3d Studio Max

Does anyone know how to load a 3d Studio Max R3.1 file and make it do things (move). Expecially Humanoid models!!! Doesn’t anyone want to help Harry?

[This message has been edited by Hairy Bill (edited 01-08-2001).]

www.wotsit.org has several descriptins of the
.3ds file format. You will have to figure
out which parts to animate on your own,
though, as that’s not a standard part of the
.3ds format.

The .max format is not really loadable by
any other program, as it consists just of a
list of references to shape/modifier plug-
ins, and then opaque data to be used by each
of those plug-ins.

Best would be to write your own exporter for
3dsmax; the SDK is on the install CD.

Thanks bgl. I don’t really have the time to make a plugin, but I have been looking at the one that Sierra provides in the Half-Life sdk.

at ftp.autodesk.com/pub/Kinetix/3dsmax/developer/sdk (i think), they have a file toolkit (3dsftk.zip or something like that) which contains c-functions to load and save 3ds files, along with information on the functions available. They are alot easier to use than creating your own functions. I don’t know for which version the toolkit is, but it works with 3dsmax 3.0 files.

if you’re lazy about dealing with plugins and stuff, then use the ascii scene export function of 3ds max. It generates .ASE files that have 99% of all 3ds max scene data in ascii, so you can write a parser in no time. Its a very complete format.

Thanks Sven Clauw. I’m downloading the SDK as i type. I’m also going to make Half-Life models. Is Milkshape really any good?

I also feel boring about this problem
until I found a perfect 3dsmax plugin.
It’s free and source codes include.
Check out http://www.codercorner.com/Flexporter.htm

It can export many info (inlclude vertex’s
weights which I almost want :slight_smile: and
I would thank that coder so much.