Modifying Character Meshes for Bloodlines

[kristykat]

Ahoy there! I'm hoping this board isn't too dead cos I have a couple of questions about modifying existing character meshes.
I personally can't stand Blender, it's the most unintuitive program I have ever had the misfortune of using and just having it installed on my computer makes me die a little inside. That being said, I have been unable to find any functional plugins to get VtM:B character models into 3DStudio Max. CannonFodder's MDL decompiler for the Source engine doesn't maintain the animation info or whatever when decompiling VtM:B MDL's and the only import/export plugin for the files that PackfileExplorer generates is for Blender. However I noticed Xaltar saying on these boards that he modified character meshes in Max - what was he using to do this?
I have no problems getting modified texture files into the game, the ones I've done are fully functional as far as I can tell, but I can't seem to find an importer/exporter for the actual character models that I can use with Max. I hadn't realized that the MDL decompiler wouldn't work and made a bunch of shiny edits to the female Tremere model only to end up with a mesh that would never show up in the game. If anyone here knows of a working plugin for Max (any version is fine), that would be most excellent.
And here's a picture of what I had done before I noticed it was totally non-functional just for fun:

[Xaltar]

I used vamped 0.92

See this thread.

You can't add or remove verts at all but you can push them around a bit. I have pretty much pushed this to its limit with my fem brujah models. Its slow, often confusing and so easy to make a mistake that will cause it not to export properly. Save often and back up your exported mesh frequently when you have made a change you like. I have stopped working on VTMB these days because its just too much work for far too little gain. Good luck though.

[kristykat]

Thank you for replying! I wasn't sure if you would still be around. I don't know how I missed that thread! So I'm guessing I have to find a way to import .x files into Max? I'll try that out and see how it goes. I can understand what you mean about too much work though, it is a pain in the butt just to get minor edits to function properly. Anyway hopefully I can get this to work!

[Xaltar]

There should be a import.ms file with the vamped download. Just put that in your max script folder (google if you need info) and run it to import the .x file.