Bf2 3ds max tools

After launching 3DSMax, if the tools are installed correctly, you will see BF2 added to the toolbar as shown below:. A new window pops up , looking like this:. Now fill in the values according to your setup. Included, is the the 'rawdata' path , 'BF2' and using a testmod 'EFM' into the possible export paths in the lower dialog. This is the most important step : Once the exporter finds one of these strings, it truncates the texture paths which are coded into the mesh to a mod-relative path, meaning the object can run under any mod on any machine without hardcoded absolute paths.

Note that in this example, we are directly exporting into the testmod structure, for convience. Sometimes the license will stop working. If it was incorectly set up initially, it can be useful to delete the existing license info. If you don't see Program data, select View from the tool bar and check hidden files. Since performance on OG-heavy maps can quickly go down the drain when these far away lods are too detailled, it's often the best to use a minimum amount of tris.

Since vegetation is always rendered two-sided in the engine, we can easily reduce the lod to flat planes onto which the tree geometry is projected, amounting to tris. To do so, one would ordinarily create the planes manually, make them fit the tree, uv them, make the background color fit the color of the leaves for better transparency and finally bake do a projection bake.

Classic Battlefield Modding Wikia Explore. Wiki Content. Sys x Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Using the 3ds max BF2 Tools. Edit source History Talk 0. By Harmonikater sometime last year I started playing around with the 3ds Max tools code to accelerate my workflows. However maxscript is compatible between almost all max versions, and is easily changed, while max SDK is compiled and therefore inaccessible.

The Material name is automatically appended with the correct prefix, and the transparency is displayed in the viewport. Changes to the Exporter : Checkbox to not create a new directory during exports of bundledmeshes, staticmeshes i. With BfMeshView it's possible to generate custom sample sizes e.

In this case each LOD node has to be suffixed with the desired size e. Only applicable for 3P Animations Since most 3P animations are split into upper body specific for each weapon and lower body animation shared among all weapons , it may be helpful to also import the corresponding lower body animation. If a 3P animation was selected in the first step, the tool tries to find the corresponding lower body animation. If you want a different one, or it didn't find the correct one, you can still change it by clicking on the 2nd "Get".

In the example, it correctly picked the lower body baf, so I won't touch it. After having selected an animation in step 1, the tool will look for what it thinks is the corresponding the weapon mesh. If you want a different one, or it didn't find the correct one, you can still change it by clicking on the 3rd "Get". Click on import and a scene with all items will load.

The scene is currently a bare-bones no pun intended animation setup, with none of the tools and controllers that are actually used during animating. Before we can actually with an animation, we need those setup. This is usually the first step in creating any animation. Luckily the tool can also take care of that for us. After importing, there will be a Message, asking whether we want to Setup Animation controllers.

This leads to the next step: After clicking yes, we can setup animation hierarchies in the way we prefer.

This is usually up to the animator's choice. In the example, I'll want all weapon meshes, as well as the hand controllers which the tool created after clicking on "Yes" to be parented under the main weapon mesh. The hierarchies here can also be time-dependent, i. Note that until the hierarchies setup is complete, the hands movement might differ from the final animation. The hierarchies here can also be time-dependent, i.

Note that until the hierarchies setup is complete, the hands movement might differ from the final animation. Once the hierarchies are all setup, after clicking on "Continue" in the FH2 Animation Tools Dialog, we'll end up with the correct animation, as well as hand controllers IK chains parented under hexagons, FH2-style. There is of course still the issue that exported animations have keys on every frame. Unfortunately there's no magic solution to get the original keys back.

So you'll still have to reduce those manually e. Alternatively you can try to use Soft Selection in the track view, or to superimpose new movements using dummies in the hiearchy. Spoiler for Small tutorial for Overgrowth Lod creator :. This tool was created to quickly improve performance of overgrowth OG objects. Since performance on OG-heavy maps can quickly go down the drain when these far away lods are too detailled, it's often the best to use a minimum amount of tris.

Since vegetation is always rendered two-sided in the engine, we can easily reduce the lod to flat planes onto which the tree geometry is projected, amounting to tris. To do so, one would ordinarily create the planes manually, make them fit the tree, uv them, make the background color fit the color of the leaves for better transparency and finally bake do a projection bake.

Luckily, the tool can do all of this for us automatically. A new dialog will appear on which we can pick some settings. To quickly sum up the settings: The texture size can be set to any Power of 2 combination, so e. If "Use Midplane" is checked, there will also be a horizontal plane so that the LOD is also well-visible from higher angles. If "Auto Background Color" is checked, the tool will try to automatically select a background color that averages the leaf texture.

If unchecked, the color can be chosen manually. Just keep in Mind that Max does its own gamma correction, so you'll have to correct values if you want to plugin RGB values from another source. Finally, we can choose whether the non-leaf parts of the tree should be rendered with their base or detail channel displayed. Texture Sizes Now let's have a look at the texture first. With the size preset, there's a lot of unused UV space in the top right corner, so let's see whether we can improve that just by using a different size.

Well, a bit better, so I'll accept that for now. If you want to manually do your UVs and e. You can re-bake the uvs here. Geometry Correction Now the created geometry still looks a bit off: We'll have to manually adjust the planes so that they match with the texture, i.

If you have a tree that's very curved in this example the trunk is straight so thats no problem you might have to add one or more edges to make the plane follow the curvature. I'll do this for both the vertical planes, and then afterwards move the horiontal plane upwards into the leaf area. Export Finally we have to export, but the tool has already prepared all the recommended settings for us anyway, so I can just click export. And the final LOD looks like this: At the distances we're talking about, it should look just fine.

And we've reduced the amount of polys to 1. And it's a lot quicker than doing this by hand. Stubbfan partner in crime in FH2 and CMP smashed through a couple dozen overgrowth models in one short sitting. Last edited by Harmonikater; at Reason: Updated download link. Re: Experimental updated 3dsMax Tools. Newer Max versions support and more. I'm blown away really. This is amazing. I quickly read through it and will for sure test most of this out! The only thing I can think of is when importing statics it skips destructible objects.

Likely cause they have an additional geometry. Having these be imported and be possible to be lightmapped as well with all their geoms would be great. Not working with 3ds max 18, but looks promising.