5 réponses à ce sujet

[ZugothNDeadly]

Which is a more reliable programs for NWN modding, 3ds max, gmax or blender?

[MerricksDad]

I prefer gmax, though it has some serious bugs, for the simple reason that I don't have to pay for it. I downloaded a free copy as a student of 3dsmax, and I can't get it to install no matter what I do. I found blender to be more interesting, but not as easy for me to convert stuff to NWN ready models. What I really want is to model with something more powerful like zbrush.

[Zwerkules]

That depends. If you have a firstborn you can sell, you can afford to get 3ds max. Otherwise get gmax or blender for free.

If you know how to use blender, it might be better than gmax, but probably not more reliable. If you don't know blender, you'll have to read tutorials or you won't be able tom use it. It is very unintuitive. Gmax however is very easy to use and there are many plugins and tools for it to support creation of content for NWN 1 and 2.

The problem with gmax at the moment is, that registration doesn't work. Someone from Turbosquid told me they are working on it, but that could be something like IGN working on the problem with the old vault, they're saying they are going to fix it soon and nothing happens for years.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

I've never actually seen a 3dsmax in the wild, as to approach one requires a substance unknown to me called "money"...

 

Regarding the two beasts I am familiar with, if you've never used Blender before then be aware you will have to spend six months to a year - or more - learning how it works before you can actually build anything worthwhile with it...

I use it for a variety of non-NWN purposes since Gmax can't render worth a damn. I've tried one or two things for NWN in Blender but, after I managed, with the aid of Blender's over-complex control interface, to completely wreck my lovingly hand-crafted Sulaco model (still putting it back together) for my ALIEN Haks, I gave up - having discovered that Blender didn't really offer me anything that Gmax didn't in terms of doing CC for NWN.

Blender - and others - can offer more potent modelling options than Gmax, but this is more or less irrelevant to NWN since the game can only handle meshes of a certain complexity.

 

Perhaps the most relevant and telling point of all, however is... Gmax has NWmax which can be stapled on top with a big brick and this essentially turns Gmax into a powerful tool specifically to generate CC for NWN. The immediate ability to just select Aurora Trimesh as a modifier or glance at a NWN specific polycounter without having to think makes Gmax the "only" choice for pretty much all geometry related NWN CC projects. At least in my shabby hyena opinion.

[TheOneBlackRider]

I think, your choices are Gmax or Blender. Even if you can afford Max, all those handy NWN1 scripts have been written for Max 7 or 8, if I remember right and they had issues with some later versions, if you read the notes about Veltools by Bannor, who tried to adjust the scripts for a newer Max version:

http://neverwinterva...r/tool/veltools

 

Blender is a "monster" tool. I, menawhile, have some (very) basic knowledge with Blender, though I never used it for NWN1 (or 2) to actually create custom content.

You can do tons of (modern) things with it, and it offers often more than one way to achieve the same thing (menu, keyboad shortcuts, side bars, ...) and it is very open to customizing your work area (layout) including changing actions for pressed keys or mouse buttons, which might be a bit confusing, if you worm yourself through tutorials.

For me, it was also a bit "cumbersome", since I (by now) know my way around within Gmax and have my "workflows", and the way to achieve the same thing in Blender does differ or just looks very different.

There are NWN-tools for Blender (eg. http://neverwinterva...ender-269-27x).I have not deeply tested them, but the "plus" is, that the author(s) are still around and probably can be contacted to get some help or to improve things.

 

So, the "plus" for Gmax is, as written above: All main tools for NWN1 are also available for Gmax. Especially NWgmax is a "must". And there are alot of NWN1 (and 2) tutorials for Gmax around, which would make a start much easier.

There may be a work around for the broken registration (I have NOT tested this! USE WITH CARE! BACKUP eg. your registry and such!!!!):

http://neverwinterva...tion-workaround

 

To sum things up: I'd say, try to get Gmax to run, cause it's easier to work yourself into it.

[rjshae]

My understanding is that if you do decide to sell your first born and get a license to run 3DS Max, then they also provide access to the older versions in an archive. That's second hand information though, and would need to be verified. 3DS isn't even the most popular choice among artists these days, but it's still darn expensive.