ase documentation

Hi -

Does anyone know where i can find out more on ASE files. I checked out Nate’s page but I need more information, particulary on model animation.

Thanks

There is no much to know about ase files…
just take a look in one and you will understand it’s architectural model immediately.
anyway, check out www.wotsit.org.

I checked that site but i didnt find anything, anyone know of other sites that are helpful?

thanks

just make a model in 3ds and export it in .ASE.

You’ll figure out the things very easely. It is a very simple format. It took me half an hour to maker a loader without animation. Shouldn’t be much longer to add the possibility of parsing animation info.

Anyone figured out how texures are assigned to the triangles in an ase file when you have multiple textures on an object?.

Never got it to work, so I switched to wavefront obj instead…

Hi-

I already made a parser to display a model, however my main problem now it how the animation is stored in the ASE file and how to make the model animate through OpenGL. I know there is an animation section in the ASE file but I’m not sure what those number represent, if you have information or know where I can get information on this, that would help me out immensly. Thanks

You have to understand how 3ds max works with animations. Check it with the program itself, or on the web. I can tell you the basic: it uses keyframes for translation, rotation, etc, and then interpolates in between keyframes.
When exporting to ASE format, you can tell 3dsmax to interpolate the in-between frames to the file. I generally export something like 5 or 10 keyframes per second to the file, and then interpolate in my engine, so I get a results very similar to what 3ds max does.

Hi -

How do u tell the ASCII exporter in 3DSMax the number of key frames? I’m not sure if I’m doing it correctly, is it the controllers field?

Thanks

Hi -

Also this is what I have in a sample ASE file that I created of a spinning moving pyramid. Can someone explain to me what these numbers mean, I’ve been playing around with this and I’m still not sure how to use it to do the animation, Thanks

*TM_ANIMATION {
*NODE_NAME “Pyramid01”
*CONTROL_POS_BEZIER {
*CONTROL_BEZIER_POS_KEY 0 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.008 0.000 0.000 0
*CONTROL_BEZIER_POS_KEY 8000 13.727 0.000 0.000 0.005 0.000 0.000 -0.005 0.000 0.000 0
*CONTROL_BEZIER_POS_KEY 12000 -16.831 0.000 0.000 0.002 0.000 0.000 -0.002 0.000 0.000 0
*CONTROL_BEZIER_POS_KEY 16000 0.005 0.000 0.000 -0.010 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0
}
*CONTROL_ROT_TCB {
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 0 1.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 8000 0.000 0.000 -1.000 6.283 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 12000 -1.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 16000 -0.000 -0.000 1.000 3.142 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
}
}

I hope its legible.
Thanks

I haven’t used those. I get
CONTROL_POS_TRACK for position
and
CONTROL_ROT_TRACK for rotation

Use the “Force Sample” to get this more simple keys, and to get 3ds max to interpolate for you the keyframes in the right way (you can the use simple linear interpolation to do the in-betweens).

odysseykre:

If you are interested in know what means the code you posted you must read some papers from George Maestri or John Lasseter. TCB_… are basically “non-linear interporlations” of keyframes.

So long,