Octopus for 3dsmax

psyclonist · Post by **psyclonist** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 12:11 am

Simba, the author, submitted a readme explaining the basic usage of Octopus. After more than 500 downloads and quite a few requests for at least a small teaser of a manual, I took the chance and opened a thread for Octopus. Maybe other people find it useful, too.

If you've got questions regarding the Octopus exporter try to keep them in this thread.

Download
Grab it at http://www.yake.org in the Downloads section.

Manual
Can be found either at http://www.yake.org in the Downloads section or in the YAKE Documentation and Users Wiki (IMHO, nicer due to reformatting).

What is the Octopus?
The Octopus is a collection of 3dsmax plugin scripts and additional utilities. It enables the artist to add OGRE specific information on materials, meshes etc export complete scenes into more or less standardized file formats.

Plugins include various material plugins, per-mesh modifiers, physics modifiers (geometry & bodies & joints), YAKE object modifier.

Utilities include an OGRE material previewer (present in the material editor).

What does it export?
Meshes are exported as OGRE mesh files, materials as OGRE material files. Scenes are exported in the dotScene format. Physics information is exported in the XODE format. YAKE specific information is stored in dotLink and dotModel files.

HTH,
psy

PS: Thanks to Simba and mj!

semicolon · Post by **semicolon** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 6:35 am

Hi Psyclonist:

I have been wondering how to install and use this very useful plug-in set for a while. It seems to have something very cool and takes some time to learn it.
Thanks for the information.

Cheers,
Semicolon

Banania · Post by **Banania** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 10:29 am

Very impressive piece of work !

I just stop by to send my congratulations to mj and Simba. The work that has been done on this exporter is truly amazing. Achieving something so complex with MAXscript is no small performance, trust me.

There are a lot of good ideas, especially the mesh modifiers and the material export part that are very cool.

Keep up with the good work....

psyclonist · Post by **psyclonist** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 11:07 am

Banania: You enhanced the mesh exporter quite a bit. I'd love to see these improvements merged into the respective Octopus plugins.

Banania wrote:(...) Keep up with the good work....

I hope you do the same

-psy

Banania · Post by **Banania** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 11:35 am

psyclonist wrote:I hope you do the same Twisted Evil

Right now, I am working with it rather than working on it. But I am still around if someone needs help.....

So, unless someone come up with a good idea I did not think of, I am not going to add new functionalities in the near future (not until Sinbad implements morph animation

) because I need to add functionalities to my own project... and because I have no more ideas....

There is one exception however : full max7 support. So far, I tested the script on max7 and it seems to work but it was with the trial version. So, no SDK which means I could not recompile the Physique Interface for maxscript and so I can't export bipeds....
If I can get my hands on a full max7 version long enough to do that, that would be great but I don't see that happening any time soon. Unless some max7 user can do this....

EDIT: I just realized that the physique interface for max6 is working with max7. This is highly unexpected but is great news....

semicolon · Post by **semicolon** » Sat Dec 04, 2004 2:25 pm

>

I think the MAX exporter doesn't have vertex alpha to be exported yet. When we have this function, we can blend without alpha map. I think this whould help memory load a little bit, whouldn't it? ^_~

Semicolon

MikeF · Post by **MikeF** » Sat Dec 04, 2004 11:26 pm

absolutely excellent tool, just getting a small problem, everything i open in the standard ogre meshviewer after exporting is almost microscopic, and i cant zoom in on it. I tried running the viewer that came with octopus but got the following error

Error#: 7
Function:filesystem::load
Description: ccannot find folder e:\3dsmax6\maps\reflection
File: \nikita\projects\ogre\ogrenew\plugins\filesystem\src\filesystem.cpp
Line: 423
Stack unwinding <<Beginning of stack>>

psyclonist · Post by **psyclonist** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 3:01 pm

Check the file "resources.cfg" in your "3dsmax6\scripts\octopus\viewer"
directory. Are there paths set in it that don't exist on your machine?

-psy

semicolon · Post by **semicolon** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 3:42 pm

Hi:

I also have a problem with Octopus as well. How would I fix this? (see the image below.)

Thanks a lot.

Semicolon

psyclonist · Post by **psyclonist** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 5:11 pm

I'm guessing here... is the specified file writable? And is the path correct?

-psy

MikeF · Post by **MikeF** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 5:25 pm

managed to get it working using the standard meshviewer eventually. just have a quick question now. IS there any way to merge two seperately exported xml files into one before converting to .mesh?
Thanks for the help

Banania · Post by **Banania** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 9:16 pm

MikeF wrote:managed to get it working using the standard meshviewer eventually. just have a quick question now. IS there any way to merge two seperately exported xml files into one before converting to .mesh?
Thanks for the help

What are you trying to achieve by merging two .xml into one mesh file ?
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to merge the two objects before exporting ?

semicolon · Post by **semicolon** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 2:36 am

Hi,

I could finally config it to work. I am playing with it a little bit to learn how to use it. I saw the funtions about BSP file format. Is Octopus able to export BSP file as well? If so, this would be very lovely for future game development.

Ahh... I wanna write down the steps for the newbies. Do you think that would be useful?

Thanks a lot for all the help above.
Semicolon

psyclonist · Post by **psyclonist** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 12:51 pm

semicolon wrote:I could finally config it to work. I am playing with it a little bit to learn how to use it. I saw the funtions about BSP file format. Is Octopus able to export BSP file as well?

Not that I know of... IIRC, there's a script plugin for 3dsmax designed especially for creating BSP geometry...

semicolon wrote:Ahh... I wanna write down the steps for the newbies. Do you think that would be useful?

Yes, of course! I'd be happy to add it this to the Octopus Wiki entry.

-psy

semicolon · Post by **semicolon** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 6:23 pm

Hi psyclonist,

Here you go... I think for the quick installation guide of Octopus, I will just write it down some steps first. But if I could clear up my current and urgent work I will create the more complete one with image demonstration.

Octopus installation process:

1. Once you download the Octopus file from http://www.yake.org Unzip the file to C:\3DSMAX\scripts (I assume that you have your 3DSMAX installed on drive C.)

2. Run 3DSMAX and go to MAXScript/Run Script...

3. Browse C:\3dsmax\scripts\octopus\macros

4. Choose "OctopusToolbar.mcr", and there is nothing appears.

5. Go to Customize/Customize User Interface, click on Toolbars tab and choose "Octopus Extensions" from the Category pull-down menu.

6. You will see an icon named "Export scene to Octopus". Put that icon on the new tab with the name, "Octopus Exporter". (or any name you wish.)

7. Click on the "Export scene to Octopus" icon, open OctopusScript.ini. There are a few things to be corrected.

8. The following lines are supposed to point to your Octopus directory.
[Directories]
XMLConverterPath=C:\3dsmax\scripts\octopus\exe
OgreViewerExePath=C:\3dsmax\scripts\octopus\viewer
OgreViewerMediaPath=C:\3dsmax\scripts\octopus\viewer

9. There are three files concerning the problems I've experienced after running the Octopus script.
9.1 resources.cfg = This file points to reflection map in 3DSMAX. If your viewer pops up the window saying anything about reflection map, you should come here to check the path.

9.2 media.cfg = This file says the name of the sample mesh for real-time Orge material viewer in 3DSMAX. IF you have any problem about sample mesh when you run the material viewer in 3DSMAX, you should come here to check the file name. However if you don't tweak any files from the Octopus zipped file, you shouldn't have this problem.

9.3 orge.cfg = This file configures your Viewer, you should check the rendering device specification before using it. Match the name with your display card, or you cannot open up the material viewer in 3DSMAX. The viewer will keep poping up saying something about D3D9 file system error.

That's pretty much it as far as I know about installation.

Any added comments are more than welcome.
Semicolon

MikeF · Post by **MikeF** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 12:57 am

Banania wrote:
MikeF wrote:managed to get it working using the standard meshviewer eventually. just have a quick question now. IS there any way to merge two seperately exported xml files into one before converting to .mesh?
Thanks for the help
What are you trying to achieve by merging two .xml into one mesh file ?
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to merge the two objects before exporting ?

Because both peices have animations using cloned rigs, and i cannot attach them in max without loosing the skin modifier on one of the peices.

Banania · Post by **Banania** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 11:26 am

MikeF wrote:
Banania wrote:
MikeF wrote:managed to get it working using the standard meshviewer eventually. just have a quick question now. IS there any way to merge two seperately exported xml files into one before converting to .mesh?
Thanks for the help
What are you trying to achieve by merging two .xml into one mesh file ?
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to merge the two objects before exporting ?
Because both peices have animations using cloned rigs, and i cannot attach them in max without loosing the skin modifier on one of the peices.

Alright. I know this problem but I am afraid there is no easy way to do that.
Although it would certainly be possible to do a tool that does just what you need, it would probably be a pain in the arse to figure out the merging process because bones and vertices migt have different indices in the two parts.

apanjocko · Post by **apanjocko** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 12:14 pm

my 3dstudio is under c:\program files\ and therefore the exporter doesn't launch the xmlconverter. i had to move it to a path without space. adding "'s to the path in the .ini didn't help either. possible to fix?

SamH · Post by **SamH** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 6:51 pm

Further to Semicolons installation process....

If you have previously installed the original Ogre exporter you will have problems when you try to run octopus...

My solution is to rename initOgreTools.ms initOgreTools.ms.BAK and restart Max. This will ensure that only Octopus is running and not the original.

After this make sure the MAX file you are using doesn't have any Ogre materials used on any objects or in the Mat editor. Save and reload the file and Octopus should work fine.

You should be able to switch between either set of tools by renaming the the startup script of the one you don't wish to use with a .BAK extension.

Cheers to all you exporter coders, I don't know what I'd do without you....

S

Banania · Post by **Banania** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 7:41 pm

SamH wrote:If you have previously installed the original Ogre exporter you will have problems when you try to run octopus...

I guess there are some name conflicts somewhere..... we should look into this someday...

psyclonist · Post by **psyclonist** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 10:47 pm

semicolon: Thanks for the instructions! I added them to the wiki!

-psy

semicolon · Post by **semicolon** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 4:20 pm

SamH: Thanks for the added comments on the setup. SamH... I agree with you. If there was nobody maintain the exporters, I wouldn't know what I can do about Orge. And Orge is very amazing 3D engine.

psyclonist: Cool. I've seen it on wiki.

Right on!
Semicolon

semicolon · Post by **semicolon** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 8:23 am

Hi everyone,

I have a question about exporting .bsp file with Octopus. I don't know the process. Could someone explain me how to export to .bsp file? Or any tutorials relating to this issue?

Thanks a lot,
Semicolon

psyclonist · Post by **psyclonist** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 9:16 am

Octopus exports to .scene files. It does not do BSP.

There's a maxscript based level editor which supports export to BSP. It requires a specific modelling technique, though. I don't have the name but it's a freely available script and a search on one of the 3dsmax-oriented plugin sites should give you nice results.

-psy

haust · Post by **haust** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 5:46 pm

Hi,

When I try to export a mesh I get the following script error :
--Runtime error: Unknown struct member: #firstFrame
in line 245 of OctopusToolbar.mcr.
I'm using version of rel. date: 1.11.04

I guess I did something wrong but I don't know what....
Any suggestion ??

thanks.

haust.

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