> > > > how do i get the complete info on the 3ds file format? i'm getting really fed up of most 3ds models in my program looking really stupid coz they use features that i don't have any info on.
> > > ok it seems the 3ds info was never officially released. if you want to put your 3d studio models into your game you have to write your own exporter plug-in for 3d studio. this is a concept that is totally alien to me and besides that, i'm not gonna buy 3d studio and write that thing if i'm not even sure i have the mathematics ability to do 3d properly and how can i write something in an alien language when i can't even convert my program to windows from dos properly.
> > > so anyway Alon can you help me find what chunk the smoothing group angle limits is in coz it seems like something simple to find and support in my program and many models are looking really stupid coz i don't support it yet. all i need you to do is to send me a 3ds file with 2 cubes not touching each other that are in the same mesh but each use their own smoothing group. one cube will look kinda rounded coz the smoothing angle limit is set too lenient. set one group to 70 degrees and the other at 110 degrees. please make sure no other numbers in the model are the same. that's all. then i think i can use a hex editor to search for where 70 and 110 occur in the file in float format and then i just look around at the nearby bytes to help me figure out the chunk number. what do you think guys? is that possible?
> > where has Alon gone now? Alon are you not here anymore? i need this.
> Sorry for not checking the forums lately. :/
> Ok I sent it to it, but there's something u should know about smoothing angles in max, while it does support smoothing angles it's not in a way of setting a polygon to *something* degrees and that's it, each polygon of an object has one or more "smoothing group" numbers, and there is an option to "auto-smooth" that requires you to type in an angle, but after you auto-smooth it doesn't save the angle, just the smoothing group numbers so if you set to 70 each face of the cube will have a number from 1 to 6 and if 110 then they'll all be 1.
> At least that's how it is with the .max format,I dunno what It is in .3ds, I just thought u should have this as general knowladge.
ok thanks for that info. i'm sure 3ds is similar. ok this means i was totally under the wrong impression of how smoothing angle limits was implemented. this means there is no need for me to handle it at all. so that option in the front end should not even be there. i guess all those models that had smoothing when they obviously shouldn't were that way because of errors commited by other programs and the artists rather than by my program.