3dsmax 9 static meshs

i'm in an Unreal Ed2 class at my college. today we learned how to use static meshs in unreal. my question is, hw do i convert my stuff from 3ds9 into static meshs to be used in Unreal ed2?

1) export the model into a .ase format
2) create a new package in the generic browser
3) Go to file/ import
4) Choose the .ase file you exported from 3ds
5) Set up materials in the mat editor
6) Enjoy
7) Profit
????

Eh -- typically better to use your mapname (ie: ctf-skyhook or something) as the package name... since otherwise you'd need to distribute both files along with your map.


That of course assumes you're not making like a TC or something that all pulls from the same packages.

I dunno about UT2, but in UT3 if you save everything to your mapfile it purges any unused stuff when you save....

So if you save before placing that static then you lose anything you did to it.

For statics that might not seem like a big deal, but when you start playing with particle systems and you spend an hour on a particle, finally get happy with it, and hit save only to have your particle get deleted... you end up being very unhappy.

What I do, is I have my assets package, and my mapfile. Then when I go to publish, I rename all the stuff in my package over to the mapfile's directory so that everything is in the mapfile and I only have to distribute that one file, but I still get the security and safety of having my package seperate while working on it.

Plus, I've had mapfiles get corrupted several times... (again UT3, not UT2)... so I'm not trusting all my stuff to be in one file.

I don't know how relevant that is to UT2, but it might help.

well my main problem is how to export them out of 3ds max as a .ase... i've tried searching google and i get nothing.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/ActorX.html

Everything you'll ever need to know is on UDN pretty much.