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Well I've got a couple questions. I got a .x to 3ds converter linked to( or maybe I dont and they meant another on the plug page). Its 3dwin 5. When its importing the .x file it doesn't seem to find the tga file but thats cause I was trying the stock figures in my test and they don't have the tga, just the dds, but I'm not sure if this is the start of my problems.( pic lower left on viewable )

Then, when I try importing this new .3ds to 3dmax I totally replace the scene and have try both converting units and not converting and even thought it asks to set the animation frames as you can see in the lower right photo its on frame 47 and still in the davinnci pose.

At first I wanted to check out how FPS set up there cameras/animations/key frames ect so during my modeling I could 'mirror' there actions. I later imported my model so I could get a basis for size for a 'main boss'.

Is there no way to see these animations once converted?
Is there no .x to .3ds converter that dose this?
Is there a specific camera position?

Everyone talks about how darkmatter don't have bones....

Dose fps require bones? or is it just needing the animation that the bones create.
If it dose need bones is there a limit? Like my boss has extra joints below his knee( cloven hove kinda deal)

Is this going to throw a monkey wrench into things if theres a "bones limit"?

Is there a frames limit for the .x created by the Panda plugin?


I'm sure many of these things have been asked but using this search engine here isn't yielding the results.

Id appreciate any help in this area....Thx in Advance...

http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/3257/puzzeled0il.jpg
url incase the attachment dont load since im on that new member delay deal.

Hi locrian
I don't entirely understand what all the problems are, but maybe this will help.

3ds format saves animation in a format that stores the transform, rotation and scale of mesh parts in a hierarchy.

X files animation for characters is stored as a single mesh that has vertex weight information so its moved according to a skeleton - in this case a character studio biped. (Note that for weapons we used TRS transforms, not a skeleton - these animations should convert to 3ds ok)

In short, converting an x model to 3ds will destroy the animation.

As far a textures go - 3ds only supports texture filenames that are 8 letters long and don't save file path information, and I'm pretty sure they only suport bmp textures.

I suggest you try a trial version of Milkshape 3D to see if that will import the X files (maybe someone from the community can answer this)

In the EA versions we saved 6 different character files, each animated depending on a weapon type, for V1 we needed one file to contain all the animations for the purposes of multiplayer. I did notice problems with the Panda exporter once animation frames exceeded 3000, but a lot of animations ended up being removed in July05 due to them being obsolete for V1 FPSC and I never had to deal with the issue properly - all I can suggest is to try it and see.

As for extra bones, they shouldn't present a problem - The only bone that the engine really needs access to is the bip01head for looking at the player in certain scripts.

Thanks Simon,
That did answer alot of my questions. Your last statement

....is this meaning all bipeds should be named consitantly as the FPS engine looks at the biped skeleton? Im also using charater studio 4.2