Greetings. I come in peace here to the halomaps forum with a small request that I would hope isn't too large of a task.

I play the game casually amongst a small group of friends, and I occasionally make small map mods with a carefully revised tagset. I know my way around the HEK itself rather well, but am not very strong in the content-creation area, nor do I have the means to do so, as the tools that are required are not at my disposal. As of late, I've become hard-pressed for some new scenery assets in the forms of small buildings and such in order to give maps more depth and atmosphere in a simple, easily placeable manner without having to modify the map's BSP itself in order to add more substantial objects. That being said, I've found a handful of architectural building models in .max format off of a reliable free 3D model repository site, TF3DM.

Essentially, what I am asking for is to have these models converted into working .scenery tags, in order of preference: Church > Lighthouse > Wood House > Old house.

Quality is unimportant, as long as they work properly (collision, internals like inclines/stairs or ladders if any, etc.)

If someone could perform this task for me in the slightest, or provide some valuable input on the idea otherwise, I would be ever so grateful.

creating a scenery object is actually super easy. and its a great idea to learn how to do things yourself, because tbh no one here is going to do it for you.

you will need a copy of 3ds max, here is a students website in which you can get a free 3 year liscense.
http://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/all

http://ghost.halomaps.org/tutorials/
the tutroials youll need to create your scenery pieces should be in the above link.

good luck.
Edited by killzone64 on Feb 19, 2015 at 11:52 PM

Doesn't it say they've got .3ds files on the site? If it's .3ds I'm pretty sure you can use gmax (which is free for everyone) to open .3ds files. Then if a tutorial asks you to export as a .jms, use http://ghost.halomaps.org/bluestreak/jms/ to do it with gmax. Put the .ms in the /scripts/startup folder or something and it'll start with gmax. You can also not put it there and open it from gmax not at startup, but I'm too lazy to explain. Plus I've only used 3dsmax instead of gmax for god knows how many years, you can probably figure it out with some google if you really want to. And on that note hopefully it actually is /scripts/startup in gmax...

but if you can get 3ds max through the student autodesk site or another way it's way better than gmax. Gmax is basically an ancient history version of 3ds max stripped down.
Edited by gruntfromhalo on Feb 20, 2015 at 12:16 AM

Alright then, I suppose I'll look into it further so I can perform it myself once I'm in the position to acquire some new hard drives, as my current ones are uncomfortably cluttered and disorganized. I don't really think my system is in the position to install or run any 3D modelling software at the moment, so I suppose I'll just wait.

Thank you both for your responses, your input is nonetheless appreciated. I'll keep the info provided at hand when the time comes.

No promises but I'll look into porting these into scenery objects.

But I can tell you right now the complex collision needed to climb stair cases and the like thereof is near un-achievable due to halo's collision rendering temper.

My, that was unexpected.

Thanks to you as well for bothering to take a crack at it. Yes, I was aware that "true" stair collisions are a bit unattainable, but stairs can easily be avoided by just "faking" it by simply making stairs a discrete upward incline, like a ramp, instead of actually trying to shape it like stairs themselves.
Edited by Interstellar Collapse on Feb 21, 2015 at 11:30 PM

Interesting. I was aware of what you mentioned first, how explosions (.damage_effects) ignore scenery objects, but have never heard of the second method of forcing collision on scenery through meta editors. I'll keep that in mind.

Low hard Drive? Try using gmax, from turbsquid, its a begining

That'd be wonderful.

I don't have Skype though, something about having Skype installed caused my computer to crash constantly with a BSOD error, and through a wild search last year, I discovered it was something with my DirectX kernel or something, and apparently it wasn't fixed until my last BIOS update a couple months back. I'm not sure if Skype works now, but I haven't taken the risk to go back and check. If you need for me to use Skype, I can see about reinstalling the program.

Beware, fossy is a huge troll.
Might be not always bad intentioned though.

K. snot possible.

1. Polycount is too high, gearbox recommend that your scenery objects don't exceed 500 triangles. You can optimize it but you'll run the risk of interrupting the uv's.

Damn Gearbox. Ever since Colonial Marines they've been on my bad side.

that is not the limit for that at all. i have had 20k poly scenery objects ingamed with no issues. those limits were put in place due to the power average pc at that time.

Yes but that stands as a one off. I'm also guessing your collision objects doesn't include staircases, rafters, window frames e.t.c

I just downloaded and opened the thing is kax.