3ds Materials & Names

Hey All,
Here's a super-tricky one for you. (I think!)

I need to figure out what the Name of the materials assigned to 3ds objects that are loaded into blitz are. I don't think at this point that this information is included in the load, but if it is, that would be great, I just don't know how to get it! As far as I can tell, 3ds material properties, such as color and texture are loaded with objects, but what about the name??

So anyway, when a 3ds is saved out, the material names are encoded into it. Looking at a format specification, I found that this is encoded in chunk Axxxh, and actually the name is a CSTR which resides at A000h. Is there a way to pull this string out of a 3ds file from within Blitz?

Any helpful info or ideas would be greatly appreciated. I'm not sure if there are helper DLLs which I could use or what, but I'm open for suggestions!

Thanks,
Roland

There is a tool called 3D Exploration, if you can find an early version of the beta this may list the materials.

Otherwise post the file here and ask us to look at it for you - if we can use some of the tools we have - milkshape, UUnwrap, Max itself we may be able to help.

Btw as 3ds is an older format the names have to be 8.3 format.

IPete2.

Would this help at all?

http://www.blitzbasic.com/codearcs/codearcs.php?code=289

Thanks for the replies, guys...

IPete2 -- I've used this tool, and this would work if this was just for my own use, but i'm hoping to have this software work for others and be self-contained... so I'm afraid this won't do it. But thanks for the head's up!

Joe -- This looks really interesting. Do you know if it shows only textures, or if it can return the actual material name?

Thanks again!

roland

Try this.
It copies a model's (f$) textures to a destination folder.
You can probably mod it to suit yourself.
Yeah, I should probably add it to the code archives.

;-----------------------------------
Function CopyTextures(f$,destdir$)
;-----------------------------------
Local m$, z, md$, hfile
Local index, index1, index2, index3, lastindex
Local modelpath$

	If f$<>""
		modelpath$ = FullpathGetPath$(f$) ; <- substitute your own path 

		hfile = ReadFile(f$)
		While Not Eof(hfile)
			If Right$(Upper$(f$),2)=".X"
				m$ = ReadLine$(hfile); implements 0D,0A
			Else
				m$ = ""
				Repeat
					If Eof(hfile) Then Exit
					b = ReadByte(hfile)
					If b = 0 Then Exit
					m$ = m$ + Chr$(b)
				Until b = 0 And m$<>""
				If Eof(hfile) Then Return
			EndIf

		 If m$<>""
			lastindex = 0 : firstindex = 0
			index = 0 : index1 = 0 : index2 = 0 : index3 = 0
			index1 = Instr(Upper$(m$),".BMP") : index = index1
			index2 = Instr(Upper$(m$),".JPG") : index = index2
			index3 = Instr(Upper$(m$),".PNG") : index = index3
			If index1 > 0 Then index = index1
			If index2 > 0 Then index = index2
			If index3 > 0 Then index = index3
			If index1<>0 Or index2<>0 Or index3<>0	;Print m$
				For z = 1 To 4
					md$ = Mid$(m$,index+z,1)
					val = Asc(md$)
					If val<=0 Or val=34 Or val=Asc("") Or val>127
						lastindex = index+z-1
						z = 4
					EndIf
				Next
				m$ = Left$(m$,lastindex)	;Print m$
				firstindex = 1 ; in case no exit coz its a whole string.
				For z = Len(m$) To 1 Step -1
					md$ = Mid$(m$,z,1)
					val = Asc(md$)
					If val<=0 Or val=34 Or val=Asc("") Or val>127
						firstindex = z+1
						z = 0
					EndIf
				Next
				m$ = Mid$(m$,firstindex) ; Print m$
				If m$<>""
					sour$ = modelpath$+""+m$
					CopyFile sour$,destdir$+""+m$
				EndIf
			EndIf
		 EndIf
		
		Wend
		CloseFile(hfile)
	EndIf

End Function

John,

Nice one!

Ipete2.

Thanks, Pete.
Yeah, I've just re-read it and I know it looks laughably crude, but I remember that my brother wanted this by the end of the day, so that's why it was slapped together.

This looks really cool John. Thanks for the response. I'll see if I can mod it to find the info that I need.

Thanks again!

roland

Cheers, it's now also in the Code Archives / Misc.