Introducing LEXIExporter & LEXIViewer

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Sethos
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Introducing LEXIExporter & LEXIViewer

Post by Sethos »

Merry Xmas :D

Here is our little Christmas gift, LEXIExporter. It is a native 3DMax exporter plugin. For now it supports 3DMax8. It is still in a Work-In-Progress state, so any requests, bug reports or feedback of any kind is warmly welcome. The current release may be downloaded from the tool download area, The source is located under Tools/MaxExporter/LEXIExporter in the CVS HEAD. In addition we also release our mesh viewer LEXIView, which also can be found in the tools download area. LEXIView is complementing the LEXIExporter but is not released under LGPL (as LEXIExport), but is free to use :D

LEXIExport currently features:
  • Single mesh export
    * Vertex Colors
    * Normals
    * Multiple UV sets
    * Reindexing optimization
  • Shader based materials, to mimic 3DMax DX Viewport look
    * Blinn colors only
    * Diffuse texture only
    * Specular Color only
    * Specular Level only
    * Self-Illumination only
  • Collapsed static mesh
    * Submesh materials
  • Bone animation (.skeleton)
    * Only one animation so far.
    * Multiple root bones
    * Linked bones
Design & Features to come:
  • Multiple animation specification UI
  • Morph & Pose export and animation
  • Plugin based exporter types
    * i.e. Scenemanager specific scene exports
  • Plugin based material export.
    * i.e. override standard material export of Max materials with Diffuse+Specular+Bump maps assigned
    * i.e. add support for new material types
Feedback may be posted here in this thread, or directly to me as a private message.
Merry Xmas and happy new year ! :)
/Sethos
Last edited by Sethos on Thu Mar 15, 2007 11:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Evak
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Post by Evak »

hey, nice I like the sound of basic shader support. Specular and bump are the most usefull basic shaders required to describe many surfaces.

Sounds like a really good start :)
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Post by jacmoe »

Really looking forward to check this out! Merry Christmas! :D
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Post by p_designc »

The viewer is very nice!

But how to export by this exporter?
I have install the exporter, but i cannot find any difference in my 3dmax.
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Post by Brin »

ditto on the inability to export? How does it work after we run the install?
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Post by sinbad »

Click on the Utilities tab, click 'More...', and select 'LEXIExporter'. Click 'Properties...' to bring up the main dialog and you can add objects to the export list from there. Each one can be given its own export settings.
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Post by Brin »

im a programmer, this tool is confusing for me -

Is there a way to export a GROUP of objects? Grouping doesnt work, nor do selection sets...

Are there any other exporters that work with groups of objects?


Thanks.
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Post by Brin »

You can do what's called attaching - this makes all the objects in to one - look at the reference guide under help for the how-to.
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Post by wuren »

Help!!!!!:o How to view the object's textures in LexiView!?? I export the objects using LEXIExport !!! When I load th object in LexiView,but i can not see the object's textures!!
Nothing is impossible!
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Post by Sethos »

@Brin: There is no scene export yet, so if you want to export a group of objects attach them as you describe, or link them together and export the root object with the "Collaps" flag on. This way the objects will be collapsed as if you had attached all together. :)

@Wuren: Set the objects material with a diffuse texture. When exporting set the "Copy textures" and "Copy Shaders" flags on. Now you will be able to see the object with texture in the viewer once you have created a light ofcause :)
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Post by Sethos »

Hi,

I have updated the Ogre Wiki page about LEXIExporter. Here you can se a couple of screenshots, and I've also created some basic video tutorials to get people started. Please do not hesitate to ask if something is not clear.

/Sethos
Last edited by Sethos on Thu Mar 15, 2007 11:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by IFASS »

Looks very cool, keep it up! :D
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Post by JuBe »

Are you planning to add support for older versions of 3DMax?

I'm currently using VIZ 2006 which is based on 3DMax 7, so I cant use current version of exporter. :(
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Post by buonnguqua »

Texture resolution in LexiView have problem :x
In Maya viewport texture 's sharp --> Lexiview 's blur :cry: (i feel texture 's resized 1/2 res)
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Post by Paulov »

or link them together and export the root object with the "Collaps" flag on. This way the objects will be collapsed as if you had attached all together.
I´m very interested on exporting objets all together as if it was a scene but having some of them unnatached so that they can have phisycs etc...

So your process seems interesting, but I dont understand it.

link them together--> what kind of linking? could you be more specific?

export the root object with the "Collaps" flag on-->
This "Collaps" flag is a MAx or an Lexi option?


so this objet could be a simple box called "scene" ?, exporting this box and then loading this box in an app should load all the linked objets?¿?¿


THanks

Pablo_>_
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Post by JeDi »

Hi,

How is the plugin system coming along? How is it designed? Do I need the max sdk to compile plugins? Or are all max-specific parts abstracted out?

What I am particularly interested in is the user-specified exporting plugins. If I understand correctly, we will be able to write plugins for DotScene, OSM and other project-specific scene formats?
And how do the material plugins work? Cause I would love to have a specular+bump map material!

Maybe I should have a look at the source code...

Great ideas! Keep up the good work.

Greetz,
JeDi
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Post by hmoraldo »

Having .scene exporting would be great...!

Edit: oh, I see it already has. Fantastic!
Last edited by hmoraldo on Sat Jan 13, 2007 12:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Paulov »

OK

I´ve been able to export a scene and load it all in another app :)

I´ve linked the objets with the "standard" linking tool of max and then in the exported properties I´ve selected the collapese hierarchy option commented before.

The .mesh file has been created correctly.

Problems: the textures have not been exported :(

In the first attemp of exporting an scene no .material and no textures where pressent in the directory, in the second attemp with another file 3.jpgs where exported and one.mesh file created.

My textures are mainly .dds files ( the .jpg´s are rests of my previous format.)

note: Dont know if its related with lexy exporter but now oFusion is not working and says when loading max that "ogre core" (or someting similar) cant be found in max directory...

This might be the source of my problems, or may not. I´ll reinstall oFusion and try re exporting with Lexy.

I´ll uninstall oFusion and try to run Lexy alone.

I´ll post if interesting ressults are obtained..

bye
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Post by Sethos »

Hi,

Good to see all the feedback.

@JuBe:
Are you planning to add support for older versions of 3DMax?
We are not planning to add support for older versions of 3DSMax8. We will probably add support for 3DSMax9 in the near future, but cannot promise anything yet.

@buonnguqua:
In Maya viewport texture 's sharp --> Lexiview 's blur\/In Maya viewport texture 's sharp --> Lexiview 's blur
I haven´t got any experience with Maya, but surely the viewer can be used with the maya exporter as well. LEXIViewer is developed to complement the LEXIExporter, so problems related to the Maya exporter is not on the high priority list :) Since the viewer does nothing special with the materials, but simply loads them through Ogre3D´s resource manager, my advice would be to try out one of the other viewers. If the other viewers doesn´t display this behaviour please post a screenshot illustrating the problem in LEXIViewer (incl. a shot of how it´s suppose to look). If this is a LEXIViewer specific problem I will take a look at it.

@JeDi:
How is the plugin system coming along? How is it designed? Do I need the max sdk to compile plugins? Or are all max-specific parts abstracted out?
I´ve been working on some better animation export options as well as a extended UI, so the plugin system is on a standstill at the moment. The plugins are not going to be MaxSDK dependent. LEXIExporter is designed to keep a loose coupling to Max, so the export data may be access by plugins through an intermediate data format.
If I understand correctly, we will be able to write plugins for DotScene, OSM and other project-specific scene formats?
Yes, you understood correctly. You will be able to write project specific scene formats as plugins. We will probably supply a basic dotScene format as example plugin. Perhaps, once the plugin systems are up and running I´ll build a LEXIExporter SDK for plugin developers.

@Paulov:
Dont know if its related with lexy exporter but now oFusion is not working and says when loading max that "ogre core" (or someting similar) cant be found in max directory...
Ahh ofcourse, oFusion and LEXIExporter uses the same approach when initializing ogre, so when using different ogre versions it conflicts with each other. This issue is noted, thanks. :)
I´ll post if interesting ressults are obtained..
Very interested :)
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Post by smernesto »

HI.

How I can export an animation using Lexiexporter and biped? I tried but it didn´t work, but with bones the animation export works fine. Is Biped supported?.

Thanks

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Post by hmoraldo »

smernesto wrote:How I can export an animation using Lexiexporter and biped? I tried but it didn´t work, but with bones the animation export works fine. Is Biped supported?.
I'm not sure if this will be useful, but biped for max and ogre is covered here: http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10040 and here: http://www.ogre3d.org/wiki/index.php/MultiBIPSkeleton

I didn't use Lexiexporter, but I suppose it works the same with it.
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Post by xavier »

Apparently it doesn't, according to the poster. I've done biped export and apart from the whole Biped system being odd at best from an exporter standpoint, it needs to be treated differently than the other animation types in Max, so it's likely that the LEXI exporter doesn't support it yet.

But yes, if the poster needs biped export today, he should for now use the (still currently official and complete) MaxScript exporter, or use oFusion.
Do you need help? What have you tried?

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Coordinates?

Post by JuBe »

I'm a bit confused how LexiExporter handles coordinates.

I have previously used Octopus exporter and it uses Pivot coordinate to set the orientation and position of the exported mesh.

In LexiExporter it doesn't seem to make any difference how object is rotated and positioned in 3DSMax, it allways seems to be exported at same orientation and position, which seems to be a bit odd.

Have I done something wrong or is there a bug in LexiExporter?
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Post by Sethos »

@smernesto:
Xavier is right. Biped is not supported in the current release.

@JuBe
Hmm. The position and rotation in the scene gets ignored when exporting a single mesh in the current release. But the pivot offsets was not intended to be ignored also. I will take a look at this. Thanks.
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max9

Post by dolemite »

hey it looks like a great exporter. How hard would it be to get a version for Max9? Max9 is such a better program than max8.


The lack of exporter support for this powerful tool is daunting my efforts :(
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