Get Shawn Olson’s Wall Worm plugins for 3ds Max for free
Games artist and tools developer Shawn Olson has released all of his Wall Worm 3ds Max plugins for free, having recently joined Autodesk to work on the 3ds Max product management team.
The plugins include modelling, normal editing and layout tools, particularly for creating game levels.
A collectiong of handy utility tools for 3ds Max game artists
The Wall Worm tools were designed to speed up the process of creating assets for games pipelines – in particular, for Valve’s Source game engine.
Olson was previously a technical artist and prop designer for Black Mesa, a Valve-approved third-party remake of Half-Life 1 in the Source engine, which officially releases this Thursday.
The collection includes modelling tools Carver, intended for Boolean carving operations; an Arch Primitive for creating structure like bridges; and Brushify, for sealing and cleaning up geometry.
Texturing tools include ProPal, intended to streamline the process of baking geometry to textures.
There are also a number of procedural asset-generation tools, including a Random Elements modifer and spline-based level layout tools CorVex, used for walls and blocks, and PropLine, for distributing props.
Still being updated, though releases will be slower now that Olson works at Autodesk
In his blog post announcing his decision to make the Wall Worm products available for free, Olson says that he will not be discontinuing work on the tools.
However, he says that his recent change of job – he has just been hired by Autodesk to work on the product management team for 3ds Max – will mean that updates will be less frequent.
“When the reality of this opportunity finally sunk in, I spent no small portion of my time considering what I would do with [my plugins and tools],” he wrote.
“I had already been struggling with that question because I went through a life-changing health struggle last year that made me contemplate what to do with my work in the event of my death.”
Olson says that he intends the free release as a “sign of thanks to all the people who have kindly supported me over the years”.
“Had Wall Worm Model Tools not been embraced so widely and enthusiastically for so long, I may well not have been able to have this wonderful opportunity to work on 3ds Max itself.”
System requirements and availability
Shawn Olson’s Wall Worm tools are available free for various editions of 3ds Max. Most will install in 3ds Max 2012+, but 3ds Max 2018.2+ is recommended for full functionality, and 3ds Max 2020.2+ is optimal.
Read more about Shawn Olson’s Wall Worm tools for 3ds Max on his website
Download Shawn Olson’s Wall Worm tools for 3ds Max for free
Hat tip to CGPress for spotting this story.