Maybe I should describe this more thoroughly and with an example:

In my 3ds model I have 5 materials (textures); the last one I've named volvo_windows and it's the alpha TGA I was talking about earlier.

In AssMan, I have 5 entries for materials and 1 entry for xmodel. The materials names match with those from Max (for example, the last one is also named volvo_windows). However, the textures names don't match; for volvo_windows the texture (color map) is raw\textures\bus_windows.tga; I'm guessing this is the bus_windows_col the converter requires.

So do the diffuse textures have to have _col at the end of the name ?
I guess so, since in the examples from the model_export folder all the textures have _col, _cos, _nrml and _spec in their names.

i don't think the converter requires these suffixes, it appears to me more like a naming convention by the developers

_col - color map (diffuse texture)
_spec - specular color map (reflection color)
_cos - cosine power map (reflection intensity)
_nrml - normal map (to generate fake depth)

but it's possible of course. so you may wanna rename the .tga textures to match the material names, and if it requires the above suffixes then change the material names in asset manager accordingly (or in 3ds max? i'm a little confused right now)

Yay, I've managed to confuse Sevenz

OK, I think I'm getting closer to the bottom of this.
I tried with another model, an MG42 I've made, which has only one material (texture) in Max. I've tried before to compile this model and I got this error:

************ ERROR ************
Can't find material [mg42_diffuseů_col] in directory 'D:\Steam\steamapps\common\call
of duty 4\raw/material_properties/' or 'D:\Steam\steamapps\common\call of duty 4
\raw/material_properties/'

The texture was called mg42_diffuse.tga at the time.

Now I changed the texture name to mg42.tga, re-exported to OBJ, converted with TOXEC and opened mg42.xmodel_export in WordPad and at the end I've discovered this:

NUMMATERIALS 1
MATERIAL 0 "mg42ů_col" "Lambert" "mg42.tga"
COLOR 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000
...

It seems TOXEC is adding some characters and _col to the material name (which is the texture name without the extension).
So I've changed mg42ů_col to mg42 and now I get this:

*** 6 degenerate tris discarded ***

Surface summary:
mg42 (8140 tris, 7381 verts, 4088 unique verts)
actual mins/maxs (-309.633 -22.3158 -123.421) (-295.482 -4.4254 -63.7235)
actual size (14.151 17.8904 59.6975) radius 31.9535
rotation invariant radius 327.666

************ ERROR ************
auto-generated rotation invariant bounds far exceed physical bounds; model should be exported closer to the root bone

aborting....

This is all like a conspiracy

weird characters these are...

silicone_milk, the author of TOXEC, told me back a while that the tool has some memory leaks. So might be a bug. but it seemed to work after you changed the material name manually.

I haven't seen the new error before (auto-generated rotation invariant bounds far exceed physical bounds; model should be exported closer to the root bone). But it sounds like your model is simply too large or too far away from tag_origin or the 3ds max origin (0,0,0) respectively. 1 unit = 1 inch, how large is your model in 3ds max?

Finally !!! Yeah, it was too far away from (0,0,0).
I just saw that MODSonline has a YouTube channel and watched a vid of "How to import a terrain model in Radiant" or something like that, and at some point the narrator made a comment about this very error.

I managed to import the bus too (see the pic in the attachment), but it only has 1 texture, the first one in the list. And I'm not sure why it's vertical.

First off, the .mtl (OBJ material library) was wrong. It had 10 entries and I only have 5 materials, so I deleted the extras. Now, the .xmodel_export has this

NUMMATERIALS 1
MATERIAL 0 "bus_windows_col" "Lambert" "bus_windows.tga"
COLOR 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000
TRANSPARENCY 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000
AMBIENTCOLOR 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000
INCANDESCENCE 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000
COEFFS 0.800000 0.000000
GLOW 0.000000 0.000000
REFRACTIVE 0 1.000000
SPECULARCOLOR 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000
REFLECTIVECOLOR 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000
REFLECTIVE 0 -1.000000
BLINN -1.000000 -1.000000
PHONG -1.000000

at the end and it repeats 4 more times... so there's 5 entries in total, probably one for each material. You'll notice the bus_window_col again. So I changed those 5 entries to this:

NUMMATERIALS 1
MATERIAL 0 "volvo_int" "Lambert" "bus_int_col.tga"
...

NUMMATERIALS 1
MATERIAL 0 "volvo_ext" "Lambert" "bus_ext_col.tga"
...

NUMMATERIALS 1
MATERIAL 0 "volvo_ext2" "Lambert" "bus_ext2_col.tga"
...

NUMMATERIALS 1
MATERIAL 0 "volvo_nr" "Lambert" "bus_nr1_col.tga"
...

NUMMATERIALS 1
MATERIAL 0 "volvo_windows" "Lambert" "bus_windows_col.tga"
...

I've replace the lines COLOR to PHONG with "..." to keep my post short.
And now only the first entry is valid, the others are ignored, and the bus only has that texture bus_int_col.tga (as you can see in the pic).
I've tried changing NUMMATERIALS to 5 and setting each MATERIAL with a figure from 0 to 4, but I get an error.
I can't seem to figure out how the materials are enumerated and how each vertex is assigned a texture.

I'm writing so much and so detailed because maybe my experience will help some other poor sap.

cskiller86 writes...

that is due to a different coordinate type, Blender has a OBJ export setting to translate Blender UP to OBJ UP. But you can also fix this by turning the texture by 90° so UV coordinates will match the model again.

I meant I'm not sure why the model is vertical in Radiant.

My MG42 did compile and it appears in Radiant, but the UV got messed up a bit.

The bus however is a puzzle. I opened another example .xmodel_export, of a character (Al Asad), which has 3 materials. This is the end of the file:

NUMMATERIALS 3
MATERIAL 0 "mtl_bodies_arab_regular" "Phong" "bodies_arab_regular_col.tga"
...
MATERIAL 1 "mtl_arab_regular_helmet_hands_sp" "Phong" "arab_regular_helmet_hands_sp_col.tga"
...
MATERIAL 2 "mtl_al_asad_head" "Lambert" "arab_regular_al_asad_sp_col_dmg.tga"

I tried doing the same with my bus (with the appropriate changes), but I still get only one texture.
Either I'm doing something wrong or TOXEC can't convert properly objects with more than 1 texture (and isn't that great at the other ones either).

The textures are assigned to the different parts of the model before you make the xmodel_export

cskiller86 writes...
Sounds like 3ds max uses a different coordinate system, you gotta find out how to rotate the model in 3ds max so that it comes out with Z up in radiant.


TOXEC isn't really finished beside the fact that it re-formats the OBJ input rather than really converting the data