.hod (you need to, instead, export to *.obj and then use CFHodEd to stick the ship in game.) So I use Maya anyways, because I'm used to it now (it crashes often though, so I tend to lose a lot of my work.)

Also the Relic plugins don't work with Maya 8, only 3-7.

[orangepaint]

So where can I get CFHodEd?

Got any links to a tutorial on how to do some modeling for HW2 in gmax?

[zatch]

Click here for CFHodEd. Modeling for HW2 is just like modeling for any other game, make the models and texture them. In Maya you also need to rig them with hardpoints, but if you're going the gMax route you'll use CFHodEd for your rigging.

[orangepaint]

Thank you so much for the CFHodED thing, but how do I use it in unison with Gmax?

Sorry for asking so many questions, I've never done any modeling for HW2 or any game before. Got any links for like a basic operational tutorial or something?

[zatch]

Read through that thread I linked you to.

[orangepaint]

Yeh I did. No one replys to anything I post on the relic forums.
Where can I get a tool to decompile the .big files so I can get all the ship .hod files?
And I didn't see anything about Gmax, only stuff about Maya.

[zatch]

Try unfBig, use the Relic Forums "Search" tool to find it. Also as I said before, there's nothing special about modeling for HW2 as compared to anything else (beyond the polygon count "suggestions" present in the RDN ArtPipeline document) so any tutorials you find anywhere (Google) relating to basic modeling/texturing in 3ds Max will be fine. All you need to do is, when you're done modeling and texturing, export the model to *.obj so it may be used in CFHodEd.

None of the extremely powerful modeling packages are easy to learn, so expect to be spending a large amount of time just learning the basics, and then even more time learning the little tricks that will help you with your modeling endeavors.

[orangepaint]

Ok thanks for the help.
Yeh I found a really really good program for the .big files called Spookey Rat, and again thanks for the CFHodEd Link.

[zatch]

You're welcome.