I need help with Gmax please.

J

jadebullet

might be back?
Well, I am about to learn Gmax. That's the good news. The bad news is that I cannot get Trainz asset creation thing to work properly. I have downloaded it, and installed it into Gmax. When I go to C:/Gmax/gamepacks/trainz and click on Asset Creation studio, I get the message that it is missing mtlgen.dlt

Seeing as I am new at this whole Gmax thing, I am finding this to be VERY annoying, and I cannot seem to figure it out. I have tried reinstalling both Gmax and the Trainz creation studio to no avail.

Any help would be appreciated.

I am running Gmax 1.2 on a Windows Vista 64bit.
 
I'm not sure if it's the same with vista but in XP you need to have an environment variable called GMAXLOC which holds the path to your gmax install. That should be set up by the gmax installer but if you don't have full permissions in vista it may not have happened.
Also check that the Trainz Asset Creation Studio shortcut has %GMAXLOC% in the "Start In" field.

HTH
David
 
I don't use gMax or Blender, but I've been doing a heck of a lot of research on both for my new web site. When it comes to tutorials, Blender wins by a bush mile. When it comes to support from this forum I still think Blender is five lengths in front. Then there's the support thing. Blender is current and still being tweaked. The AutoCad mob who owns but doesn't support gMax any more, hasn't touched the program for almost 5 years. In computer terms, that is a.n.c.i.e.n.t. Finally, I've read many times that gMax runs with some difficulty (if at all) on Vista. Then there are comments about using it with TRS2009.

I wish you lots of luck, but gee wizz, I know where I'll be placing my bets.

Some of the best tutorials I've ever seen for Blender are here. If you must stick with gMax, most of the tutorials I know about are in the Tutorials section on my site (link in sig)
 
Davido said:
I'm not sure if it's the same with vista but in XP you need to have an environment variable called GMAXLOC which holds the path to your gmax install. That should be set up by the gmax installer but if you don't have full permissions in vista it may not have happened.
Also check that the Trainz Asset Creation Studio shortcut has %GMAXLOC% in the "Start In" field.

HTH
David
Click to expand...
David, not being the most computer-savy person, could you please explain how I find the "start in" field, etc?
Kind regards, Evan.
 
i would strongly, VERY STRONGLY, suggest blender. its much better for first time mesh creators including myself (SLSF 4-8-4 4500 is my creation thank u, all blender :) ) so i strongly reccomend blender

-AJ
 
Milwaukeeroad261 said:
i would strongly, VERY STRONGLY, suggest blender. its much better for first time mesh creators including myself (SLSF 4-8-4 4500 is my creation thank u, all blender :) ) so i strongly reccomend blender

-AJ
Click to expand...
AJ, I've already produced several meshes in Gmax as experiments and am quite comfortable with it, so I will be sticking with it. This error is hopefully the last hurdle before having TACS working properly so I can export my first pieces of content to Trainz.

Keep up the good work on SLSF 4500. She's looking great.

Kind Regards,
Evan.
 
D9007_Pinza said:
David, not being the most computer-savy person, could you please explain how I find the "start in" field, etc?
Kind regards, Evan.
Click to expand...
Well, you can Google how to add environment variables ...there's heaps of articles about it, and if you right click on the shortcut icon and go to properties you'll see the "start in" field as below.

gmaxloc.jpg


and this is the environment variable

env_vars.jpg


Cheers
Davido
 
TACS

Is my gmax working differently to everybody ele's then?
I installed gmax ages ago and then TACS.
When I start gmax that's what I do, start gmax, not TACS. After gmax has come up on the screen with the control panel on the right side of the screen it then changes all by itself to the left side as TACS comes in.
And that's it, I never click on a TACS icon to start gmax.
So it seems to me that TACS starts after gmax has.

And the proof of the pudding is in the amount of assets I have created both for the DS and TPR. And I am still doing it.

Angela
 
Thanks for that David. That's exactly how the TACS properties window looks on mine, although I'm not sure on how to get to the enviroment variables window.
Thanks for the help.
Kind regards,
Evan.
 
Yes, bumping an old thread I know, but I've just had cause to revisit this problem after installing gmax/TACS on a new Win7 system.

To answer D9007_Pinza's question, which was left hanging, on my Windows 7 PC, the Environment Variables window is displayed by;

Right-click on the 'Computer' desktop icon, then select
Properties
Advanced System Settings
Environment Variables

In my case after installing gmax/TACS, I got the old 'mtlgen.dtl file is missing' error. %GMAXLOC% was already correctly set up in the TACS shortcut properties as per Davido's post above, but GMAXLOC was not listed as one of the Environment Variables.

Since I had installed gmax to C:\Program Files\gmax, I added GMAXLOC as a new variable and found for the 'value' that entering either the full path C:\Program Files\gmax\ or just C:\gmax\ worked OK.

Hope this helps somebody.

~ Deane
 
Last edited:
Installations

On my Desktop I have XP but my laptop runs W7.
The installation process I used for both was exactly the same.
I gmax start from the gmax Desktop icon on both machines.
The only thing about TACS is I know it is installed but it runs in the background and as an Exporter.

Angela
 
After a little probing around, mtlgen.dlt is a plugin used by gmax. For me it lives here: C:\gmax\stdplugs

I always run gmax by a TAC shortcut. If I run gmax normally then the Trainz plugins dont become activated and I dont have any access to the exporters etc.

If you need a copy of the dlt to progress further, let me know and I can email to you.

Kess
 
Kessica said:
After a little probing around, mtlgen.dlt is a plugin used by gmax. For me it lives here: C:\gmax\stdplugs....

Kess
Click to expand...

Yes, that's certainly where the file resides and I suspect it is rarely, if ever, actually missing. The problem seems to be that the TACS installation doesn't always set up gmax to see it. To clear up the problem, an environment variable called GMAXLOC needs to be created (and its location value specified) and then it also needs to be referenced correctly by the TACS shortcut, as in Davido's post above.

I'm writing this all out fully so next time I have this problem I can refer to it myself!
 
Dinorius_Redundicus said:
I'm writing this all out fully so next time I have this problem I can refer to it myself!
Click to expand...

Perhaps the most important thing ever! Nobody likes to document anything, but its the little things like this that are usually the biggest headaches. Its always good when browsing to find a solution to a question, even if the person who asked the question posted the answer themselves!
 
I would like to bump this with some additional information.

After the Gmax installation I changed the folder name, and very carefully changed all the details in the gmax.ini and the shortcut

I had the same problem with 'mtlgen.dlt', I set everything up as detailed in this thread with no solution. I am not using TACS.

Google came to the rescue. There is a file called 'plugins.ini' that I had not touched and this still pointed to the original folder name, once that pointed to the correct folder, Gmax started.

So if you fiddle with the Gmax path names, you must reset both the .ini files.

Peter
 
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