Does anybody out there still use the BioWare export scripts?

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Or am I the last person on Earth doing it this way?  Just wondering.  I use NWMax to do some things but when it comes to tiles I prefer BioWare export scripts/aurora.dlm and VelTools.

Anybody?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Michael DarkAngel]

               

OldTimeRadio wrote...
but when it comes to tiles I prefer BioWare export scripts/aurora.dlm and VelTools.

Hmmm.  Curious as to why?  NWMax is more suited to tile work than doing anything else.  True it does everything well, but most of its "behind-the-scenes" functions were written specifically for doing tile work.

Just wondering...


  MDA
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Hmmm.  Curious as to why?  NWMax is more suited to tile work than doing anything else.  True it does everything well, but most of its "behind-the-scenes" functions were written specifically for doing tile work.

It's been a while but a good example related to tiles was how much memory my walkmesh modifier was taking up under NWMax.  I just checked this to make sure my memory was correct.  Make an editable mesh from a 15 x 15 length/width seg plane.  Apply a walkmesh modifier to it.  For me that eats up about half a gigabyte of ram!

IDK if anyone else has similar issues or if it's just related to my Max config or something about my system.  Once I started doing whole level/landscape conversions from Google 3D Warehouse or other games I was dealing with so much data anyway that the BioWare scripts were the only thing that could take it without crashing.  That's hardly "normal" usage though.  Loads and plays just fine in NWN tho even really complex scenes.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Michael DarkAngel]

               

OldTimeRadio wrote...
It's been a while but a good example related to tiles was how much memory my walkmesh modifier was taking up under NWMax.  I just checked this to make sure my memory was correct.  Make an editable mesh from a 15 x 15 length/width seg plane.  Apply a walkmesh modifier to it.  For me that eats up about half a gigabyte of ram!

What you could try is increasing the heapSize and stackLimit, described in this post.  I ran into issues when importing models from The Witcher and increased both to stop crashes upon import.  I've never exported anything so large that it caused problems so I'm not sure if this would solve your problem, but its worth a shot.

I'm not at all familiar with the BioWare scripts so I'm sorry to say that I can't answer any questions you may have in regards to them.

HTH


  MDA
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Michael DarkAngel wrote...

What you could try is increasing the heapSize and stackLimit, described in this post.  I ran into issues when importing models from The Witcher and increased both to stop crashes upon import.  I've never exported anything so large that it caused problems so I'm not sure if this would solve your problem, but its worth a shot.

Thank you very much for that, MDA.  Unfortunately it didn't change the situation.  After failing to resolve the issue using two different versions of Plus across a few versions of Max I loaded up stock GMax with stock NWMax and saw the exact same behavior.

An editable mesh from a 5² plane with a Walkmesh modifier eats up about 7 megs.  10², about 50 megs.  15², about 500 megs and a 20² about 1.5GB.  These were all 1000cm² in size.  The extra memory appears to be drawn from outside the heap, even when it's set up to something like your suggestion of 500 megs.  Maybe it's related to undo being on or something similar.  I snipped Tile Slicer out of the latest version of NWMax to use with the BioWare scripts and turning off undo in those scripts helped a lot.  I'll have to give that a try.

BTW, the Witcher export scripts are based on the BioWare export scripts.  I don't have Max 8 or whatever is required to use the plugins but the scripts are partly the same MaxScript which were released to the community in 2002- plus a whole lot of extra things added.

Thanks again.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 03 janvier 2011 - 06:35 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Michael DarkAngel]

               

OldTimeRadio wrote...
An editable mesh from a 5² plane with a Walkmesh modifier eats up about 7 megs.  10², about 50 megs.  15², about 500 megs and a 20² about 1.5GB.  These were all 1000cm² in size.  The extra memory appears to be drawn from outside the heap, even when it's set up to something like your suggestion of 500 megs.  Maybe it's related to undo being on or something similar.  I snipped Tile Slicer out of the latest version of NWMax to use with the BioWare scripts and turning off undo in those scripts helped a lot.  I'll have to give that a try.

Okay, maybe I'm reading this wrong.  Are your sizes above a 5x5 tile-sized plane (25 tiles) with a single walkmesh modifier?  I've had complete BioWare tilesets loaded into Max, prior to any changes I made to NWMax and had seen no memory leaks like that.  A couple other things to try.

Do a manual garbage collection.  Open the Max Listener window, in the upper portion type gc() and then press enter.  Do this both before and after applying your walkmesh modifier.

Another thing, before applying your walkmesh modifier, split your plane into tile sized chunks (1000cm2) then apply the modifier to each one individually.  Yes, more time consuming, more tedious, but that's the trade-off.

Of course none of the above matters if I am not reading your sizes properly

OldTimeRadio wrote...
BTW, the Witcher export scripts are based on the BioWare export scripts.  I don't have Max 8 or whatever is required to use the plugins but the scripts are partly the same MaxScript which were released to the community in 2002- plus a whole lot of extra things added.

The models themselves (NWN and The Witcher) are practically the same.  Minor differences in the beginning and all the extras that CDP added including composite animations.  But yes, the export scripts that CDP provided The Witcher community with their in-house exporter plugin were basically BioWare scripts.  The Witcher is run on the Aurora engine on steroids.


  MDA
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Michael DarkAngel, 04 janvier 2011 - 03:44 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Michael DarkAngel wrote...
Okay, maybe I'm reading this wrong.  Are your sizes above a 5x5 tile-sized plane (25 tiles) with a single walkmesh modifier?  I've had complete BioWare tilesets loaded into Max, prior to any changes I made to NWMax and had seen no memory leaks like that.  A couple other things to try.

Just a single tile 1000cm squared tile each time.  Switching to GMax because it should be common between us.  I'm talking about creating a single plane, changing the length and width to 1000cm each on the Parameters rollout for plane creation then (on the same rollout) changing the length segs and width segs to either 5x5, 10x10, 15x15 or 20x20.  Then converting that to an editable mesh and then applying a Walkmesh modifier.  That is what I was referring to.

Do a manual garbage collection.  Open the Max Listener window, in the upper portion type gc() and then press enter.  Do this both before and after applying your walkmesh modifier.

This is appearing to work!  Thank you!  I had played with garbage collection (for other scripts) but had forgotten all about it.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 04 janvier 2011 - 06:41 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Michael DarkAngel]

               

OldTimeRadio wrote...
Just a single tile 1000cm squared tile each time.  Switching to GMax because it should be common between us.

I was reading your sizes wrong.

I'm glad something appears to have worked.  Garbage Collection is done after certain NWMax functions but isn't done all the time.  Doing so flushes the Undo buffer and frees up Heap space.

I have access to GMax and Max 6 thru 9 for script testing purposes. '>


  MDA