About 3ds animated..

NOT A CODE PROBLEM
I only have Anim8or to model with. i struggle to create a box in blender, as well as read any of the text, and everything else is either 5 G's or sharware (cept Pacemaker which doesnt work here).
so, i export seperate frames of an animation made in an8 (bare minimum of course) of a3d model, load them into an array with a loop(usually a local array within a type object eg :enemy), and then hide and show the relevent entities at the relevent moments eg:




If frames8>0
ShowEntity mushroom\mushmesh[frames8+1] HideEntity mushroom\mushmesh[frames8]
ElseIf frames8=0
ShowEntity mushroom\mushmesh[frames8+1] HideEntity mushroom\mushmesh[8]
EndIf

;frames8 of course increased in the same way as the frame of an animimage...

first question, is if this is just totally horrible wrong, or wether i could get away with doing it this way.

MY QUESTION
I'd like to know how 3ds animated are stored in file: not exact specificatin or anyhting like that, just a simple description of the way in which the animation is held
::ie is each frame stored as a 3d model, or is it done in a each 'vertex has a path' sort of way

Thanks-aab

Is there a specific reason you are limited to anim8or? Why is Pacemaker no good?

Because when i run it the mouse moves to jumpily to execute any commands, it running so slow on my PC.

i used this when i tried my hand at modeling for Den Bros 4- it works... but it isnt aesthetically (sp!?) pleasing....

*bump
I'd really like to know about the files format