Is there a way to import 3D Studio Max scenes into Blitz 3D?

My question may be already answered elsewhere, but is there a way to import a scene from 3D Studio Max directly into Blitz 3D, without using any other conversion program that I have to buy?

I have 3D Studio Max 4.2 and I tried to export a scene to the .3DS fileformat.
When I imported the scene into Blitz 3D, the entire scene was black.

I want to create (finally) a game like Grand Theft Auto 3, and I wanted to create the cities with 3D Studio Max.
It would be nice to have a complete scene, which I can render in 3DS-max to see if the scene is good, with all textures on it already.

Thanks.

I think you need your textures in the same place as your scene!

Even if the textures are not there, wouldn't you still get a white/grey mesh?

I think that would depend on how you colored the mesh in 3DS Max. A few pointers to remeber with 3DS meshes.

1> Ensure all textures are in the same dir as the .3DS file.
2> If you intend to load in meshes and retain their Max names, use LoadAnimMesh and use GetChild and EntityName to retrieve them.
3> If you use LoadAnimMesh to load them, you will need to apply collision and other attributes for each child individually.
4> If all else fails and everything is kinda black, you might want to add some lights in there ^_^.

Did you remember to set up a camera? Is the camera zoomed out far enough, and pointing at the scene? There could be a million reasons why it doesn't work. On my website I have a couple of things, mostly Island Wars and Metal Messiah that both use .X and .3DS files respectively, all exported from 3DS Max without the use of any additional exporters.

If you still can't get it working, feel free to drop me an e-mail and I'll have a look see...

I got a few things working now.

For exporting to .3DS format, the textures must be in the same directory (thanks to Neo's reply), and they must use the 8.3 file-format (= DOS-names) for files.

But I'm still having troubles with lights.
I created a cilinder, which is the base of streetlight.
On top of that streetlight, there's a bended cilinder (so it's actually half a donut).

If you don't know what I mean, take a look at this file:
http://users.pandora.be/vge/blitz3d/Streetlight.bmp

It's a screenshot from within 3DSMax 4.2.
The pink sphere is a sphere with the Alpha set to 10 (almost completely transparent) and Shine to 60.

When I position a light inside this sphere in Max, I don't see anything in Blitz3D when AmbientLight is turned off.

When I place the light in Blitz3D, the entire streetlight is lit, also on the top on the streetlight.
And the streetlight doesn't create a shadow on the floor (normally the shadow should appear on the right, I think).

The camera is positioned correctly, because I can see the entire streetlight.

So, exporting lights and creating shadows are my current problems.
If anyone could help me with this.

And Flameduck, how do you export a scene in .X format?
I have the complete 3DS Max 4.2, but there is no .x exporter.
If you installed an external .x exporter, could you send me the link, so I could use this too?

Thanks.

I don't believe lights export from Max for various reasons -- not least of which being the hard limit on the number of hardware lights (8 on most cards).

I'm not perfectly certain how you'd do it in Max, but the way I'd get around this would be to create a small piece of geometry (I'd say a joint, but I don't think joints, Max and Blitz play nice together), name it BULB:RNG:TYPE:RED:GRN:BLU or something to that effect.

Now in Blitz, have your code seek out the 'Bulb' entities at runtime using FindChild. Grab the types, ranges and colors from the info you've embedded in the entity name. Then just plant a Blitz light at the same coords as the child, use entityalpha on the child to make the 'bulb' invisible, and manage your 8 lights by keeping track of which ones are in view of the camera.

Alternatively, you can bake the scene lighting into a lightmap, of course, but that I can't help you with -- and it won't affect other entities in the scene without some more technical wizardry (linepicking and texture manipulation among other things).

[EDIT: two more things. One, =please= post screenshots as png or jpg; bmp is just way too big to deal with. And two, hardware lights naturally won't cast shadows; that's a far more complex issue than just 'adding a light.' Lots of ways to fake it, in varying stages from 'that's a black spherical smudge' to 'hey that looks like a real shadow', but naturally they all involve code to some extent or other.]