Porta View?

Porta View is a utility that allows 3D Artists to show off their work without worrying about what software their audience has installed, or whether or not all the texture files are accounted for, or if someone else might decide to use that model in their own project without bothering to ask.

Porta View exports straight from 3DS Max to an executable viewer file. In the viewer, a person can see the model rendered in real time, switch the textures on and off, and view the wireframe as well as the shaded mesh. The executable file includes not only the viewer, but also all mesh and texture data, so that one file is all you need to hand out.

Download

Porta View Version 1.02:

PVExport.dle

User's Guide

Update History

Version 1.02 - 23 November 2007

Added the ability to view the UV unwrap in the viewer, as well as the option to not include this feature in the exporter.

Added the ability to reset the camera in the viewer.

Fixed camera rotation issues.

The viewer now handles being resized properly.

Version 1.01 - 21 November 2007

The missing dll error when running on machines without d3dx9_32.dll no longer occurs.

To Export

You will need:

3DS Max Version 9.0 or better

PVExport.dle

The .dle file goes into your 3DS Max Plugins folder.

To export to Porta View, fire up Max, open your model then go to File->Export. Chose "Porta View Executable" and pick your destination. The dialog that appears lets you provide information about yourself to anyone viewing the model. Fill in as few or as many fields as you like. Click OK and you're done.

To view

You will need:

Windows XP Sevice Pack 2 or Windows Vista

Your Porta View executable

Double click on the .exe. That's it.

What is Saved Inside the Executable?

Glad you asked. Here is a list:

Mesh Data:

Vertex positions and face indices.

UV coordinates (map channel 1).

Textures:

The following bitmap textures are exported:

Diffuse map

Normal map

Specular level map

Specular colour map

Opacity map

The supported file formats for textures are: .bmp, .dds, .dib, .hdr, .jpg, .pfm, .png, .ppm, and .tga.

Note that currently these textures are only exported from a standard material.

Other Data:

Initial viewer camera angle

This is taken from the active viewport. It is strongly recommended that this be an actual camera view. The exporter will try to cope with other view types, but no guarantees are made. In the viewer, the camera will rotate around the target, so it's best to set this near the centre of your model.

Background colour

This is taken from the render background - the background colour set in the environment settings.

Wire colour

The wireframe colour of the mesh.

All that stuff about yourself that you filled out when you exported.

Note that if you export a whole scene, it will be exported as if it were a single mesh - meaning that only one wire colour and set of textures will be exported.

Current Limitations

Currently the following things are not supported by Porta View, but look out for them in future versions:

Multi Sub materials

Animated meshes

Smoothing groups (currently the whole mesh is smoothed)

Multiple map channels

Camera animations

Copyright and Disclaimer

All art content belongs to its original owner.

Use at your own risk. The developer accepts no responsibility for any loss or damage incurred as a result of using this product.

The developer is in no way responsible for any content provided by the artist.