3d Studio Max & Blitz3d

Hi all,

I'm having a few quirky problems loading in .3ds models.

Sometime they work as expected, other times they face the wrong way - only have one surface and so on.

Is there a standard setup that should be adhered to?

Guess I'm really looking for a checklist I can give to my Gfx artist for when he exports/saves the model?

eg. World co-ords at 0,0,0 etc..

Any help appreciated...

Couple of pointers:

1. To make your models face the right way, they should be facing 'north' in the Top View.

2. Use LoadAnimMesh even if the model isn't actually animated and you need access to the model hierarchy (i.e. to spin the wheels of a car model).

3. IIRC, exporting to 3DS format exports a pivot, with the actual model itself as a child of that pivot. May be wrong on this...

4. The axis of your model should be positioned at world coords 0,0,0, as this will be interpreted as the axis for your exported model.

Use the b3d pipeline:
http://www.onigirl.com/pipeline/
and export to B3D format instead. This will particularly help if you use the B3D brushes inside Max. And your artist will be able to preview from within Max.

You need to decide on a scale, so everything is sized the same. Many people use 1 Blitz unit = 1 Meter.