3d studio max 6 and opengl

Is there a plugin so that I can use whatever i make in 3ds max in an opengl program or do I have to write my own?

You’ll have to export to 3DS and then load that file into your app by yourself. See http://www.wotsit.org for infos on the 3DS-Fileformat.
3D Studio’s native Format MAX is commercial and not suited for realtime-apps, as in opposite to 3DS it doesn’t store meshes with their vertices, but rather steps on how to create primitives. So something like this : Sphere at x/y/z, with Radius X and Y subdivisions.

3ds is a horrible file format. It’s inflexible, hard to parse, ill aligned, and not very rich in the areas that matter.

OpenGL has no native mesh format. However, you can find code to load a large number of formats on the web. For example: md2 is very simple for animated meshes; x is more advanced; ASE is fairly rich; you can find loaders for all of these on the web.

Max comes with exporters for many of these formats; others can be found on the web. (The DirectX SDK has an exporter for x files, for example).

Discreet also has an exporter called the “igameexporter” which demonstrates their simple API for writing game-specific exporters. It’s available to download for registered developers on their web site. I recommend it if you want to write your own.

I recommend alias wavefront .obj, it is very simple and it is readable for humans, making the program easy to debug. check out www.righthemisphere.com for “deep exploration”, a program to display and convert all kinds of 3d file formats.

A program that reads .obj and makes a display list out of it is really easy to write, if you fail, I might write you one (best was <4 h in java, done that quite often by now).

Jan

Did you even search google for an answer? Please keep newbie questions in the newbie forums.

Hey bertino, we don’t need another cocky opengl programmer in this forum. Beginners can ask questions here too.

from: http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/
3dsmax 5.x to MilkShape 3D exporter available
– Tuesday, Jul 29 2003 http://www.mds.mdh.se/~elt01mcg/ <-D/L located here

This thread is clearly off topic.
It belongs in one of Discreet’s forums (not beginners).

Check out here: http://www.codercorner.com/Flexporter.htm

Flexporter is a free utility plug-in for 3D Studio MAX, designed to easily export a lot of information out of it.