3ds max 2010 export to CE3 DEGENERATIVE SURFACES!

[Refuse2lose]

Hello everyone - I received a model from a friend a few weeks ago that he made and imported into GTA. Its a huey helicopter.

I have imported it into max as a .3ds doc and proceeded to assign materials and textures accordingly using the original UVW coordinates. All is good concerning that.

However, I went to export the helo to the game and received about 6 degenerative surface or vertices errors. I have selected the faces, tried welding them and non of the vertices are in range. Then I deleted the bad edges - well now I have half a helicopter. (Export fails)

If I go into wireframe mode to look at the edges - for the most part its pretty hard to see any issues with the naked eye since the fuselage is so complicated and the wireframe covers the entire screen.

I thought that maybe I could manually select a problem edge and fix it.

QUESTIONS:

Is there a way for me to uncomplicate the object so that I can manually fix the issue?

I have the vertex coordinates from the exporter - what good are they? Is there a way for me to precisely go to that vertex (is it highlighted?) and fix it?

If I move vertices or edges, I believe that will alter the shape of the model correct?

Are there any tutes on this issue?

[e-freak]

Degenerated Surfaces shouldn't stop the Export Process if I'm not mistaken. However, cleaning them up is obviously a good choice:

a) Use xView to scan for any isolated vertices and other errors (click on the little plus in the top left of your viewport to enable xview)
b) STL Check (is a modifier)
c) Reset X-Form or Snapshot to Mesh
d) CryMaxTools - CryModel - Mark Degenerate Triangles

[Refuse2lose]

efreak - thanks but i guess my problem is i dont know how to deal with the issues once they are identified in xview.

Please NOTE: I have several high poly meshes that the exporter will NOT export. Not sure why you feel degenerative surfaces should stop the export - these forums are replete with the same issue. It seems Crytek isnt worried about this...

[e-freak]

Can you post a picture of the problematic area? Also, how many polys do those models have?

[IxenonI]

You get these errors in the following cases:

- More then two vertices on the same edge without them being connected (triangulated) to another vertex

- Faces that have are made up of vertices laying exactly on top of each other

After you done the checks described by e-freak, delete all the marked vertices, edges or faces and rebuild them manually.

Your highpoly mesh issues: There is a hardcoded polygon limit for assets, I think its either around 50.000 tris or 100.000 tris. If you get random errors on export (i.e. saying degenerative faces or vertices on the same line detected), go ahead and split up those meshes into several cgfs with a maximum polycount of 25.000 tris each. I know that the internal exporter will tell you too many vertices but I have no idea if that is implemented in the SDK exporter yet.