Anyone use 3dsmax instead of hammer?

[Sel]

I personally just don't see how 3DS can compete with the speed and accuracy of BSP brush editing, especially in an engine where staying on the grid is so important. 3DS is so much messier in that regard

That said though, 3ds isn't really any more or less useful for creating boxes and mashing them together than hammer is, and aside from the vertex editing being infinitely fucking better than hammer's, there's really no reason to use it over hammer and deal with the headaches of some exporter.

If you want to go make maps for a video game with 3ds go check out halo, it's both a far better game and engine B)

 

[Freyja]

I've never had the grid in 3ds work nicely, it always does weird things.

And I think hammer is far, FAR better at creating basic boxes and mashing them together, especially considering you don't have to unwrap anything in hammer.

 

[Sel]

I
And I think hammer is far, FAR better at creating basic boxes and mashing them together,

well you're wrong lol

especially considering you don't have to unwrap anything in hammer.

what are you talking about? the face editor in hammer is basically just a much shittier uvw editor that makes it obnoxious to apply proper texture coordinates to anything that isn't a flat square face.

 

[Lampenpam]

If you want to go make maps for a video game with 3ds go check out halo, it's both a far better game and engine B)

Agreed, Halo is a better game then hammer ^^

 

[Freyja]

I'm going to regret biting for this but here goes...

well you're wrong lol

I like how this really contributes to discussion. Why are you even bothering in this thread?

Hammer's brush tools are far far quicker at making basic boxes and such, ie. what's necessary for a BSP based engine. A lot of it is personal workflow, yes, but I've been using 3DS for almost half the time as I have hammer now and I could never make something like the double cross bridge in 3DS as fast as I could out of brushes. Especially all the tedious unwrapping and UV packing it would need, whereas hammer is just a few alt-RMB clicks and you're good to go.

For things like dishes, sure, 3DS is far better than say displacements, but for basic geometry I would extremely disagree. You can see how other engines build their meshes in modular forms and then place it within the editor, because making an entire level in 3DS would be far too time consuming. Brushes are just like an extreme version of modular meshes (in fact isn't this exactly how unity does it? Just deforming mesh primatives as their "bsp")

And halo is almost a 15 year old game that looks pretty polygonny, I don't think it really compares.

what are you talking about? the face editor in hammer is basically just a much shittier uvw editor that makes it obnoxious to apply proper texture coordinates to anything that isn't a flat square face.

It's technically unwrapping yes, but it can be done a thousand times faster, without packing, baking, anything like that.

And Alt-RMB aligns things fine, and a lot faster than 3DS can do it. Perhaps you should use hammer a little more, aligning textures in it is far faster than projecting, stitching and packing.

If you want to go make maps for a video game with 3ds go check out halo, it's both a far better game and engine B)

So why are you here on this forum bothering us with how your methods are oh so superior to us plebians?

 

[Sel]

I'm going to regret biting for this but here goes...

Idk why you'd regret learning new things, but ok!

Hammer's brush tools are far far quicker at making basic boxes and such, ie. what's necessary for a BSP based engine. A lot of it is personal workflow, yes but I've been using 3DS for almost half the time as I have hammer now and I could never make something like the double cross bridge in 3DS as fast as I could out of brushes.

If you have any idea what you're doing in max you can mash boxes together to make objects just as quickly as you can in hammer, because the geometry placement is literally the exact same workflow. You snap things to a properly set up grid and then that's it. If you're unable to place boxes in max as quickly as you can in hammer then that's a problem on your end.

Especially all the tedious unwrapping and UV packing it would need, whereas hammer is just a few alt-RMB clicks and you're good to go.

You do realize there's another uv modifier called UVW map that serves basically the exact same functionality as hammer's face editor right. UVW Unwrap is typically for complex objects or texture coordinates.

Like, oh, right, cylinders, flat faces that aren't going in a straight line (eg curved trims) and any sort of curvy object which hammer has immense trouble with.

And halo is almost a 15 year old game that looks pretty polygonny, I don't think it really compares.

The community has since extended the engine significantly, adding support for normal mapping, post processing, and removing geometry rendering limits, among other things, but the point was that it's an example of a game that uses 3ds for level building, and does it pretty decently, and worth checking out if the op is looking for an engine that uses 3ds for level creation.

It's technically unwrapping yes, but it can be done a thousand times faster, without packing, baking, anything like that.

baking has nothing to do with this lol, and see above.

And Alt-RMB aligns things fine, and a lot faster than 3DS can do it.

see above

Perhaps you should use hammer a little more,

I'm pretty sure the issue here isn't my supposed inexperience with hammer, it's your obvious lack of experience with 3ds max lol.

aligning textures in it is far faster than projecting, stitching and packing.

We're talking about uving boxes, not baking maps from a high poly model onto a low poly one. If you knew what you were talking about you'd know that baking, projecting, and packing have nothing to do with this, and I've already explained that the uvw unwrap mod has nearly no use for this type of modeling anyway.

So why are you here on this forum bothering us with how your methods are oh so superior to us plebians?

I'm sorry for answering the op's question? Idk what the fuck your problem is. I already said that there's literally no benefit to doing the process in 3ds over hammer because it is nearly the exact same thing as far as geometry creation goes and not worth going to the trouble of dealing with some exporter over, and you're getting upset at the fact that yes, you can mash boxes together in max and give them texture coordinates just as quickly as you can in hammer?

 

[Freyja]

Unless my UV Map modifier is completely different, it functions nothing like hammer, considering all it does for me is a projection.

Could you link me to a tutorial that explains how to use it properly, because I'm clearly missing something.

Apart from that, I'm sorry, I misread your original post and misunderstood your intent. I concede.

(Although baking does have something to do with it because using brushes allows VRAD to bake AO into their lightmaps, whereas unless you unwrap and bake AO on your model, it will not have such.)

 

[Sel]

Unless my UV Map modifier is completely different, it functions nothing like hammer, considering all it does for me is a projection.

I dunno how hammer handles it at a technical level, it could be exactly the same as just dropping a plane somewhere and uving just like max does or it does it some other way, but the results you can get are the same.

Could you link me to a tutorial that explains how to use it properly, because I'm clearly missing something.

It's not really a very useful tool for props most of the time but if you need to use a tiling texture on some model it's what you'd use.

Just select the faces you want to set texture coordinates for, add the modifier, and then set the values you want to use.

(Although baking does have something to do with it because using brushes allows VRAD to bake AO into their lightmaps, whereas unless you unwrap and bake AO on your model, it will not have such.)

The baking of lightmaps for level geometry would have nothing to do with max though that'd be handled on the engine side.

 

[xzzy]

I'm not sure why one would even want to "mash boxes together" if they had the power of a full 3D modeler at their disposal. I mean if you could make maps that look like this:

(keep in mind that image is over 10 years old so it's going to look dated)

Why would you ever bother with brushes? You could replicate that look with TF2 and displacements but you'll probably go insane pulling it off with the trashy mesh editor that Hammer implements.


I'd argue that Hammer isn't any better at square buildings either. Yes, if you're been using Hammer for years you're probably really good at banging out structures but this is one of those things where just because you're good at it doesn't mean it's the best way to do it.

This page was written for gmax (a free version of 3ds they killed off many years ago) and illustrates one method for hollowing out a cube:

http://xzzy.org/halo/tut_interior/

Far from the only way to do it, but it's not any slower than Hammer.



As for texturing, I'm indifferent. I had no issues texturing anything in 3ds/gmax. It supports per-face coordinates just like Hammer does and isn't hard to use once you learn the tool. It's also pretty good at autogenerating coordinates so in many cases you don't even have to bother with uv mapping.

 

[Sel]

mudslide was such a good map <3

 

[xzzy]

I still feel bad about those two token logs stuck at the bottom. It's the only real evidence on the entire map that there ever was anything resembling a mudslide to happen in that area. They don't support the gameplay at all, they can't even function as cover. All they do is get in the way of warthogs.

To be fair, at that point custom props wasn't really an option so I had to make do with what the game already had.

 

[Sel]

holy shit you made mudslide

i love u

 

[xzzy]

Yeah, it was the only one I ever actually finished. I would have really liked to make more, but the tools support for Halo was comically bad. I had developers sneak me details of their file formats so I could help write tools that would allow people to get their maps into the game.

Eventually I got frustrated and moved on to other things.. just wasn't worth the pain.

Which I guess is a strong argument in favor of Valve and Hammer.. for all the quirks the Source SDK has, at least it exists, has documentation, and can be used to generate all types of content that the game supports.

You don't have to buy software that costs thousands of dollars or guess how to build. You load up the tool, make some shapes, then press "go." It does what its supposed to and you can instantly run around in your map. If it doesn't, answers are easy to find and you can even email Valve employees to try and get stuff fixed.

 

[Freyja]

You people are making me want to install halo CE again.