Game Player Mode

[lightcube]

I would like a new viewport mode inside 3ds Max that allows you to navigate a scene as if you are a player character inside a game engine. This new mode should be customizable to emulate any scenario game developers have for their scenes. When saying game player, I do not just mean human characters. It should be robust enough to represent arbitrary characters (maybe vehicles, etc).

Aspects that should be customizable include:

Character Representation

• The system should allow setting a custom mesh node to represent the player in the scene.
• The system should allow setting a custom collision hull for the player
• The system should allow animations (in both mesh and in hull) to test different designs affecting collisions and animations
• Custom view angles and cameras per character

Collisions

• Allow the system to define what kinds of objects in the scene are colliders. These should allow determining collision by geometry type, custom attributes, custom attribute settings, appdata settings, userprop settings, MassFX RBody settings and even by materials.

Movement

• Allow setting movement rules that include standard game movement rules.
• ASDW+Mouse navigation AND/OR gamepad controllers
• Jump
• Crouch
• Prone
• Run
• Speed
• Slope Restrictions (walkable vs non-walkable surfaces)

Multi-User Inputs and Views

• Allow individual perspective views to be torn off and allow more than one user to interact in this system.
• Allow one viewport per user--it would be even better if there was a network system where a user can connect to a view remotely.
• Ability to record all movement paths to be replayed.

Presets and Integration

• Include several defaults for common games and engines (UE4, Unity, Source)
• Make the system easily customizable by developers and users

I feel that this will help optimize creating scenes and assets inside Max to get a better idea of how well the environments work before sending into the game engines.

[companioncube]

use could just use 3Ds Max Interactive but you should really be doing this in your engine of choice (unity, unreal). 

This would be a pretty major feature and i'm not really sure of the benefits and there are so many more important things the developers should be working on. 

[lightcube]

@companioncube I can respect your opinion. My own view is that this isn't actually that complex of a request; moreover, anything you can do to optimize a user's time inside Max makes Max stronger. Navigating complex scenes is very often less than pleasant for many people; I've mentored no small number of people who wish they could navigate more easily in game-like environments inside Max. And I tend to agree with them on this topic. For me, the more I can achieve directly inside Max, the better, as it means less back and forth between apps--which is of necessity inefficient.

[dgorsman]

Have you looked at Navisworks Simulate/Manage?  A lot of what's asked for is already in there, although some of the game-specific stuff is not (and in any case would likely best be done in the specific game engine being targeted).  It shines when navigating through truly large data sets, and can (relatively) easily output quick test renders for previs purposes.

I've already got an Idea in here somewhere, for better integration between the two products.

[lightcube]

@dgorsman I'm all for better integration with other apps and would be happy to support your idea. But my personal goal is to make navigation inside 3ds Max itself more robust. I don't really feel good about opening other applications for navigation inside a Max scene.