It's pretty painless. All you need is Cchargin's tutorial and you're off. The only trick is getting the size and hand placement right. If your textures are too dark, you run into overlapping vertices, or you run into failed SanityCheck's, just PM me and I'll help you out. Cchargin has been a lifesaver when it comes to that.

If you're textures are too dark, you run into overlapping vertices, or you run into failed SanityCheck's

FYI Dark textures DON’T cause failed SanityCheck's or overlapping verts,

Here is a tip: right click the viewport name and turn on edged faces it helps big time. It shows you all of your faces, so you can see if some thing is not quite right on the smooth / highlighted model.

Badly welded models or non-welded models cause Failed SanityCheck's, as well different set pivot points. And some cases not resetting xform to name a few....

svцsh

FYI Dark textures DON’T cause failed SanityCheck's or overlapping verts, sigh*
I'm sure that didn't qualify as a "semi-hidden meaning", right Darth333? Once again you assume someone said something they did not. Do you even READ the posts?
If you're textures are too dark, you run into overlapping vertices, or you run into failed SanityCheck's, just PM me and I'll help you out.
I'll try and break this one down Potato Head Style:
"Hey Jedi_5002, if ,in the course of converting your models, you run into the following:
1. Dark Textures
2. Overlapping Vertices
3.Failed SanityChecks

PM (that's a private message) me and I will offer you assistance in completing your task."

Dark Textures: In g max, in the material editor, under "Shader Basic Parameters" you can set this to Blinn, Metal, or Phong. I don't know what any of that means but Cchargin says to set it to metal and I leave it at blinn. Either way it works. In this example we'll set it to Metal. Under that is "Metal Basic Parameters". Notice "Ambient" and "Diffuse" are set to a dark grey color. What you need to do is click on the box of grey next to "Ambient" and set it to a pure white. Do this before you finish loading the bitmap for the texture. This solved my problem with dark textures.

Overlapping Vertices: The author left some duplicate vertices unwelded or some other weird problem with the mesh. Whatever. You can't use MDLops to convert it back when it is like this. Cchargin knows about this and is looking to disable the check for overlapping vertices, although he doesn't know how that will affect the models in the game.

Failed SanityCheck's: When you get all finished and go to export the model, you might get a "Failed SanityCheck" from NWMax. This can happen for a couple of reasons. When this happens, look in \gmax\scripts\NWmax\sanity and find the text file with the same name as the model you were trying to export. Open that file up and read what it says. In my case it said this:

Checking node w_DsrptPstl_002
Checking node ignore_NGon01
Checking node w_blaster_
The bitmap name "blaster_pistol_inworld" is too long. Please reduce it to 16 or less characters
'Bitmap Name Validity' Check failed.
Checking node bullethook

What do you know? The whole problem was my texture name was longer than 16 characters. I changed the texture name to "dl44" instead of "blaster_pistol_inworld" and problem solved.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once again, I say this:

"If your textures are too dark, you run into overlapping vertices, or you run into failed SanityCheck's, just PM me and I'll help you out."

And Svosh sees this:

"If your textures are too dark, that will cause you to have overlapping vertices and failed sanity checks."

Amazing! Didn't they have reading comprhension tests when you were in highschool? Did you even pass?

Now that wasn't "semi-hidden" at all.

(edit: I don't care if you did edit that out, svosh. I already saw it.)

Bneezy,

svцsh was trying to help here. There is nothing offensive in his post ( I have seen the sigh* too but he removed it right away: you should take this into consideration). He was giving tips about modeling. Try to help each other make better mods: that is the aim of this forum.

Look at the other threads...they are full of similar posts but they don't end up in flames. When I see something that is not accurate in a post, I mention it: the idea is to help. When someone corrects me, I don't get upset: on the contrary, it gives me the opportunity to learn something and to do better the next time.

For the moment, I am locking this thread: insults are not tolerated on these boards ( http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=127725) and you have already been warned in the past.