<html> <head> <title>How to export a model from 3DS Max 4.2</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="highlight.css" type="text/css"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> <p><font size="6"><i><b>How to export a model from 3DS Max 4.2</b></i></font></p> <p><font size="4">The graphics engine developed to display the visual aspects in the scene is only capable of rendering static objects. These objects are exported from the 3DS Max 4.2 package into the Void format used by the engine. The exporter is written using <a href="http://www.codercorner.com/Flexporter.htm">Flexporter</a> written by Pierre Terdiman. The Flexporter export plugin was written by adding to the sample 'VoidExporter' ... hence the name of the file format. All the necessary code should be located under 'unsupported/FlexporterSDK'. The most important project there would be VoidExporter.</font></p> <p><font size="5"><b>Quick Installation Instructions</b></font></p> <p><font size="4">Flexporter is composed of three parts. Support libraries in the form of DLLs, the 3DS Max Flexporter plugin in the form of a DLU file (a utility plugin) and Flexporter plugins (the actual exporters) in the form of FLX files. Each group of files has to be put into the right directory. The support DLLs have to be placed somewhere, where Windows will find them (any place in the PATH). The Flexporter DLU file should be placed in the 'plugins' directory of the 3DS Max installation folder. Note, that Pierre Terdiman provides several different versions of this file (for 3DS Max 4 and 5 plus various Character Studio combinations). Only place the correct DLU in the plugins directory! Last but not least, the Flexporter plugins have to be placed in the 3DS Max directory (the same directory which contains the 3dsmax.exe). After this, the plugin should be loaded correctly on startup. For further questions please refer to the Flexporter Documentation. </font></p> <p><font size="5"><b>Modelling</b></font></p> <p><font size="4">Objects can be modelled in 3DS Max as usual. This also includes texture mapping, etc... The only thing to care about is the name of the materials used. The exporter totally ignores the material settings. It only cares about the material name, as this is interpreted by the graphics engine as the path to a file, which contains the material description. So, if the material name is 'material/brick', this will cause the engine to look for a material file called 'material/brick'. The contents of this file should look like this:</font></p> <pre>Material.Diffuse = "texture/brick_d.jpg"; Material.Normal = "texture/brick_local.png"; Material.Specular = "texture/brick_d.jpg"; </pre> <p><font size="4">The Diffuse texture is the diffuse color of the surface, Normal is the normal map (used for bump-mapping) and Specular describes how light is reflected by the surface (this often is identical to Diffuse).</font><br> </p> <p><font size="5"><b>Exporting</b></font></p> <p><font size="4">Go to the Utilities pane and select the Flexporter utility plugin. There hit 'Export ...' and a list of parameters should show up. Make sure the VoidExporter is selected. The default settings should be sufficient ... and export the file. Then, you only have to load the file into the scenegraph. This is described in the <a href="howto_simulator.html">Simulator HowTo</a>. Look for the creation of StaticObject hierarchy nodes.</font></p> <p> </p> </body> </html>
distrib
>
Fedora
>
13
>
x86_64
>
media
>
updates
>
by-pkgid
>
fba45f71a752b715a482b8d4a068e673
>
files
>
277
