DFF importer and exporter for 3ds max

[Tut98]

On 6/22/2020 at 8:23 AM, The Hero said:

I may implement fixing material assignment sometime, and also importing materials as standard materials. i still have a few other things on my mind though, but i actually am working on 3ds max stuff right now.

Cool thanks. Right now I'm using GIMS EVO to convert to standard material type. Not the best but it works. Even with them converted to standard scanline RBG multiply maps, they still show the bug. It's a little strange.

 

@gold_fish thanks for your indepth explanation. I'm not sure I explained it correctly so I've just recorded my viewport showing the material issue:

https://streamable.com/6s8a24

Edited June 23, 2020 by Tut Greco
typo

[Tut98]

Hey @gold_fish and @The Hero, I and someone have tried to correct some tuning parts which didn't show up the way they should. Both of your exporters show the same result (I'm adding it to a spoiler (no pun intended), there's a few screenshots):
 

Spoiler

Where the left is exported and right is default. It was exported with normals enabled, and its materials correctly contains envmap and specmap.

 

Fixing it was done by exporting the following section from a default tuning part (ID 1162), into our custom tuning part.

 

This is the difference between same files replacing ID 1162 (tuning part) and 1337 (world object):

 

I have linked below the sample files if you'd like to test it out !

 

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/308956559201796097/725228723363905546/spl_a_j_b.dff -- default untouched tuning part

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/308956559201796097/725229286662864987/1162_2.dff -- custom tuning part exported with The Hero's script

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/308956559201796097/725228721140924466/fix_section -- extension copied from tuning part's DFF as shown in previous images

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/308956559201796097/725228718632730734/1162.dff -- custom tube with the extension copied over

Note: they use the texture of Jester (remapjesterbody256).

 

Do you reckon there's something missing on exporting to DFF?

 

 

[Bane712]

On 6/18/2020 at 9:34 AM, gold_fish said:

by the way @Bane712 could you share in a personal message dff which have 3 UV channels so I can study them? I understand that these are gta sa models?

@gold_fish What do you mean?

Most custom models i see nowadays have a lot of UV channels, i have a samurai edge model that has like, 5 uv channels for the single mesh, a texture for the grip, a texture for the flashlight, another texture for the laser and so on, it's very common among modelers.

I have exported models like that with the updated kam's max scripts, i don't get why this ain't normal for you.

[Tut98]

1 hour ago, Bane712 said:

@gold_fish What do you mean?

Most custom models i see nowadays have a lot of UV channels, i have a samurai edge model that has like, 5 uv channels for the single mesh, a texture for the grip, a texture for the flashlight, another texture for the laser and so on, it's very common among modelers.

I have exported models like that with the updated kam's max scripts, i don't get why this ain't normal for you.

What you're describing is a model that uses 1 UV channel and has multiple materials for its mesh. The UV's are simply overlapping eachother, but that's only visible in the UV space. If your texture are tileable, you'll see UV's way outside of the primary UV space. This is not to be confused with multiple UV channels.

[gold_fish]

4 hours ago, Bane712 said:

@gold_fish What do you mean?

Most custom models i see nowadays have a lot of UV channels, i have a samurai edge model that has like, 5 uv channels for the single mesh, a texture for the grip, a texture for the flashlight, another texture for the laser and so on, it's very common among modelers.

I have exported models like that with the updated kam's max scripts, i don't get why this ain't normal for you.

In general, it is very strange why there are so many UV channels, when all this can be placed in one, in addition, the DFF structure accommodates a maximum of 3 Uv channels

 

Can you show what UV channels do you mean? Where do you view them? Can you show them?

Edited June 24, 2020 by gold_fish

[The Hero]

RpGeometry and hence DFFs can have up to 8 UV channels. I think rwio supports that but i don't think i ever tested it much.

[gold_fish]

15 minutes ago, The Hero said:

RpGeometry and hence DFFs can have up to 8 UV channels. I think rwio supports that but i don't think i ever tested it much.

And does it support the GTA SA engine? Ie physically able to process more than 2 channels? never experimented ...
And it seems to me that Bane712 has mixed something up. Probably under UV, he means a scan of the texture, or something else ..

Edited June 24, 2020 by gold_fish

[The Hero]

It all depends on the rendering pipeline. I don't think RW itself every uses more than 2 channels. in SA the second channel was only used for the PS2 vehicle env map...the PC version doesn't even use it but still requires the channel to be present.

Edited June 24, 2020 by The Hero

[The Hero]

New version 3.3: you can import kam dff material now with an option on the import dialog. you can also choose to import materials as standard max materials instead of my RW thing. note this will not import any SA-specific data. added tristrip option to export.

[Tut98]

Very nice updates The Hero. I'm glad you've got the motivation to work on it again! The option to import standard materials is very important for me so I thank you for that!

One question, and sorry for my ignorance, but what does triangle strip export do. From what I'm told it can cut down on file size a lot, but I don't really understand the visual part of it. What's its purpose?

 

Few suggestions:
 

Spoiler

 

Currently I cannot export skinned meshes although it does import them correctly. Can this be looked into?

Currently I import IPL with Kam's scripts, but neither Kam's nor Goldfish's imports certain models correctly. You'll have some rooftops with wrong materials applied. This works correctly using rwio however. Would it possible for you to rip Kam's MAP IO script and implement your DFF plugin with it, so instead of importing IPL and Kam's for models, it imports IPL and RWIO for models. I hope everything makes sense.

 

 

[The Hero]

Tristrips are just a way to render a bunch of triangles. on PS2 you basically need this. on other platforms it's not so important or gives you actually worse performance. My tristripping algorithm is not very clever though, i never got around to properly implement the tunneling algorithm.

 

Exporting skinned meshes works in principle. You'll have to be more specific as to what doesn't work.

 

I'm not fixing kam's scripts. I just pushed my own gta map scripts to github, but it only supports gta3 and the user interface could also be better. I wanted jago to beta-test this for gta3d mapping but since you asked...https://github.com/gtamodding/gta_studio_max

Edited July 1, 2020 by The Hero

[Tut98]

Thanks @The Hero. I cannot tell what specifically is wrong with the skinned meshes, but it doesn't load. I have given it a quick glance using RWAnalyze and the differences between (original) Kam's and your are very significant. It seems like most of the frame list data is entirely skipped in your plugin. Please see if these sample models help. I converted it from VC to SA. Thanks in advance

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/308955445568077824/728524691928514600/10kams.dff

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/308955445568077824/728524694734766150/10rw.dff

[The Hero]

Huh...that is strange. It does export skin data but the hierarchy is almost empty. i think that can only happen if the bone tag (user property) is explicitly set negative.

[cj2000]

On 6/24/2020 at 2:05 PM, The Hero said:

It all depends on the rendering pipeline. I don't think RW itself every uses more than 2 channels. in SA the second channel was only used for the PS2 vehicle env map...the PC version doesn't even use it but still requires the channel to be present.

Shure the PC version don´t use the second chanel at all?

[The Hero]

Yes. Skygfx uses it of course, but vanilla PC does not.

[Tut98]

This is more of a feedback for people using RWIO's GTA Helper. If you're working on a larger project and need to convert a large amount of GTA materials to RW materials, make sure that the materials aren't loaded in your scene (remove project path) so materials are just blank white. Doing this, it reduces the conversion time from roughly 2 hours (where your PC will probably freeze) to less than a minute.

(The reason why you would convert from GTA to RW prior to converting to standard scanline/your type of renderer material for production rendering, is that GTA material has a desaturated appearence as opposed to RW material. GTA materials makes for less detailed renders.)

Edited July 9, 2020 by Tut Greco

[Tut98]

Max crashes when attempting to export certain models with Tristrip enabled. Is it possible to instead output a warning that the model does not support tristrip option instead?

[The Hero]

No. I'd rather fix the code, but i'd need some file that it can't handle to test it.

[Tut98]

Thank you. It took me 16 crashes to be able to reproduce it, but here you go haha! I was able to find just 2 meshes out of the 30-40 so I think that'll help you troubleshooting on your end.

PS. It crashes immediately without any message from Autodesk either. If that's any useful to know. I hope the model helps.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/308955445568077824/731988347744026735/the_hero_tristrip_troubleshooting.rar

 

It contains Max scene for 2020 through 2021 as well as the scene exported to DFF without tristrip. It crashed on 2021, not sure about older versions since I don't use those.

Thank you again for looking into it The Hero.

Edited July 13, 2020 by Tut Greco
updated file

[Gmer]

@The Hero i found a model that causes 3DS Max to freeze when you try to import it

 

Here is the DFF: https://www.dropbox.com/s/n5mhox29ddfltyx/vehicle.dff?dl=1 so i think you can find a plugin bug, if you reproduce..

[The Hero]

thanks. i don't know when i'll have time to look into this, but at least we have it documented here now.

[Meng Fan]

Why not rwio2016.dli x64

Edited July 25, 2020 by Meng Fan
Typo

[Tut98]

4 hours ago, Meng Fan said:

Why not rwio2016.dli x64

Back when I was using Max 2016, rwio2015.dli worked just fine for me.

[Meng Fan]

22 minutes ago, Tut Greco said:

Back when I was using Max 2016, rwio2015.dli worked just fine for me.

3dmx2016 can really use rwio2015.dli, then you can use rwio17 and 18!

[atay26]

can some one give me a script to import gta: lcs ios dff modles into 3dsmax

[Jago]

56 minutes ago, atay26 said:

can some one give me a script to import gta: lcs ios dff modles into 3dsmax

try using lcsconv before importing

[atay26]

1 hour ago, Mr. Jago said:

try using lcsconv before importing

ok but what dff importer should i use, tried kams script dff/io but the bones f*ck up so any other dff importers?

[Tut98]

On 8/4/2020 at 9:16 AM, atay26 said:

ok but what dff importer should i use, tried kams script dff/io but the bones f*ck up so any other dff importers?

I think this query deserves a new thread, can you please make one in https://gtaforums.com/forum/332-gta-iii-vc-sa/ 

Going off what you said it could be as minor as an import setting when using Kam's. Please ensure that you have pressed the A button to load skinned data when importing.

[Meng Fan]

Why can't light and shadow control DFF

[Tut98]

2 hours ago, Meng Fan said:

Why can't light and shadow control DFF

Please elaborate on your question