OFAC tut 3dsmax ogremax basicscene

From OpenFrag

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Creating your first scene 3 Applying a basic material 4 Creating a Max viewport/render material 5 More advanced materials 6 Conclusion

Introduction

In this tutorial we'll discover how to create a basic scene with Ogremax. Nothing fancy yet, no superbe materials, no diehard shaders, just a simple scene.
Download the files for this tutorial here.

Creating your first scene

Start 3ds Max and do the following steps:

• Create a plane with dimensions 150*150 units at location (0,0,0)
• Create a box with dimensions 50*50 units at location (0,0,0)
• Create an omni light at location (30,90,90)
• Save this scene as OgremaxTut2.max

This should look like this:

Applying a basic material

The Ogremax material system takes a little getting used to, we'll talk about these more in #5 Ogremax materials, for now, just follow my lead.

• Hit M to open up your material editor
• Select the first material (called 01-Default by default)
• Select the OgreMax Material and click OK
• It will ask you to replace this material, select the option Keep old material as sub-material and hit OK.
• Now you just created your first Ogremax Material, it should look something like this: (note that Ogremax has a dedicated viewer for the material)

• Click the first technique, called None This creates the first technique for this material.
• Create a pass by clicking on the first Pass.
• Create a new texture unit in this pass
• Scroll down to the section called Texture
• Click on the None button located under Bitmap
• Select a texture, grass-texture.jpg in our case.
• Now go to the root of your material, using the 'Go to parent' button.
• Rename your material from 01-Default to grass
• Now it should like this:

• Copy your grass material into the second slot, by dragging it into the slot.
• Rename your material to oflogo
• Change the texture to oflogo.png
• Apply the grass material to the plane
• Apply the oflogo material to the box

Now you'll see that 3ds Max just displays the materials as being gray on the objects. This is because Max can't 'read' OgreMax materials. If you do want to see an actual material in 3ds Max, you can take the steps in the following section.

Creating a Max viewport/render material

This is just for recognition in 3ds Max and does not affect your export in the end at all.

• Select your grass material
• Click the Viewport/Render material for max:

• Create a simple material using grass-texture.jpg as a diffuse texture.
• Rename this max-material to max_grass

• Go to your of-logo material and also create a max material using oflogo.png as diffuse texture.
• Rename this max-material to max_oflogo
• Once you took this steps you should get something like this:

• Now save your file.

More advanced materials

Once you made your way through the Ogre materials manual, which can be found in the Sample materials, using Ogremax materials shouldn't cause any problems. Just create an ogremax material, and it's layout should be self-explaining. Just playing with it is really the best way to learn it!

Conclusion

We have made our first scene with Ogremax! Now head over to #3 Exporting to see how to export this piece of work.