Exporting .3ds from Max 2011-lose Maps and Points?

[tyard]

Hello all,
After having been a Trainzer for a while and recently discovering Autodesk's Education software, I realized that the stars had aligned and it was time for me to start on that steep hill, and make some nice new content.

So I went through the modelling part of Phil's Flatcar tutorial over at World of Trainz, and then realized there would be no exporting from Max 2011. But, before biting the bullet, and starting over in Gmax, I figured from what I had seen that working in 3ds 2011, exporting a .3ds file file, and importing with Gmax would work. However, it didn't, not completely-whether I opened the .3ds file back into Max 2011, or in Gmax. All my points were gone-but that's a quick fix. Problem: all my Texturing was gone. The Unwrap UVW for my box was MIA. I later tried starting over in Gmax, and my mapping in that didn't go quite right.

So, to again try and avoid biting the bullet, I ask the many skilled Trainz 3d creators if this is just what happens when you export to a .3ds file, or if there is something I can try to fix.

Thanks
-tyard

 

[Retro00064]

It does appear that you lose the attachment points when you export the .3ds file, but the mapping should still be there. Is the only modifier in the stack of your objects the "Editable Mesh" modifier? If so, then the mapping should still be there, but the stack was collapsed when you exported/imported the .3ds file.

Open the Material Navigator, and you should see a list of materials that the model uses. Open each one in the Material Editor, and click the little blue-and-white-checkerd cube to show that material on the model. If just that does not work, you then might also have to point the materials to their image files again.

Regards.

 

[vulcan]

Retro is correct, attachment points do not export to 3ds format.

Animation will export. Material names are truncated to 8 characters, so if you had names longer than that reload and match the material names in the gmax Material Editor.

Ian

 

[tyard]

Thanks

You were both right on the money, and I was able to easily get everything imported and working great, so that now I can move onto more advanced models/scripting.

Many thanks to you both.