Well I haven't touched modeling in a looong time. But you need to get your hands on gmax and renx. Then you need to extract the needed files from BIG files (Big files [hence the name] that stores just about all the game data). W3DZH.big and TexturesZH.big i think. Personally,
FinalBig is what I use and its pretty good since you can make it "open with" big files so all you have to do is double click on the big file to open it.
You'll need some form of dds to tga converter since gmax can't read dds files. If you have photoshop you can use that with nvidia's dds plugin (google "nvidia dds", should be the first link, or just go to developer.nvida.com and navigate around there.) I'm sure there's apps that can do a batch conversion of dds to tga, just google it.
Next you'll need to grab a w3d script that imports w3d files into gmax. Again, I don't even have gmax installed, just google it. If I recall correctly, it was at
sleipnir's stuff (do a forum search for it. The readme should tell you how to install it.
finally you open renx (which is basically gmax w/ cnc specific stuff) and go to the utilities tab (the hammer) and press the maxscript button, a dropdown should appear and click on it and select the w3d importer (if it looks selected, still do it to actually run the script). Then press the newly appeared import button and just choose your w3d file to import (make sure that the texture files are in the same directory as the model).
Guess what? You've just imported a model
If you've converted the textures and didn't change the name at all, the textures should all be applied. If not, you can manually apply them w/ the material editor (m hotkey).
Then you can move/rotate/scale/position/etc. the objects. If you don't know how to do that you should right click in one of the views to show a quad menu and select move/rotate/scale. Then select the object. There should be a xyz origin thingy coming out/near the object. You can drag on one of the xyz lines to restrict it to that movement/rotation. Little corners near the lines allow 2 of the xyz properties to be modified at once. To really understand the tools, you should read some random gmax tutorial out there.
Finally, when you done (assuming you saved), you go file>export to export to w3d. Make your that you select W3D format before saving.
There you go...
guess what? I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico! (if you didn't get that... please ignore :dead
Feel free to question
butchering
. Anyway I may actually be answering the question incorrectly...
