Exporting a world from 3D Studio max

OpenGL OpenGL: Basic Coding
1

Hello everyone, I hope someone can answer this question that I ahve because it is really bothering me.

I created this world for my game in 3d studio max but I’m not sure which file format i should export it as so that loading it in opengl wouldn’t be that hard. If anyone knows which is the best file format to export it as that would be a great help. Thanx!!!

2

try this. it might help. i’m not too familiar with 3d studio max file formats though.
http://nate.scuzzy.net/docs/ase/ http://nate.scuzzy.net/common/

3

If you’ve drawn the world in 3ds max, the you’ll probably need to do some sort of computation on it to make it feasible to display it in an opengl application. Personally, I draw levels in 3ds Max, export them as ASE files (file->export), then use a program I wrote to:

  1. split large meshes up into smaller objects
  2. split vertices to allow correct normal/texture coordinates for each point (3ds max doesn’t really do this explicitly)
  3. calculate visibilty data - you can’t just draw a 200,000 polygon level every frame and get a decent frame rate
4

Hello,

You can also write a plugin for max to export to a file format that your game will understand, or even more easier, lean the MAXScript utility (very easy, don’t take more than half hour to understand) and create an export script. I did that, and was able to import textures, pre-calculated normals, all the complicated meshes. Just have to be careful, because the system coordinates of MAX are different from the opengl, but that is just a matter of inverting y and z coordinates…

Bye,
Matheus.