> > the rest have everything linked to nothing or linked to something called DUMMY and i have no idea what this means. i really need 3dsmax users to tell me quickly what it means, what is it for? am i wasting my time coding for a 3ds feature that 3ds users don't want to use?


> A dummy is an object that does not consist out of polygons. It is like a fake object.
> Its use however can be very helpful, especially when animating. By linking one or more object to a dummy, you can manipulate several object at once.

> for example:
> The animation of a rotating earth round the sun: you put a path controller on dummy so it follows the circle around the sun. Link the earth to the dummy so it also orbits the sun. now apply a rotation animation on the earth its self. This would be impossible to do without the dummy as once an object has a “path controller”, you no longer can animate the axe rotation..

> Look at a dummy as a sort of "manipulator" object...

ok thanks again Flyby. i've redone that code to use the hierarchy chunk data in the tree instead of the meshes to allow for those DUMMY things to be in the tree. unfortunately it is going to be very difficult for me to verify if my code is working correctly because the model i used for testing has the meshes labelled strangely. i'll go and look in my vast collection of test models again to see if this time i can find another one suitable for testing.