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Part I ✦ Attacking gmax Hard and Fast
Learning the History of gmax
At the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) in 2001, Discreet dropped an announce-
ment on the gaming community that had generally had one of two different effects
on the listeners. Attendees were either rendered immobile from shock or set into a
frenzy of giddy excitement. Essentially, the announcement was that Discreet was
going to make an optimized version of 3ds max for gamers, and they were going to
give it away for free. At the time, this was an amazing bit of news, because 3ds max
sold for around $2,500 to $3,000.
The excitement for gamers was significant because 3ds max is the software package
that most game companies use to create their games, and now game content cre-
ators can use the same tool that the game companies use.
Once gmax appeared as a free download on the Discreet site, the number of down-
loads began to take off and entire Web sites sprang up overnight devoted to gmax
and custom game content. Today the total number of downloads of gmax is over a
half million. That’s a lot of game content creators.
Understanding the Relationship
Between gmax and 3ds max
To understand gmax, you first need to understand where it came from. gmax is
based on 3ds max, version 4, which just happens to be the best selling 3d modeling,
animation, and rendering package available. Combined with Character Studio, it’s
the product of choice for most gaming companies.
Even though 3ds max 5 is currently available, most of the functions found in gmax
are the same as those found in 3ds max 4. Version 5 includes many high-end
enhancements that wouldn’t be included in gmax anyway. Over time, some of
these improvements will find their way to gmax.
gmax actually comes in two flavors — regular and extra crunchy. The normal gmax
version is available for free from Discreet (or you can get it off the CD-ROM that
came with this book). Discreet also has a development version of gmax available,
affectionately called gmax dev. This later version enables game companies to create
game packs that ship with their games. If you’re looking to get your hands on gmax
dev, then be warned that it is very expensive (unless you own a game company),
but for most users, gmax is more than enough.
The latest version of gmax at the time of publishing, version 1.2, is included on the
book’s CD-ROM.
On the
CD-ROM
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