Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: "Nigel Critten" Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english Subject: Re: 3D FIle Formats - Need Help! Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 16:28:14 +0100 Organization: PlayStation Net Yaroze (SCEE) Lines: 32 Message-ID: <9lgp0a$nhm5@www.netyaroze-europe.com> References: <9lglsa$nhm4@www.netyaroze-europe.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: host213-122-47-213.btinternet.com X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 There are certainly 3ds and lw converters available, can't remember off hand where but I have them somewhere :) The 3ds format cetainly holds the texture and animation data, the .lwo format only holds the object and texture data so if you wanted to convert the animation as well you would need to reference the .lws file as well, for the .lwo & .lws format go to www.newtek.com and go to the developers section the file formats are there to download... actually I've just checked and becuase they are rebuilding there site it isn't available at the moment... instead you could try Ernie Wrights page at http://members.home.net/erniew/ that has the sdk you need ... his page has other details you might need as well, like motion file information stuff like that. Not sure how you would store the seperate animations in Milkshake but LW is quite nice because you model it then take it into layout to animate it, you can animate a walk cycle, jump cycle etc. and reference the keyframes or there is a new feature LW now has Motion Mixer which allows you to mix seperate animations so the walk cycle flows into the jump etc. very nice... not sure if that would help you at all. I've never found much information on the .3ds file format, I did have it a while ago and know I've got it backed up somewhere, I'll let you know if I come across it, the .max fileformat is closed AFAIK, they like you to write utilities within the Max program that exports your data, there might even be one for .tod but it depends on the version of 3DS Max because they change the plugin format with every release the old plugins (normally) don't work. Hope that helps but I don't suppose it does Nigel