Exporting

There might be a chance that your normals are out of wack and are all facing inward. your realtime viewer probably doesnt show backfaces and only displays the polygons whose normals face the camera.(which is why games like quake3 run so darn fast)

So if the normals look good in hash, then you need to invert them before exporting.

- Joe Cosman

I've been converting some of my hash models to MAYA Nurbs. There is no simple way, but the way I use is still worth the trouble in the end. The results are great.

1. Export model in HASH AM as a DXF, set on variable setting.
2. Import DXF model into MAYA.
3. Click on Window - Make Live in MAYA
4. Now click on the curve tool and you can start developing your nurbs curves on the surface of your hash model. The curves will follow the dxf mesh.
5. creat a series of lines around the mesh, for example in my case it was muscle leg, use verticle lines around the mesh to make it ready for skinning.
6. make sure as you are making each curve that the number of points are the same. for example one line on the side of the leg should be 14 points and the front side should be 14 also to match up.
7. now you need to click the curves in sequential order and then press the skin tool in maya.

The more curves you have, the better the mesh obviously, but it can get tiresome if you have too many curves. But the curvature results can be very rewarding in the end. I guess this method may seem obvious to most here, but its probably the only way of translating your hash model to maya nurbs without any current available plugin to IGES format. hope this method is helpful to some

wez

Just thought I'd pass along a little useful technique I've been using at work.

If you've been looking for a way to export your Hash model into another 3D package (in my case Maya) and preserve your mapping, here's a technique I've been using:

When you texture your model make sure to use a flattened pose (don't use other projection mapping techniques)

1. Export your final model as DXF

2. Export the flattened pose/action you used for texturing

NOTE: Your target 3D package will need to support morph targets/blendhsapes...

3. Import the flattened DXF model and texture map it using planar projection mapping (this model represents the UV layout)

4. Make your final model a morph target/blend shape for the flattened model.

5. Crank the morph target slider and watch your flattened/textured model morph into it's final form.

6. Delete History/Collapse your stack and your done!

NOTE: If you used more than one flattened pose to texture your model, export each one and morph to each one, applying planar mapping to the each subset of polys. I'm planning on doing a quick tuturial on this method. It's pretty easy to demonstrate visually.

Wesley Grandmont III

I was experimenting with transferring a DXF quad file into AM over the weekend and I discovered a simple tip which others might find useful. The model started out as a nurb model so it had the approximate mesh resolution to work well in AM but it wouldn't import. I didn't get an error message, it just wouldn't do anything.

I thought there might be some problem with the DXF file so I fired up bbEdit and took a look. 3 hours later after trying much experimentation with the slight differences between a Hash exported DXF and the file I wanted to import. I was stumped.

Then I noticed in the 'save as' window there was an 'options' button. In there, there was an option to save with Mac, Unix, or DOS carriage returns. The file was using Unix so I changed to DOS (This was on a mac, by the way) and now the file came in perfectly.

There was no visible difference in the appearance of the text in the DXF file by this change, so I don't know how you can tell just by looking. Maybe most text editors can do this, I don't know, but bbEdit rocks.

John Koester

Remember that the models you export out of animatioon Master will have to be triangulated before they can be used by the Quake2/3 or Unreal engines. So your Hash model should only use half the patches that you want your final poly count to be.

-Greg Jackson

It depends, really. What you want to do is take the max number of polys the engine can render without bogging it down (something like 4000 for quake2, i think), and divide that number by however many of that model you would have on the screen at the same time. So if you were going for a big ass boss type monster, you could go for some really good detail and use up all those 4000 or whatever number of polys, just as long as it was the only one on the screen. But, if your just want a number, the average player model for quake2 is about 600-700 polys, and about 800 for quake3, I think.

Strykerwolf

You mean you have finished playing with all the models on the AM99 CD? There is prolly 400 megs of model data sitting right on your CD -- royality free, no conversion needed.

There is 1 way to get models from other programs into AM and that path is through DXF. DXF format does not include texture info. Most of the free models I've seen are triangulated mesh and will not import well into AM. So d/l the special Crossroads viewer from the forest. When you open a file in there and see it is made up of triangles -- don't even bother trying to import it to AM. If you see a nice quad looking mesh, chances are it will import into AM with little or no problems.

The larger the DXF the longer it takes to import into AM, if you try a 5 or 6 MEG DXF file be prepared to wait 15 minutes or more (there is no status bar on the import to tell you AM is working on it). I have successfully brought in a 10 meg DXF which took over a half hour to import. Once in AM it had so many splines & patches that I spent the next 6 hours removing spline rings that added no extra detail in AM. Did I ever use the model after that -- nope, just too much trouble.

BTW, some formats are more Hash friendly than others, LWO being one of them. However, that special crossroads viewer/converter doesn't support LWO file format, so I use the full version of TrueSpace to import an LWO file and export it as DXF from there. Nendo models can be exported as OBJ and those work quite well in AM.

Finally, we have what we have, you can live with it or not, but as a reminder, this list is not for wishes or what Hash should do about importing other file formats, we have been there and done that. The hash sdk has all the data so you can write your own exporter from AM, but I believe they don't have any import data documented in the sdk. BUT, AM does import it's own older V4 SEG file format, that format has been documented and there would be no reason you couldn't make a file converter that outputs SEG similar to the special crossroads converter. (Where there is a will, there is a way.)

I hope this gives you some bright ideas...

Jeff C.

After lots of experimentation with dxf import, I've noticed the following:

1) It is pointless to model & export a complex polygonal model to dxf and import that huge file into AM. You'll end up with a model with huge patch count & destabilize AM at the same time. It'll also hang if you render that.

If you can LOWER the polygonal complexity of the polygonal model & then export that to dxf, the resulting model in AM will be lower in patch count AND STILL LOOK AS GOOD AS THE HIGH RES POLY MODEL IN YOUR OTHER 3D PROG. Really cool.

For example, if I lathe a section curve with only 4 vertexes into a sphere in AMAPI, it'll look facetted & render jagged in AMAPI. But if you export that sphere into AM, it'll load in 2secs & look perfect in AM.

2) Make sure your other 3D prog can export quad polygons. It'll lessen incidences of 3-point patches in Hash. And don't export the dxf as a polymesh, you'll just get broken splines & individual CPs without any splines when imported into AM.

3) Yes, there'll be some splines that become curved when they should be straight, it's no problem, just select those wayward splines & press 'p' on your keyboard. They'll shout "Yes, Sir!" & straighten. If you model straight edges in AM, you'll have to do the same thing anyway.

With the above in mind, I'm currently importing all sorts of lofted, swept, NURBS objects into AM. Bear in mind that my other 3D prog is AMAPI & my experiments are solely based on using AMAPI as the modeller and exporter.

-Vincent Wan

Gilles Charbonneau & I have experemented with Nendo models and Lightwave files exported as *.obj and Hash DXF import. Nendo can export a quad *.obj file, if you never touch the painter portion of Nendo (thanks to William Weggington for that tip).

You need another program to convert the *.obj file to DXF quad. Since I also have TrueSpace, I have found it does the trick quite nicely. You may find some freebie format converters that triangulate the mesh and make it worthless, so avoid those that do. The key is to look at the mesh in it's native form and see if it is triangles or not, if not, then you have a very good chance of bringing it into Hash as a DXF quad with very little touch-up.

The larger the dxf file the longer it will take to import into AM. I should mention that there is no visual clue that AM is working on it, so start small and see how it works before you try that 17 meg DXF!

Jeff C.