I still have some work to do for the “apply SGs” function to work as expected on every type of object, and even on polygon selection, and even on instancied modifier polygon selection…

But I thought I would share what’s already done since it’s already a great helper !

Stay tuned for more !

Stay tuned !

Available soon ! Stay tuned !

At least one new feature should be available in the exporter after the track will be finished !
Meanwhile, enjoy the pics :

The exporter is still in development and there can be remaining bugs. You can report these in the comments, or ask for new features !

Why another exporter ?

Using this you can directly edit and modify inside 3ds max, then all you have to do is click “export” to see the modifications inside ReVolt. Plus, there are a bunch of new features coming along such as:

• All collision properties available
• Collision flags (object only/camera only)
• Transparency gradients
• Envmap gradients
• Texture animations !!
• Quad surfaces optimisations
• And more !

And of course all the existing features are still available (Lighting using vertex colors, doublesided polygons…)

Download

>> ReVolt Exporter <<
Updated to Version 1.14
January 8 2018

Changelog :

1.14 – 8-January-18

• More useful Smoothing Group panel with surface properties
• Setting a material ID of 99 (or more) on a polygon will set the polygon to be untextured ingame
• Cleanup panel: the Search for “Zero edge” button will now select all the problematic vertices and all the problematic objects. You can also adjust the precision with the threshold value to fit your needs
• Cleanup panel: you can filter by Smoothing Group to apply angle threshold on quads, allowing to triangulate only double sided quads for example
• Fixed bug: in the texture animations properties, the final animation length was not always correct
• Fixed bug: the Search for “Zero edge” button now works on invisible edges too

1.13 – 5-February-17

• Added global scale multiplier !!
• New option for PRM export: shiny by default
• Env mapping is now defined in the same way for W and PRM
• New surface definition: SG27 now define a Semi-transparent type, unaffected by mirrors !
• Stats window now display file name and scale
• Fixed bug: texture animation wasn’t fully exported if active animation range was smaller than the defined one
• Fixed bug: PRM export using object pivot didn’t work properly !
• New “Adjust animation range” function in texture animation modifier + reviewed UI with more infos
• Removed custom SG flag 27: game crash when more than 1 car is on the surface !
• Pivot point is now centered on Edit_Meshes when exporting *.w files for more accurate bounding box
• Note: Global scale option in v1.12 Start Point helpers wont work. Replace by new ones !

1.12 – 24-January-17

• Added mirror support : *.rim files can be exported
• Added Start Point helper: useful to fill the *.inf file
• Added: exporting mirrors along with world files (one button process !)
• “Add Texture Animation” button selects last modified object
• “Add Mirror” button also selects last modified object
• Added help link

1.11 – 4-August-16

• Fixed bug: *.w export was no longer possible without using texture animation

1.10 – 29-June-16

• Modified the way texture animations are handled
• Added texture animation modifier
• Fixed bug for animation: coordinates were messed up
• Fixed bug for animation pick button

1.03 – 02-May-16

• Added functionnality “Reset pivot” for cleanup and convert functions
• Fixed a bug when an object had no texture channel

1.02 – 08-Apr-16

• Added statistics for export
  

1.01 – 06-Apr-16

• Unified export : PRM and W export should now work exactly the same
• Added “Keep quads” option for PRM export also to unify
• Default window size is now longer
• Added Backface culling display utilities
• Added Hidden edges display utilities
• Added bulk “Turn Edge” function to help with texture animation process

1.0 – 29-Mar-16

• First release

3ds max setup

To install (or update) just drag and drop the 3ds2rv.mzp file over a running instance of 3ds max and follow the instructions as shown in the following video:

By default you can no longer see both texture and vertex colors displayed in the 3ds max viewport but it’s possible by choosing any other display driver than “Nitrous”. Go inside the display driver configuration and change the driver, see video below:

F.A.Q., usage and known bugs

How to export

Select any object you want to export into ReVolt, open up the exporter panel, and click on the export button. You can choose to export an object (instance) as prm, or an entire scene (world) as w.
If you export large scenes/objects, the exporter may seems to hang (sometimes the progress bar freeze), just wait a few seconds and it should be fine.

Smoothing Groups conversion table

As with the ASE2RV tools, you can define surface properties using smoothing groups.

You can also convert any track that was meant to be exported using the ASE2RV tools by a simple click. Open the “Convert ASE2RV objects” panel and choose either the Morph or Ali table. That’s it, ready for export. Note that using Ali table conversion, if you made any shiny or transparent material, you’ll need to manually apply these settings on the objects. To do this, just select the faces and change the vertex alpha (=transparency) and illumination (=envmap color) values.

If anything goes wrong during export, delete the layer named “Re-Volt Export Layer”

When exporting the objects are cloned to apply necessary modifications and put on an new layer named ”Re-Volt Export Layer” (see layer manager)

This way, even if a bug occurs and you unintentionally save your scene, all you have to do to repair it is delete the layer named “Re-Volt Export Layer” along with every object it contains.

3ds scene setup: backface culling + edges only

Faces in Re-Volt are one-sided by default. If they are doublesided in the viewport activate the “backface culling” option. A good practice is to turn on the “backface cull on object creation” 3ds max’s option
(Customize->Preferences…->Viewports).

Lighting and vertex colors

To show vertex colors in the viewport you must disable Hardware Lighting and not use the Nitrous display driver.

How to keep “quad” faces (4 sided)

Just turn on the “Keep quads” option.

Sometimes 4-sided faces are divided into 2 triangles because they are not completely flat (coplanar). To force a 4-sided face to be exported as a quad, just make it “doublesided”. This is particularly useful when dealing with texture animations.

You may also change the maximum angle between 2 triangles threshold. Try to keep this value very very low, visual glitches may appear as you increase it.

You may force a triangulated export of any object by adding an “Edit Mesh” modifier.

Texture animation orientation

To change the animation orientation on a quad just turn the middle edge. Every time you turn the edge you turn the orientation by one quarter turn more.

Bug you may experience using “Keep quads” option: a face may have no collision

This is a bit tricky to explain, but to avoid any bug just add a middle edge when 2 edges on a 4-sided face are almost colinear (or more than 4-sided).

Note : the above example is exaggerated. For this bug to occur the 2 edges would have to be perfectly colinear, but better be safe than sorry.

You may also force a triangulated export of any object by adding an “Edit Mesh” modifier, wich will automatically solve any bug.

A good practice would be to add an extra middle edge on every non-convex face.

Zero edge bug.

Sometimes after export unexplained visual bugs appears (distorted envmap, invisible collision wall…) that may be caused by edges that have a length of zero. To solve the problem select the objects to export and click “Search for “Zero edge !”. If any zero edge is found the object in question will be automatically selected. Select all vertices and use a “weld” with a very low value !

You may try to see where the problem lies by looking at the object from “behind”.

Statistics

You can have a preview of what’s exported using the “Stats” option.

Here’s a list of currently known limits (Thanks to Huki for these infos) :

• 16383 solid polygons ( = polyhedrons) (65535 since RV1.2)
• 1400 transparent polygons visible at the same time (note that “additive” polygons are taken into account)
• 4000 envmapped polygons visible at the same time
• 16 texture animations (no limit since RV1.2 – Alpha 12.0405)

• Collision can now be set to “Object only” or “Camera only” on any polygon !

I will add a download very soon, as I never made any script available to public I don’t know how to package it. But since it’s already working quite well, I thought I would explain some features !

So here it is, the brand new 3ds to Re-Volt exporter :

It is using Smoothing Groups to define surface properties, in a very similar way as the ASE2RV tools does. The conversion table is based on the -morph conversion table.

There are several parts in the toolset :

The “Utilities” rollout allow you to quickly show every vertex color information : Color (vertex color), Alpha (new feature to set transparency !), and Illumination channel (new feature to set Envmap color !).

It also allow you to visualize any vertex color information by disabling material display in viewport !

The “Convert ASE2RV objects” rollout allow you to quickly convert pre-existing objects made for the ASE2RV tools by adjusting the Smoothing Group values and applying transparency.

The “Cleanup objects” rollout can perform a resetXform, convert to editable poly and reduce to quads (keep only triangles and quads) operations with a single click !

The “Quick Smoothing Groups” can be used to quickly test some surface properties on selected objects.

Instance and World export : you can choose to export any object to an instance or world. Smoothing Group 23 allow you to use a custom collision flag (since every collision flag is not available using Smoothing Groups 0 to 22).

Next main feature will be :

• Texture animation export

I will also investigate about transparency, since too much transparent polygons in a track tend to make visual glitches and I dont know the limit yet, + a bunch of small features to make the exporter more user-friendly !

See you soon !

And absolutely amazing news : Re-Volt does support envmap gradient !!

What does that mean ? That it is now possible to create gradient using the reflection effect (known as environment mapping), here’s an example :

The image on the left show the object in 3ds with colors, and on the right the result in Re-Volt. There’s only one big polygon in the middle, and a great gradient appears !

Two more views to show the effect :

So here are the features for the new exporter :

• Support surface definition using Smoothing Groups (-morph equivalent)
• Color, alpha and envmap super-easy to modify in 3ds
• Texture support as with ase2rv tools
• At least one new collision property ! (tests on their way)
• And of course, texture animations is the next step !

See you soon !

IT’S OVER !!

Export is now done from inside 3ds max, transparency is 100% supported, EnvMap (glossiness effect) and animations are on the todo list !!

Thus the new exporter will take care of :

• textures
• vertex colors
• vertex alpha
• env colors
• texture animations (it’s planned !)
• and more !

Here’s one of the early export tests with transparency gradients on an ice bridge ! For now, the exporter can generate *.prm files (in-game instances) with per-object surface properties 

Next to come is a modifier allowing per-poly properties (with quads support !), here’s an overview ! ^^

Collision properties order is about the same as the -morph command switch table (ase2w.exe and ase2prm.exe from RVTMOD), so people used to it should quickly find their marks (properties are also summarized on the right side).

More infos very soon !!