3D Studio Models

3D Studio models

LoadMesh and LoadAnimMesh also read .3ds files of 3D Studio (an extension: the original names them but its loader never got them to work with animations). LoadMesh makes one mesh of all the objects as they are at the first frame, and LoadAnimMesh makes a pivot with an entity for each object, light and camera, with the hierarchy and the animation of the file. The file type is told by what is in the file, not by its name.

• 3D Studio is right-handed with z up, so y and z are swapped and the corners of every triangle are put in the order that Blitz3D calls the front. LoaderMatrix does not change this.
• Normals are made from the smoothing groups of the faces: faces that share a group and a vertex share a normal, and a face without a group is flat. The pictures of 3D Studio start at the bottom, so v is flipped. There is one set of texture coordinates.
• Materials become brushes: the diffuse color, the shininess, the transparency (as the alpha of the brush), two sided (EntityFX 16), additive (blend 3), flat shading (EntityFX 4) and a self-illumination of more than half (EntityFX 1, full bright). The first texture map is the texture of the brush, with its tiling, offset and rotation applied to the coordinates of the vertices, and clamped if the map says it is not tiled. The names are looked for next to the model, and then in the folder of the program. Other maps (bump, specular, reflection, opacity) and the ambient and specular colors are not used.
• Keys become the frames of an animation at 30 frames a second. The rotations are added up from key to key as the file stores them, and the frames of the file are used as they are. The curves of the keys (tension, continuity, bias) are not used, the animation goes straight from key to key.
• Lights are LIGHT entities (point, or spot lights with their hotspot and falloff angles as the cone, a range from the outer attenuation, and the color times the multiplier) and are hidden if they are off. Cameras are pivots, as the camera of a model is not one to render with. Both are turned to look at their target, also while the target moves. The color of a light over time, the field of view and the morphs and visibility keys of objects are not used.
• A node that the file marks as hidden is a hidden entity, and is not in the mesh of LoadMesh. A dummy object is a pivot with the name of its instance.