Modelling infantry

[Tiel]

Hey, I've been making models for vehicles and stuff, and have made them as lo-poly as physically possible, but when it comes to making infantry I'm stuck - what is the poly budget there? How do you make them fit within it while still staying true to concept art? Annex seems to do it through superb texture work, but that's not something I have at my disposal. 

Also, not sure how to go about animating. Do you just rig it and animate like other games, and then follow the export procedure outlined on the wiki? There are blender tutorials, yes, but I'm a max user 4lyfe and all.

[-Archmage-]

Magitech standard is about 500-800 polygons, with a 256*256 texture for infantry. That was a long time ago though, I would say the standard now is more like 600-1100, with a 512*512 texture for infantry.
You can try higher polycounts if you want. Blender has an amazing decimation tool that can be used to really hack down the polys on models. As well you can put a lot less detail in places the player doesn't see.

We all animate with Blender here, I have no idea how you can animate in max and get that to Glest... Luckily for you Blender animation is quite easy.

[Omega]

We all animate with Blender here, I have no idea how you can animate in max and get that to Glest...

At one point of time, we had an export script for 3DS Max, but it has since fallen in disuse and no longer functions with the more recent versions of the program. The G3D model format, however, is well defined. The community would certainly welcome the creation of an up-to-date export script if anyone has the relevant experience to create one.

The crucial flaw is that 3DS Max is not free software, and nobody wants to pay to develop for software they don't even use.

[Ishmaru]

I have the Max 7 export which also works on max 8. however there is no updates since.
to animate infantry would be the same if would model on blender.  You can (should) rig but it's not necessary as the export only stores vertex keyframes.

As for poly count it's really up to you. Annex uses really low poly models due to the large number of units at the same time. if you have a slower paced game then you can have more polys to work with.

[Tiel]

I read on the wiki that you could export from MAX to .md5, which preserves the mesh and animation, then import that to Blender and from there export to g3d. Is that no longer possible?

[tomreyn]

May work, and there is also another approach. Since nobody here seems to regularly use current versions of 3DS Max for MegaGlest modding (unless I misunderstood Ishmaru there) it's probably just not known, and you should give it a try.

[Ishmaru]

May work, and there is also another approach. Since nobody here seems to regularly use current versions of 3DS Max for MegaGlest modding (unless I misunderstood Ishmaru there) it's probably just not known, and you should give it a try.

Yea since I use the old 3DS Max 8 with g3d export I haven't tried any ways of importing to blender sorry.