Subject: [Nel] Max 4 plugin and some questions

From: "Anatoly Sennov" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 20:38:14 +0400

Hello,

Max 4 plugins seem to be functional. I've attached my version of patch (the
diff is against the pre-Max4 version of NeL, so #ifs are looking differently
:-).

Are there some general guidelines for the process of landscape creation ? Is
there something special about data organization, etc ? As I currently
understand, the artist should first form the tile bank to be able to texture
the landscape. What I miss is that what the general concepts of the tile
bank structure are. What the tile set's children are for, for example ?
Next comes the section of questions about the zones. Are there rules (or
limits) about how many patches should be in the zone, optimal patch size
(curvature), how many zones may be in the landscape, should all zones be in
the same .max file, etc ?

In general, I need to explain our 3d artist what he is to do to create the
_proper_ landscape, the one that may be painlessly imported into NeL.

Or maybe there are some .max projects we might learn from.

--AS

---

From: "Cyril 'Hulud' Corvazier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2001 19:33:34 +0200

Hi,

> diff is against the pre-Max4 version of NeL, so #ifs are looking
differently

Good work, i know that compiling NeL plugins for 3dsmax 4 is a big challenge
:-).
Not that in general, the NeL team add include and lib directories in the
visual pathes,
not in the DSP files.

> the same .max file, etc ?

Ok, give me some times to make a complete reply to your post with some max
exemples.

You must know that we have an internal plugin, a modified version of
discreet editpatch, in which
we "paint" the landscape textures, colors and displacement textures. We
can't distribute this plugin
for licenses reason. You should contact Robert Bjarnason from InOrbit. He
has started to write
an ingame painter for the NeL landscape.
He has made a post about this project in the list some weeks ago.

Thank for your feedback and stay tuned!

Regards,

Cyril.

---

From: "Anatoly Sennov" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2001 10:26:26 +0400

Hello Cyril,

> Not that in general, the NeL team add include and lib directories in the

I've got a habit to not touch the 'directories' tab - the changes there will
affect all projects you have on machine and it's easy to come to situation
where different developers will have different compile environments for the
same project. DSPs are under CVS control, so we always know where our
includes and libs come from.

> Ok, give me some times to make a complete reply to your post with some max

I'll be waiting :-)

> He has made a post about this project in the list some weeks ago.

Thanks, I'll try to contact him. For now, however, I'd prefer the 3ds plugin
for landscape texturing, so artist might stay in the same environment all
the way. I'll try to investigate what could be done.

--AS

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From: "Vianney Lecroart" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2001 10:33:04 +0200

> includes and libs come from.

You're right, but it's not so easy, because putting include dir in the dsp
means that everybody must install external library in the same directory.
For example, I installed directx on my E:\mssdk and my friend install it on
his C:\sdk\dx. Another problem is that we have to set up the directory for
all new project and we have dozen of project!
There's not perfect solution for this problem so we decided to use directory
tab for all libraries (NeL included);

Vianney Lecroart
---
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From: "Valerio Santinelli" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2001 10:40:34 +0200

> tab for all libraries (NeL included);

I've got the habit of moving directories path up and down in the path list
under the directories tab, so that's not a problem for me :)

--
Valerio Santinelli
HateSeed.com Founder (http://www.hateseed.com)
In Flames Italia Webmaster (http://www.inflames.it)
My Lab (http://tanis.hateseed.com)

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From: "Cyril 'Hulud' Corvazier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 17:09:42 +0200

Hi there,

> > Are there some general guidelines for the process of landscape creation
?
> Is

Just a word to say that we have added the painter plugin in the cvs tree.
(nel/tools/3d/plugin_max/nel_patch_paint).
After your question, we have decided to detach the painter from the
"modified" edit patch plugin.

I will post a compete "how to deal with landscape" answer soon.

Regards,

Cyril Corvazier

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From: "Anatoly Sennov" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 21:44:44 +0400

Hello Cyril,

> "modified" edit patch plugin.

Thank you, but 'cvs update -d' didn't uncover it.

> I will post a compete "how to deal with landscape" answer soon.

Patiently waiting :-)

--AS