3DS Animation Loaders...

[Reynard]

Me, yet again. At the moment, I'm trying to put together the character animations for my 3D tennis game. I've got both MilkShape and 3D Studio Max, and a very good Java3D loader for MS3D-format files (the Java3D Game SDK, from SourceForge). Ideally, I'd like to be able to create my character animations using 3D Studio, but I can't find a 3DS loader that supports animation. I had considered creating the animations in Max, then bringing them into MilkShape and converting them to MS3D format, but MilkShape doesn't seem capable of importing animation tracks from 3DS.

Does anyone know of any good Java3D loaders that DO support 3DS animation tracks? Otherwise I'll just have to plough ahead with MilkShape...

Thanks!

[Ifadolai]

3DS can export animations to VRML.

2 VRML loaders for Java3D can use animations: Xj3D and vrml97.jar  (see other VRML threads on which to use)

[bmyers]

Animations are a problem...

Currently, the only publically loader that I know of that supports animations is the OpenFlight loader from the guys at FullSail (and that is probably the most full-featured loader out there), and possibly the Neverwinter Nights loader.

Discussions with various people seems to indicate that Loaders end up being a "roll-your-own" if you really want to get all of the features that you need, like animations.    Or convert all of your 3d models to OpenFlight format (and buy OpenFlight!)

Personally, I would pay good money for a Java3D Loader that supports animations, multitextures, and skeletons for either 3DS or OBJ format.  It's either buy it, or hire someone else to build one, because I have too much on my plate already to spend the time to build it myself.

Any takers?  

--Brad