Wall Worm Model Tools 1.7 released... VTA tools, particles and more - Developers

Wall Worm Model Tools 1.7 was released yesterday. Among the changes are VTA tools and particle system controls. See the whole [URL="http://wallworm.com/projects/utilities/docs/resources/changelog.html"]changelog here[/URL]. Also, there are [URL="http://wallworm.com/projects/utilities/docs/rollouts/attachments.html"]basic docs on the particle system ui here[/URL]. Enjoy.

This is great, when I do a revamp of my existing [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC8Pn3SmiGQ]custom particle material tutorials[/url] Ill be using this.

great work, this will be very useful

Thanks guys. I will make a video demonstrating the new VTA tools/intgration as I get time.

Looks nice. I personally prefer to type this stuff out myself, but it's definitely helpful to some.

[QUOTE=wraithcat;32546318]Looks nice. I personally prefer to type this stuff out myself, but it's definitely helpful to some.[/QUOTE] I bet you're just too frightened to try something new.

I also wanted to share the fact that there will be an update to the Wunderboy SMD Exporter soon that fixes a couple bugs that have been unearthed... one of which will forever squash the bug that the File > Export SMD dialog doesn't pop up after using WWMT. I am mentioning that here since I know there were some people in these forums who have noticed the bug. I cannot say specifically when Wunderboy will release this new update, but I'd keep an eye on his site over the next few days to weeks for that update. PS. @wraithcat ... thanks for the comment. I know several people who share your opinion. Mine is that I am more personally interested in the design aspect... and whenever I can optimize the time I spend doing the QC aspect... I'd rather be able to blast past that. Of course, for anything very advanced, WWMT will only take you so far. Just like using an HTML editor... you can use the editor to create a framework... but it still takes someone knowledgeable to fill out clean, accurate and complex structures with interactive JavaScript, etc. Again, it's all about optimizing time for me. In many ways, you can think of WWMT as a scaffold that gets you to the end faster.

@wallworm - don't take it bad. I find your tools to be extremely useful and quite a great aproach. The phys mesh tool itself is probably a lifesaver for anyone that works on static props. At the end of the day I think most people are just cranky that valve is really slowish on setting up these tools themselves. And something like UEd for source would be amazing. Since that would allow to circumvent the "hacky" nature of almost all devkits that exist for source in a sense. The fact that you went out of your way to provide a particle list is great, though not the best if you work with custom ones. But at the end of the day, it's awesome that someone does all of this. hence kudos to you. As to the wunderboy importer and exporter. Do you know by any chance if the person is planning to include a toggle between polygon normals and standard smoothing groups? Since the normals have a tendency to break between exports.

[QUOTE=wraithcat;32553391]@wallworm - don't take it bad. I find your tools to be extremely useful and quite a great aproach.[/QUOTE] None bad taken :) [QUOTE=wraithcat;32553391]At the end of the day I think most people are just cranky that valve is really slowish on setting up these tools themselves. And something like UEd for source would be amazing.[/QUOTE] Yeah... when I first moved to Source I was flabergasted that it was so hard to get anything you design into the game. Certainly much more difficult than it ought to be... and the amount of time it takes pushed me away from Source for a while... but eventually I just chose to optimize the steps for myself (which was the impetous for WWMT). [QUOTE=wraithcat;32553391]The fact that you went out of your way to provide a particle list is great, though not the best if you work with custom ones.[/QUOTE] Actually, the particle list was just an afterthought to help me test it out... since the particle system integration was a feature that Cra0kalo and several others have asked for. You can still just enter your own system name and it will use that. [QUOTE=wraithcat;32553391]As to the wunderboy importer and exporter. Do you know by any chance if the person is planning to include a toggle between polygon normals and standard smoothing groups? Since the normals have a tendency to break between exports.[/QUOTE] I cannot speak for that specifically. (I have actually never imported an SMD into Max... only exporter from Max to Source.) SMD Exporter Version 1.6 does have an export option to use Explicit normals when using the standard Export dialog. At the moment that option is not part of the MAXScript interface so WWMT cannot control that... but it will likely be available soon... in which case I will add that as an export option in WWMT as well.