Animation and .3DS

Hey, I created a model of a robot and animated it. Just a simple turn. Now when I try to un the animation frame it Blitzbasic, it seems to runs only sometimes and other times it does nothing..Any comments or thoughts. And I made anther model using IK handles and that doesn't work AT all. I am using 3DS for the my modelling and animation

thanks.....

What type of animation - mesh - bones ? Did you create the animation using biped ? What format did you export to ?
Did you use the b3d pipeline to convert to .b3d or did you export to .3ds.
How are you loading your model into Blitz ? What code are you using to run the animation.

If you supply the answers to these questions I'm sure that someone can help.

it's a mesh I made in 3ds and exported it to 3ds format. I used the Loadanimmesh function ..

The 3ds format is a poorly standartized format. 3DStudio Max is able to include a lot of animation data and then reimport it properly, but most third party apps cannot handle it. If you want to use .3ds and .x files, you should use the socalled "rotate-move-scale" animations only and also use them with child meshes (link hierarchy etc.) only.

It's probably best to convert them to B3D, by using "B3D Pipeline" for Max or the converter "Ultimate Unwrap 3D" (eg. for DirectX9 to B3D conversion).

Er.. no it isn't. 3dStudio Max can't do anything with the format that other programs can't do just as well. No one who owns 3d Studio ( with the exception of the warez kiddies who really have no clue what they're doing ) uses the .3ds format at all. It's not even a 3dsMax format. It hasn't been updated since the days of 3d Studio, the predecessor to Max, and is only present for legacy reasons. It cannot under any circumstances store any kind of animation other than hierarchical and all texture names must be in the 8.3 dos format.

I don't think it supports vertex normals, vertex colors, multitexturing either.

I just mentioned this because I remember I once exported some kind of Mesh deformation animation (I think it was WAVE) and then successfully re-imported it including it's animation.