Hammered to the Max is a free ebook by Shawn Olson that teaches how to use 3DS Max as a level editor for Valve’s Source game engine. Read on for more.
Very little was done to the art pipeline for the Source Game Engine
for years. This has led to many corners of the internet to dismiss
Source for some of the newer engines. While Source has continued to
evolve since its inception, its clunky nature for integrating custom
assets has never been easy for artists–and the level editor called
Hammer is archaic next to modern level editors.
This is where Wall Worm comes in. Wall Worm started in 2010 as a
simple tool that automated a few of the steps of bringing models from
3DS Max into the Source engine so they could be placed in Hammer. Over
the next four years, Wall Worm evolved into the complete asset
pipeline and now a full-blown level editor. Wall Worm has all of the
tools to create environments for Source directly inside 3DS Max.
Unlike using the traditional Source where artists had to open text
files, batch files, compilers, etc, the Wall Worm philosophy is to
allow the artist to create everything visually. Who wants to open a
text file and type 10 lines of commands just to make an ammo crate?
With the recent release of Wall Worm 2.0, there is now a book on using
Wall Worm as your Source Engine pipeline. You can read this new ebook
for free. Get “Hammered to the Max: A Hammer User’s Guide to 3ds Max” at:
http://www.wallworm.com/projects/utilities/Hammered-to-the-Max.pdf
You can get Wall Worm for free at Wall Worm’s site.
