Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Mods Where is the 3ds Max exporter?

I understand that there's supposed to be a 3ds Max exporter included in the latest update that exports a custom non-Granny model and animation file format that the Divinity Engine can read. I am having some serious trouble figuring out where the plugin is, how to install it, or whether it's even been published yet.

I have the Steam version.

I don't know much about modelling, but maybe the exporter has something to do with the tool they under the tools menu in the editor called "Export selected objects(.obj)" ? I could've sworn that wasn't there before last patch. Maybe you select a folder and it converts 3ds Max files to .obj? Have you played around with that, or has that been around for a while and has a totally different purpose?

If you go to add a mesh resource in the editor there's now an option to source it from a .gr2 file or a .lsm file. Presumably this stands for Larian Studios Mesh. I don't have an old release of the engine but I believe that what the exporter is supposed to do is export these .lsm files, giving us an alternate pipeline to get stuff into the engine than converting .fbx files to Granny files with the third-party tool or illegally acquiring a Granny plugin. I haven't experimented with the .fbx to .gr2 converter. Does that work for skeletal meshes as well as static meshes?

There is half of an pipeline to get something into the engine the other half is still missing. Larian provides an exporter inside the editor, to OBJ.. but this only works for static meshes (Try it yourself on a character or armor piece). OBJ does not support all features required.

LSM or GR2 are both formats 3dsmax and blender can't open nor export to.

Which leaves us right where we already were. LSTools already allowed static mesh import into the engine. The problem lies in animations, keyframes, source skeleton binding and weighting.

We still need
- Source skeleton and rigged character with armor and hair as 3dsmax "*.max or *.blender" file
- 3DSMax/Blender importer/exporter plugin/script

I think the wording in the patch notes was simply wrong. What they added was en editor model export/import. Which I am gonna be honest with you, is really cool. Since the source inside the editor is GR2. But we are still missing the tools needed to actually have an art pipeline here where the end is an easy making of art. Currently you flat out can't make certain things in the editor. Like new monsters.

Also there was a topic like this already ;P
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=562169#Post562169

I guess I am just too used to people being competent and making sure that everything that's in the changelog is actually released... It would be nice if someone official-like from Larian would verify that a 3ds Max to .lsm exporter plugin that can handle skeletal meshes and animations might exist somewhere and could be pushed out in an update soon. I've been waiting for months for a proper pipeline to be put into place, just like everyone else.

Well for NWN it took many years and some really good hackers.. so patience... In the end this might be semantic confusion rather than a lack of competence.

I am sure with time come tools.

Just speaking for myself here, but I would hate to find out someone from Larian did find some time to pop onto the forum one day only to be called incompetent. I feel lucky to have been able to purchase these tools especially given that we were given early access. We could be waiting for a perfect, shiny editor even now.
If you are working on a mod and you find something that doesn't work or is missing, move on to something that does work after you've made sure you weren't just doing it wrong.
If the only thing you have left to do is waiting on a missing feature, that's unfortunate, but still not a cause to start insulting people...

I certainly don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but it's certainly quite annoying to be told that something exists and can be used today, and then find out that it actually hasn't been released and might not actually exist. I don't want to attribute this to dishonesty or malice when it could be a simple small oversight, or me not being able to find a 3ds Max plugin because it's very well-hidden, and I certainly don't want to shut up and wait for months for the exporter to be released, Cryengine-style, when I paid $40 for a map editor that I was under the impression would have had a working art pipeline. I don't consider incompetence to really be an insult, especially when it's on this small of a scale and could potentially be so easily fixed if the exporter does exist and just wasn't included in the patch. I would personally love to have an employee pop in to this thread and say if there's any progress being made on releasing the exporter, but so far (in my admittedly small span of time spent here) I've seen no evidence that anyone from Larian actually reads the forums.

So, Larian employee, if you do read this: It's not too late to fix things. Please release a patch with the 3ds Max plugin, or tell me where to find it, or at least say when or if it will be ready for release.

To my admittedly limited understanding, just getting us the tool to open up the proprietary file format will be a monumental accomplishment. Googling the issue a little makes it seem that other communities around games using RAD game graphics gr2 files had limited success in developing unofficial tools with varying success in unlocking files to a point where they could be exported into another program for editing.
The Civilization series and Eve seem to have used granny graphics, though the discussion of these tools seems to have died off somewhat and I couldn't get either to work on DOS gr2 files.
The impression I got was that not only were these methods shut down but the discussion of them was suppressed. In seeking to protect a proprietary format, its possible that the owners of the technology strong armed the game makers into making this all seem impossible.
I worked on a now shut down music website during the time when the RIAA was suing the pants off everybody for copyright infringement, and such shenanigans aren't out of the question for people that believe limiting access to technology is the only way to make money with it. I could also be biased and reading stuff that isn't there into stuff that isn't there...
All that is to say that promising us it could be done and then saying they had success with the "third party" in implementing this makes me pretty hopeful, as it seems like they made the promise before they got permission from the people that own the rights to the format, but then were able to get an agreement of some sort with them worked out to deliver on that promise. If so, that's a huge win, and I am excited to see it happen if they can actually pull it off.
I think Larian wants the engine to be everything we want it to be and that they are doing everything they can to make it happen while also working on new games and polishing up DOS and expanding their operations and probably countless more heavy duty tasks considered more important than nurturing our impatience.
Honestly, from my own experience with game forums I can totally see how devs that have been in the business for as long as they have could have the impression that there is little good in dedicating resources to making forum users happy. I have yet to ever see happy game forum users.
Until now, maybe... It seems that most of the people here are hard working and helpful and positive. Above all I think everyone working on mods right now while being active on this mod forum is excited for new updates but also appreciative of the tools we have, and genuinely interested in giving back.
I think one of the hallmarks of "bad" game forums is TL;DR posts, so while I promise to try not to be THAT guy, maybe this will give you something to read until the next patch comes out, hopefully the one that includes the exporters.

It would be nice all things considered to have someone at Larian at least comment on these things so that we don't sit in the dark not knowing what we have and what we'll get... worse than little information is only no information

Currently, nobody who knows has a lot of free time to read the forum. I asked, but have not gotten a reply yet.

It's been another month. Is there any news? Raze, maybe you could send that guy another email?

There hasn't been any news about the editor, but: Editing GR2 meshes finally possible.

That's good news! It's a shame that it doesn't support animations but I can work with this. Thanks.