Gmax was an attempt by Discreet to profit off the community 3D artist movement for popular games, like Quake or Half-life, and try to cut down on piracy of its 3ds Max program. A game development company or publisher would pay Discreet to provide a 'game pack' for Gmax, which would enable it to export files in the format for that particular game. Discreet's parent company, Autodesk, did restructuring in 2005, which resulted in the discontinuing of development of Gmax.
The EULA of Gmax prohibits it for being used to create models for unsupported games. Gmax never supported Never Winter Nights, so you are breaking the EULA to do so. DLA built a 3rd party program to circumvent the export options of Gmax.
So, simply put, there is no realistically free and legit way to create 3d models for NWN right now. Maybe someone could create some kinda Blender export plugin, but I doubt it for such an old game.
I'm gonna go out on limb here and be a little realistic. Autodesk doesn't care about piracy of 3ds max on the amateur game art community level. They have never made any money from you guys, and never will. The price tag is there to shut the pirates up on their support forums so they don't have to repeatedly help some noob figure out how to make a cylinder.
If, however, some pirate actually does became an adept artist using their software and moves into the professional arena, that artist will purchase the program and they'll be 4 grand richer.
The fact that no one in the Neverwinter Night custom art community for the last 8 years has been contacted by Autodesk for illegal use of their software supports this theory: that you are all under their radar.
I am in now way condoning software piracy.
Modifié par Morikahn, 02 septembre 2010 - 04:30 .
