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Gmax Tutorials

SG properties is actually used for Gmax to control the lightings of the model. The ASE Converters doesn't use theese properties to their original purpose, but instead the ASE converters is using them to control and manage which surface and what kind of property each polygon need. So what we see as numbers between 1 & 32 in Gmax is actually important information for how your track or model will be to drive on or crash into in the end. In this tutorial you will learn how to use the SG Properties and some tips about them, by step-by-step instructions.

Our lovely house would for sure need some SG Properties even though you dont want grass surface on a house for example. Instead I want the House's roof to have no collision. Why? Because no car is able to get up there anyway. SG Properties is an important feature, because they can help you alot in situations where you for example has reached the collision limit of Re-Volt which is 16000 triangles.
Let's get startet
Find your mesh and convert it to editable mesh. You can do that by right-clicking on your mesh, find Convert To and then press Convert To Editable Mesh . The toolbar you see to the left will then change to the Modify Tab . Below you can see the modifier list and afterwards the editable mesh menu.

The SG Properties is placed somewhere in the Editable Mesh menu. You will see for 5 different ways to edit your mesh on named vertex, edge, face, polygon & Element . You can only use 3 out of 5, Element, polygon and face. You should choose which one yourself all after which one that is most usefull for you. If you choose faces, you can select each triangle on your mesh and give it SG. If you choose polygon, you can select parts of your mesh as squares. Choosing element will make you select the whole mesh by one click on it. I will use Element because the whole roof-mesh to have the same SG property.
The last steps
Asigning SG Properties to your mesh is quite simple. When you have choosen the way you want to edit your mesh on, scroll down in the menu and find Surface Properties . Below you will see 3 sub-headers of Surface Properties, Normals, Material & Smoothing Groups. Under Smoothing Groups You will then see alot of buttons with different numbers from 1-32. To find out which of theese numbers does what you can either find the documentation in the rvtmod7.zip or find the list of number here, on perror.de. For the roof on our house we need the property 32 to tell the ASE tools that we want the roof without collision.