The Harvest Moon Consortium

I am in need of exporting a few hundreds of tiles from 3ds max 6.
I am using NWmax, and i have VetTools and TSC installed too

Some of the tiles fail the sanity checks (which isn't important at this stage, I am editing an already working tileset), and they don't get exported with a mass export.

I tried turning the sanity checks off anywhere, in the NWmax rollouts, in the .ini file in NWmax scripts directory, I have even modified a script to set the value to 0 as default (no check).
Nothing seem to work, when mass exporting the sanity checks are still performed, and the tiles that fail of course don't get exported.

I have also tried a few tricks suggested by Bannor, still no result.


I would even go for a manual export tile by tile, if this was the final version of the tiles. But since I'll need to import and export them again and again, it'd be a nightmare.

Any ideas? :biggrin2:

I would suggest posting at DLA's forum. Only because I have had the same issue you have had. Diff is that I am never doing more then 16 tiles at a time as I am fixing so I just grap one base at a time as I export.

Let us know :_read:

I might have found a solution. I am double checking it, i should be able to post it in a short while

Alright, something has changed in the meanwhile.
I have downloaded the last version of NWmax, which doesn't seem to have the button to set the sanity check parameters from inside 3ds max. No big deal, although the option could help a bit.

Anyway, I found out why any changes to the sanity check list didn't go through. It is quite simple in fact, if you load and work on a saved scene, the scripts override any global settings you might have decided for NWmax, by loading those same settings from the scene savefile. I had a scene on which some changes were already been done, and so i kept changing the sanity check settings and loading the scene.
It couldn't work.

there is a nwmax.ini file in the [3ds root folder]/script/NWmax folder. The file is self explanatory, and one of the strings under [init] contains the necessary settings (array of 0's and 1's, each value turns on and off a sanity check)
My string ends up like this sanity=00000000000000000000.

There is the chance that the scripts override the nwmax.ini values not only by loading the settings included in a saved scene, but also by looking in the file nxlocalprefs.ini in the 3ds max script folder. To make sure, I have edited this file as well, adding the lines at the bottom of it. it might not be necessary, but better safer than sorry

This way I turned off all sanity checks by default, so mass exporting runs smoothly ignoring the .mdl issues (I am working with pre-existant tilesets, and i need to fix the bugs in stages). If I need a sanity check for a particular model, I turn it on by checking the boxes in the NWmax main rollout (as for the last version, it doesn't seem to be an option anymore to check the boxes on the aura base property panel on the right, but maybe I am just temporary blind).


So to sum it up:
if you need to work on a large bunch of tiles and at this stage doesn't matter if they fail some of the checks, to allow a smooth mass exporting you need to set all sanity checks to 0 in the proper .ini files, then import the models, mass edit them as needed (it was my case), and you can export them without obstacles.
If you save the scene, every time you reload it the sanity checks are overriden by the scene settings, so don't bother trying to change them in any way except manually editing them every time you export a single model.
If you need to switch from mass no-checks to mass do-checks, I'd go for mass exporting them, and reloading them in a new scene with the proper sanity check settings.

Bonus feature: I am pretty sure that you don't need to edit the .ini files if you just occasionally need a scene with all sanity checks turned off. You could create a new scene, edit the check list in the NWmax rollout as needed, and then import your models. They should automatically use the settings of the scene they are being loaded into.


In a nutshell, global settings for sanity checks only get applied to newly imported models. Those inside saved scenes have their own that override general settings

I was waiting for Joco to double check it, but since I didn't get a final answer, I'll dare to post it myself.

It seems that since the last version of NWmax, sanity checks settings are global, so the settings you decide aren't overridden anymore by the settings of your saved scene. Anyway, I didn't test it.
I work with them always off, and i activate them before exporting a single tile, if I need to. But on mass exports I never use sanity checks, because the changes I make on a global level shouldn't ever corrupt the tiles I am working on.

Thank you very much for sharing! I have moved to doing mass imports and exports on a regular basis. It's a real pain to have to pull up the schematic view to grap each of the bases and export.

Please share any other short-cuts or insights you have. If you are so inclined share some screen shots of your project in 'Table Talk' forum.

Thanks!

Christopher wrote:Thank you very much for sharing! I have moved to doing mass imports and exports on a regular basis. It's a real pain to have to pull up the schematic view to grap each of the bases and export.

Please share any other short-cuts or insights you have. If you are so inclined share some screen shots of your project in 'Table Talk' forum.

Thanks!

FYI Unless the mass exporter has changed drastically in the latest version, you can just select everything and hit mass export and it seems to work fine

That seemed to be true if your mdl passed the sanity check. Any mdl's that failed didn't export. I wish they had an option to export and delete mdl. Then you could at least go back over the sanity issues with the individual tiles.

In my personal experience, there is one exception to the "mass export without sanity check". NWmax doesn't allow any mass export for models that have an AABB split problem. The only option is to export the trouble mdl's manually, since the exporting routine asks for confirmation when finds the walkmesh problem.
I agree that an option that automatically hides the successfully exported models, or that highlights the trouble models would be a boon.

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By the way, do AABB split problems always mean there are some double faces in the walkmesh? So far, every time I received such warning message, I have actually found hidden faces attached to the legitimate walkmesh faces. But maybe the AABB split issue can be caused by overlapping faces as well, correct?

The easiest way to track what got missed is to ensure that your input and output directories are the same, then sort by date/time after export. Leave the originals in the directory and just move all the 'new' files to your 'fixed' directory.

I use Windows XP save folder view (win200, win ME also allow this) and set that export folder to reverse sort by date, newest at the top.