Post on 24-Dec-2015
Copyright© 2009 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. #Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. 1
NAGFO Game Developer Webinar Series
Making 3D Game Production FasterUsing Scripting in 3D Studio Max#
Augustine John
Copyright© 2009 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. #Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. 2NAGFO Game Developer Webinar Series
Augustine JohnSr. Technical Artist, Indiagames Ltd.#
He has been in the graphics industry for 11 years – before joining Indiagames 4 years ago.
He started his 3D career doing modelling and rigging, and has lead the 3D character art team. He has been instrumental in streamlining the production pipeline – developing 3D Studio Max scripts and plug-ins for the artists.
Currently as a Senior Technical Artist, he contributes his experience to Indiagames proprietary ICE 3D# platform.
Copyright© 2009 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. #Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. 3NAGFO Game Developer Webinar Series
Agenda
• Short Introduction to Maxscript• Maxscript in action–Modeling–Animation– Exporting– Level Design
Copyright© 2009 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. #Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. 4NAGFO Game Developer Webinar Series
•Maxscript is the built-in scripting language for 3Ds Max
•Allows to control 3Ds Max
•Allows to customize and extend 3Ds max user interfaces
What is Maxscript?
Copyright© 2009 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. #Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. 5NAGFO Game Developer Webinar Series
Maxscript in Action
Copyright© 2009 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. #Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. 6NAGFO Game Developer Webinar Series
•Texture Finder– Assigns the latest texture from the specified
folder and its sub-folders
Modeling & Texturing
Copyright© 2009 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. #Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. 7NAGFO Game Developer Webinar Series
•Adjust UV– Transforms the UV as specified
256 x 256 texture Resized to 128 x 128
* Texture from Project Asoka
Modeling & Texturing
Copyright© 2009 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. #Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. 8NAGFO Game Developer Webinar Series
•Change Texture Format
Modeling & Texturing
Copyright© 2009 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. #Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. 9NAGFO Game Developer Webinar Series
•Problem faced– Change in Bone Count or Hierarchy– Change in Character’s Proportion– Change in Character’s Overall Dimensions– Animator’s file may be initial rough model
•So, animator has to– Save all the animations one-by-one– Load these animation files into the final model
Animation
Copyright© 2009 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. #Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. 10NAGFO Game Developer Webinar Series
•Batch Save and Load Animations
Batch save ‘bip files’ from max files Batch load ‘bip files’ on finalized
model
Animation
Copyright© 2009 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. #Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. 11NAGFO Game Developer Webinar Series
•Process for our earlier MascotCapsule v3 rendering engine in our game development pipeline– All animations 1st frame be positioned at x = 0 & y = 0– Insert a new 1st frame common for all animations– Export this max file to fbx format (This process is to save data)– Import the fbx file– Change the fps as required for the target phone– Adjust the ‘main key poses’ – which may be lost in fps reduction– Collapse the trajectory to 1 key per frame– Place BAC axis in (0,0,0) to take care of y-z axis and origin.– At last, export the file to bac and tra
Exporting
Copyright© 2009 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. #Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. 12NAGFO Game Developer Webinar Series
• Approx. export time per animation manually = 4 minutes(Ignoring the potential human errors)
• Impractical to export manually
• Approx. export time per animation using script = 8 seconds(Plus gives detailed report witherrors and warnings)
Exporting
Copyright© 2009 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. #Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. 13NAGFO Game Developer Webinar Series
•Level Editor (Predator)
Level Editor used for the mobile game “3D Predator: Bad Blood”
Level Design
Copyright© 2009 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. #Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. 14NAGFO Game Developer Webinar Series
•Automate repetitive tasks– For e.g.. Batch save & load animations
•Simplify the workflow– For e.g.. Save and load biped animations script
•Export assets for game programmers– For e.g.. Level editor, Camera exporter
•Eliminates the human error•‘Time’ factor – faster job completion
Uses of Maxscript
Copyright© 2009 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. #Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. 15NAGFO Game Developer Webinar Series
•Maxscript documentation
•Study others’ scripts from sites like www.scriptspot.com
•Search / ask questions in online forums
•DVD video tutorials
How to learn Maxscript?