Which format

Hello all,

I am looking for a way to get animated objects into Blitz. However, I don't know which format supports what. This sort of info I have been unable to find anywhere, just rants and raves on forums all over the Internet. Which formats support animation, 3ds, obj,wrl? Which support skeletal animation? It seems B3D is best suited for blitz, but none of my 3D apps support it (well, there is a converter for trueSpace, but that app's animation tools I don't want to touch). Any info you can provide is welcome.

If you need animated / boned stuff I'd recommend exporting to .X and conversion to .B3D with UUW3D. Blitz supports .X natively too but it's the older DX7 format that doesn't have bone support.

Blitz also loads natively .3DS and .MD2 which could be used theoretically for animated meshes but those formats suck (they are ooooooold) so bad that don't even think about it.

Isn't .3ds about the same as DX7 .X? I think they are useful for some things too, eg: mechanical stuff. They also render faster than boned models, esp B3D with weighted vertices.

Some people even prefere MD2 because it's much faster than B3D, but allows Mesh-deformation in the loaded animation too.

I agree for fully functional characters and creatures B3D may be the best choice.

Hello again,

Thanks for the tip. So B3D it is... Now to look for a good tool which supports it.

.actually, I find MD2 quite useful and excellent for things such as flags, and cloth animation at all, exported from max and done by cloth modifier within max..its excellent and fast for such a things...

Thanks for the info guys. I'll test out the various formats available, see which one best suits my needs.