Real-time 3D Character Animation with Visual C++

11	Importing geometry and animation from 3DS Max

Getting information about the file format for 3DS Max has proved very difficult. No doubt once this book is published someone will point me in the right direction, but I have tried many user groups without success. There are some limited and unreliable documents available for the ‘3DS’ format, but very little about Max. In the end, I decided to derive the information I required from an ASCII export of a 3DS Max scene file. 3DS Max differs from Lightwave by combining geometry, surface and motion into a single file, and provides the option to export this as a plain text file. In this chapter we will look at getting the geometry, surface and motion data out of this file.

An ASCII export of a ...