A freeware 3d modeling tool. http://www.discreet.com/products/gmax/index.html

Wow, GMAX is finally released for download.

For those who haven''t been following it, it is essentially a subset of 3D Studio MAX with emphasis on game creation tools.

The full developer version is probably not of much use to the types of independent developers that are the norm here on gamedev.net, but the free tempest gamepack that allows creation of Quake3 levels is probably useful to many MOD teams and such.

Looks pretty cool.

Anyone had any experience with it yet? It seems severely crippled to me... it is not a general-purpose tool, but rather individual games must support gmax in order to use it for modelling/editing. At least, that''s the impression I get from reading Discreet''s description.

Right. When the developers create their game, they have to pay a license to offer gmax compatability with their game. So basically, the developers have to pay for their users to make mods using this "universal" game editor. But really, all it is is a map creator similar to worldcraft only more like 3dsmax.

-Luxury

I''ve been playing with gmax for a while now and here''s what I found about gmax:

- You can only open/save from/to the .gmax file format
- .max import is only available with gmax dev (not free)
- It''s possible to export/import from/to other file formats, but only from within the modified editors (ie. Tempest for Q3A) NOT when starting gmax as a normal program
- You cannot create plugins for gmax without paying many $$$
- MAX plugins do not work with gmax
- The file I/O functions of MAXscript do not work so you cannot export data to your own file format
- You cannot create NURBS or Bezier surfaces
- Subdivision surfaces are not complete, you only get MeshSmooth (tm)
- gmax doesn''t target character animation, altough it does have support for 2-limb IK
- gmax is only for personal use so you cannot create models with it and use them in your own games (AFAIK)

Pfew, that''s a lot

So in other words: it''s actually just a crippled ''demo-version'' of MAX4 and for amateur game developers it''s pretty unusable since there''s no way to get the data out of it (just like with Blender)