Importing in 3DS MAX 2008 or 09?

[thedrake200]

Hey do i need the older verions of max to import models into ?

[GogglesPizanno]

For character exporting I believe the official exporters only support 3D Max version 3 and 4.
If you just wanted to export static objects, then you can use any version of Max with the niftools plugins.

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/3ds_Max

[thedrake200]

i have Max 2008 can u import character from that version? Or how would i get Max 3 or 4?

[Xenolith]

I'm going to make a serious effort to find 4 or 5.  What would be my best option, of the two?

[GogglesPizanno]

Aren't most meshers still using the FF ones? I thought I remember the FFvTR ones being very Beta-y or having some weird quirks that were never fixed by Irrational. Or am I just remembering that wrong.

[Vertex]

Actually in most ways they work better. In my opinion there were two "problems" with exporting to FFVTR.

1. a lot of people for one reason or another kept using Freedom Force instead of FFVT3R, this left a bit of a moral quandry for many. Switch to exclusive FFVT3R and leave them with nothing new? Many decided it was kinder and more sensible to continue to export for FF and let meshes be converted to the new game. This has many probs though... many hexable parts that work fine in FF behave oddly even after converted and "float" in FFVT3R.
2. Other than myself, I don't think anybody ever successfully exported particle meshes through the FFVT3R exporter. Never quite understood that problem honestly because I had success right away on that. I didn't however like an aspect of the FFVT3R particles and got some help from Irrational that fixed that problem "somewhat". FFVT3R particles do not continuously loop when exported, at the end of any non looping animation they stop emitting particles until another animation starts. the "fix" I was walked through for the exporter fixed it so in the     c-tool the particles looped but I never realized that ingame they still stop and start so it wasn't a complete fix. In all other ways though I'd rate the behavior of the FFVT3R particles to be better ingame. In case you've never noticed.. simply take a ff export particle mesh and one of my FFVT3R versions ingame and let them run around together.. use the same skin and you'll notice the improvements.

[Valandar]

Speaking as someone who is now completely incapable of exporting to FFvTTR...

... The odds of finding a legal copy of 5 or before on Ebay are slim. And 5 and below (dunno about 6 and up) simply don't work on Vista in MY experience, at least not 64 bit Vista.

[Xenolith]

Ah.  I did find a copy of 5, but the potential problems with Vista hadn't occured to me.  Hmm.  I guess I'll just forget about it since I'm running Vista. 

[GogglesPizanno]

Depending how cheap it was if you had an old Win2k or Xp disk lying around you could try something like VirtualPC, and run in it in a VM... Ive done it with Gmax and it seemed to work ok.

[Xenolith]

It was 300 bucks, not counting shipping.  I'd rather not take the chance for that amount.  Just out of curiosity, the only thing I want to do it make keyframes.  Can those be created in the newer version or another program?

[Colon Semicolon]

I was reading through the Update logs for Niftools and came across this:
http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2203&p=16535&hilit=freedom+force#p16535
It's rather recent. Can anyone confirm whether this can properly export character meshes or not?

EDIT: Wow I didn't realize the thread's last post was around 3-4 months ago. oh well, i thought it would be of interest (even though folks probably know about it by now)

[Tomato]

A few things

-though the update is interesting news as far as FFv3R, but I know the last time I tried the exporters they still weren't great as far as the physique and such, which is why they're usually just used for static bits (IE, bits that don't animate). However, this was after the last time I tested the tools, so maybe it's worth looking into?

-To Valander, if he ever sees this... I use Vista 64 bit as well, and as Goggles points out you can get a Virtual PC to run Max 5 on.