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3DS Max 2012 Export Diagnostics?

lionheart

lionheart

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Hey all,

Ive hit a wall. I did a fair amount of model work today, and just went to export a test model and its crashing Max. I tried selecting a few parts, exports fine. I export them all (selected parts) and it crashes.

Not all parts have materials.

Polys: 89,000
Triangles: 118,000
Vertices: 70,000

This is in Max, exporting to X and Xanim.


Oddly, it shows no 'Scene contains FS9 materials, blah blah' materials. It shows the warning, but no materials that are usually in the list. It does show the Materials that are FS9 types when I export just a few parts (like a hand full). But none otherwise.

How in the world does one diagnose to see what the issue might be?




Bill
 
Just remembered the log... arrgh.

Mainly the left aileron and panel have degenerate Polys. Would these be Parots that have been working at a Nuclear Powerplant?



heh... ok, kidding.
 
I try...



Ive been experimenting with trying to find out which parts are doing this. The log wasnt too much help, in my opinion. I found if I do not export the panel and its new parts, it exports fine. If I export the panel and parts, no others, its fine. So I wonder if its a memory thing? I know I havent maxed out any Materials. Hardly anything is mapped and painted.



(scratches chin)
 
Well, I am up to 10 megs now before the compiler crashes.

I went through and took out Lines from the assembly, thinking maybe the Max compiler has a problem with those.

What could it be....
 
Hi Bill,

Did LM actually solve the 65.000 Poly limit for export? I haven't checked the P3D forums lately, but wasn't that a problem with the SDk until now? So, if you export without panel, is it under 65.000?

I have now about 40.000 Polys on my project, also exporting from Max2012. About 30% of the exports are crashing as well. Usually it goes good when I restart Max and try it again.

Cheers,
Kai
 
Hey Kai,

ack... That is not good news. 65k would be grim! I would almost need to return the model back into Gmax to export it.

Its getting crazy again....


On the unstability of Max exporting, we had this with Gmax. If it ran high amounts of RAM on the system via giant PSD files in pure color (not wire frame), then we would shut down Gmax, reboot Gmax, then export in wire frame mode. And then, it was usually good for only one or two exports, then you needed to reboot Gmax again. This is, I think, similar with Max that I am finding out. I have actually been totally rebooting windows to completely clear the RAM out, as the rig has SSD hard drives which make a Windows reboot super fast to do.


So... I wonder if I can take some scissors and duct tape and make a version of compiler for Max that might use the FSX version??


So many limitations and obstacles. Oi veh.
 
Why in heaven's name are you using PSD files in either Max or GMax? Take the time to SaveAs your PSD files as .tga and save yourself a lot of memory overhead!
 
I am going to say that I have hit the limit of the P3D Max 2012 SDK of 65K Polygons.

I was laying in bed this morning, pondering my perdicament, when it came to me. I could;

* Export the plane as 2 models, breaking it down into 2 halves; fuselage things and panel bits.
* Reclaim each into MCX, exporting those as 3DS Files
* Importing 3DS files into a common scene in Gmax FSX SDK
* Exporting as one big happy family into MDL format from Gmax FSX SDK


- Got the models into a scene in Gmax
- Named it with a new GUID name
- Some parts (of A TON OF PARTS) now all have the same names, so that needs to be redone. They are auto-named in MCX with LOD names.
- No animation tagging is there, so everything has to be reanimated in the pooling together of different exports.

I was curious if it would export. It exported from Gmax without issue. But in Prepar3D, parts that use fuselage materials were using other textures, the fuselage and wings were gone, parts missing, etc. It was grim....

I dont know if my eyebrows are up for this. I hope Lockheed Martin can save the day now.
 
Remember that script you were recommended not long ago? BFF. That will export your Max model in a script which Gmax can run, recreating your model in Gmax with part names, textures (bitmap only), hierarchy all intact. Animations are iffy, but that's a small price to pay; also many parts with the same name will probably be confused.

Give it a go, it's really good! :)

User instructions available on request. ;)

edit: the Max 9 sdk is good for hundreds of thousands of polys, the limit there is XToMDL and Sean Isom's 64-bit version can get around that.
 
Last edited:
Thanks Tom! I know you are working a code for that, into and out of Gmax. I thought that was a ways off.
 
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