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[dill37]

I'm trying to export a scene I've made. The scene consists entirely of box primitives (around 600), and 2 player start entities. The boxes are all convex and have only one face per... face, they all have UVW maps and materials assigned to them, and have all been 'set selection as brush geometry'. Once exported, when I try to load the map in hammer I see the error "For your information, 179 solids were not loaded due to errors in the file", and half my map is missing.

When I try to compile the map from WWMT exporter dialogue (the Quick preset), the console window also throws a lot of "Brush xx: no visible sides on brush", and produces the same result.

The parts of the map that are missing were created by cloning existing geometry (copies, not references/instances) and mirroring it with the mirror tool. What's strange is that other parts of the map that were also mirrored but on a different axis are exported correctly.

Any ideas what's going on?

[wallworm]

Presuming that the objects are all valid ( so the Box primitives have all length segments/width segments / height segments of 1) then this is likely a XForm issue. You should generally not use Mirror function in Max (especially older Max). If you do mirror geometry, use the Reset Xform utility (in the Utility tab of command panel) on them before exporting. The problem is that Mirror often breaks the transformation of an object making it invalid with negative scales which can throw off the exporter.

Let me know if this helps.

[dill37]

Thanks for the quick reply. Yes, the boxes all have 1 segment per face. I have 3ds max 2015, not sure if it's too old for this kind of thing. I tried the 'reset xform' on some boxes but it didn't work, still get the missing geometry.

[wallworm]

Can you click File > Archive and send me the ZIP file Max creates. I will look at your scene and determine the issue.

[dill37]

Sorry for the long wait, I just tried to make a minimal working example - just create 3 boxes, set them as brush geometry then make 2 copies and mirror them using the mirror tool, one on the x and the other on the y axis. If exported as a level, hammer doesn't load the copies, just the original unmirrored geometry. I tried using 'reset XForm' but didn't work. Is there a fix for this, apart from re-doing the geometry in the correct orientation (which will be a lot of work)?

[wallworm]

Please remind me which version of Max you are using as the mirror tool changed in recent versions.

In newer versions the mirror tool has two methods: Mirror the Transform or mirror the geometry. You should only use mirror geometry. However, if you use the transform version, then you may need to do two things: 1) Reset Xform then use the Normal modifier on it to flip the normals.

To see why the transform method is causing incorrect results initially, do this before adding reset xform: Right Click the object and go to Object Properties and turn on Backface Cull. Now when you apply the reset xform to fix the transform from having a negative scale, you'll see that faces are the wrong way.

Note that if you use the Geometry method instead, newer versions of Max use a Mirror modifier. This will create invalid brush unless you either tag the object as a Concave Brush (in level design menu) or break it into multiple objects.

Hopefully this helps you.