3 weeks is pretty quick!

That's totally cool! Looks awesome! Great depth in every scene. Three weeks is super fast! Testiment to the versatility of Cipher.

toxinid, That looks real cool, How many polys are in the view at one time while maintaining the 24fps? Can't understand why you have problems getting things out of Max, a 200,000 poly multi-mesh scene dressed up in Max, I could be walking around in it within 10-15 minutes(a little more time for animated models), it's a joy.

Actually, I'm really depending on good 3d game editor. :)) We've spent last year outsourcing a lot of graphics assets for another game, for another company. There was dozens squared kilometers of cities, everything modelled and designed in 3ds max (a lot of real buildings, a lot of deco buildings, trees, grass, thousands textures, a lot of small objects decorating streets, etc.), any change depending game itself (design, playabality) took very long time. Meanwhile we have tested some 3D editor similar to game editor, supposed to be a military application, but this is confidential. We used same art assets and build one of the cities, like in MAX but 10 - times quickier, automatic visibility computation and model optimization, etc. THE WORK TOOK LESS TIME...

Exporting or designing is not a problem, but due to my experience it's a question of effective work.

Game development is sometimes very stressing work, then why make it harder :)) I like comfortable work. :))

Scene have something about 200K, but I can say that there wasn't time to get back and optimize some models. Whole track and surroundings is built 1:1 with real part of city here in Bratislava, including castle :). Only sportsmen are a bit bigger than in reality about 3 times :), but this is because of visual influnce of scene in game. This track is about 1,6 kilometer long, but for competion is used only about 1,2 kilometer.

i forgot: thanks to all
Edited 6th October, 2004 15:22

@toxinid, what is it specifically with using Max, that causes the increased time getting content into Cipher, the modeling, mapping, animating and optimizing tools are all top notch, which contributes to the fact that it?s one of the most used tools in the gaming industry. What is it that these other editors your talking about do better/faster than Max? I?m sincerely curious in knowing what Max?s shortcomings are with professionals like your self.

My favourite is Maya. But in fact we're cooperating with other artists who working for us and using Cipher supporting tools which needs MAX, I'm using MAX :). I can work with MAX, I can do all the things with MAX, but I can say where is the difference between using MAX and any proprietary tools - this is why we started building PhaseONE - and as I said before, PhaseONE is level editing tool, not a 3D editing tool.

Flow of game development on side of game design could be split into two parts - level design and scripting (all done in propietary 3d level editor with very little low-level editing features) and assets modeling (all done by any 3D package like 3DS MAX or Maya, Softimage, TrueSpace, Lightwave, whatever you want).

All this have to do with effectivity of work, assets management, spliting team into level design, art assets development, you don't need to pay 3000 Euros for 3DSMAX just for level building, and a lot of other things.

I hope this make things more crystal clear. :)
Edited 6th October, 2004 16:55

Hey toxinid,

"This is third time we have experineced that building level in 3ds max and export it properly into engine is pain in the ass"

"I hope this make things more crystal clear"

Not really, the question was. What "specifically" is the pain?

"like in MAX but 10 - times quickier"
What kind of procedures are creating this time savings?

"automatic visibility computation"
Sounds interesting, how are you using this within Cipher?

I hope you don't mind the questions, I also realize that not everyone on a game developement team need a program like Max or other's like it, given the expense.

Great work toxinid, will you post it for us to play? Congrats on finishing it so quickly too. As far as the whole Max vs. Level editor thing.. I'd have to say that even though creating levels in Max takes longer (that much is true because it's more complex,) I still wouldn't want to use a level editor simply because there is no way you can make a truly detailed environment in a simpler "proprietery" level editor. You could if you import the details from Max, but then again why not use Max from the start.

Don't misunderstand me though, I'm not saying a level editor isn't worth anything.. for some games, it's easier to use it, and also for beginners who are not comfortable with Max it's also useful. It could also, eventually, evolve into a complex editor like UnrealEd, in which case I would gladly use it :-)

I do want to point out, however, and this is strictly a rumor, that 3D Studio Max 7 will not have ASCII (ASE) export. So, perhaps we will have to use either PhaseONE or Maya and XSI. I'm really hoping this is untrue, because Max 7 will also have built-in Normal Mapping and a 1st-person viewer.

Everything is a question of experience.

This is mine.

I think we've spent a lot of time solving this "problem" and I'm not going force you doing anything you don't want. It is just my view, opinion based on my experience. That's all.

My really favourite combination would be:
MAYA Complete - for 3D models and animations and export into Cipher format
PhaseONE - for level building

Anyway, oneday (soon probably) I'll present my "utopistic" world of development :).

@toxinid, I just thought if you could point out the irritating area you have with Max, I could possibly help you with a solution, I was seriously interested in how you where gaining speed in the content line and about the automatic visibility methods. Please accept my apology if my questions where out of line.

@webphoenix, I would assume that the Max6 source code for the .ase exporter could be recompiled for Max7, if it doesn't contain one. If not I've written a scripted .ase exporter, that presently supports only static geometry, but I could add animations to it.

@JTilo

i'm still talking about BUILDING a level NOT A MODELING a models in level.

gaining speed: when you're using a proprietary level editing tools, this means (here) that you'll use exported models from MAX (MAYA). If your scene is too big for MAX to keep reasonable speed, because MAX is complex program and it's not focused on real-time previews using features of your engine.
Your editor can do this, can maintain reasonable speed, because it using your engine and scene is managed in your engine, anyway you can see how is the level looking in your engine.
Every 3D package will irritate me when I would build level where is thousands objects divided in to 20 MAX files and each scene/file has about hundreds of thousands of polys. 3DS MAX is irritaing me most, because I'm using it more than others. :))) that's all... I had never modeled small scenes, only big ones.


visibility methods: When I was talking about proprietary editor, it wasn't about PhaseONE or Cipher. It was about engine used for military applications (MEngine, used in Czech republic). This engine using proprietary and complex editor, development didn't took that much time. Each object has enviromental properties which tells about way of rendering, automated LODs, extremely good working occluders, and this editor has been able handle very detailed and large scene.

And this gave me idea that proprietary editor is the best thing ever.

@toxinid: Hey man that's cool. What you and your team have done is awesome, and I completely agree that Larger scenese with hundreds of thousands of polygons could get really annoying and complex. For some reason Max also tends to selelct the object behind first when you click on the object closest (go figure :-/)

@JTilo: So what you're saying is that even if Max 7 won't have an ASE export extension, you created a work-around? May be I missed someting (as I often do--reading between the lines just isn't for me)

Keep up the good work guys :-)

@toxinid, thats the answer I was looking for, although Max can handle a fairly large polycount, large object counts degrade the display processing to a crawl even on the fastest machines today, I use "Named selection sets" on scenes with a lot of objects, and manage them in sets that don't kill performance, before that I could definately relate to your "pain in the ass". Your really pushing the envelope with thousands of scene objects, man... you gotta be waiting for new hardware just to stuff it. Cool!


@webphoenix, yeah, I created a scripted .ase exporter, my reason for it was the fact that every .ase file exported with the Max exporter contains all of the Max bitmap material references in Max's materials, even if the object object was using a single bitmap, the files can get quite large even without having to carry all the uneeded references, also my first use was to add the alpha vertex info to the .ase, the script exporter is slower than the compiled Max exporter because it checks every poly on the mesh object for materials before writing the file, but its not to bad, I use it most of the time, it's an option in my exporting tool. I've also written a .ase importer that imports the .ase, which is useful for taking geometry to lower versions of Max to possibly use plugins that I don't have for later versions without all the problems I have with other import/export format. Like I mentioned above, unless Discreet does something real flaky with 7's SDK, the Max6 source should compile to insure a compiled exporter can be made available. Could be some major work though if they change the skin/physique exposure radically.