I think you should be able to do that with .fbx export. have a look into that format. I guess it depends on where you are taking it aswell, another 3d package? or a compositor?

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Hi, Tyson,

Thanks a lot for your reply.
I have tried to only export the spline, the camera path, to a .fbx file and its about 12kb. I cannot open it using normal tools such as wordpad, notepad, etc. so I downloaded the fbxconverter and tried to convert the .fbx file into .obj file and it didn't work. The converted .obj file has no information in it what so ever.
Is there something I did wrong or it just cant be done by this way?

Thanks, Sun

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What program are you importing to?

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

well, obj is for exporting geometry. You can export models with fbx too but fbx can store animation data, .obj can't. I'm assuming you are trying to export the animation of a camera moving along a path right? If so where its going to be imported is an important part of the equation, is it another 3d program, a game engine, a 2d program?. You may need to convert your path animation into keyframe data for the camera object because otherwise you are exporting a max path constraint which may not be supported by the other software and or the .fbx file.

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I think he wants to export the spline to an ascii format. Thats what I get from his comments...

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--Matt

Matt, yes, that is exactly what I want.

Lets say I have an animation of 120 frames (8 seconds, frame rate: 15 fps) in 3DS Max. What I need is the camera coordinates (X, Y, Z) for each frame. So technically, I want to export the spline which has exactly 120 points.
Ideally I would like to export the path into ascii format such as a .txt file so that it can be read into opengl applications.

Thanks a lot for your replys...

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Yeah, hmmm well I have no clue about that sort of work flow but maybe that VUE file renderer could be the answer?

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Hi, Tyson,

I am genuinely impressed by how much you know about 3DS Max though you always claim that you don't have much experience in this particular area . Thank you. I tried the vue render and it does give me a different transformation matrix (for whatever is moving) for each frame. However, I can't directly use this matrix in OpenGL as this matrix is 3 * 4 instead of 4 * 4. Do you know how to fix this?

Thanks a million...

Sun

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Hi, I just realized how confusing my last post was so I just wanna clear things up. In my animation I have a spaceship attached to a spline. The animation is actually about a spaceship flying along a path. The .vue file generated by the vue renderer has a different transformation matrix for the spaceship position in each frame. This matrix has 12 elements and the last three elements are identical to the spaceship's coordinates in 3DS Max, this is the case for every frame rendered and the reason I believe this matrix is a 3 * 4 one. I tried to just add {0,0,0,1} as the forth row to that matrix and use it as the transformation matrix for the spaceship in OpenGL but the result looks very weird. So my question is: is there any way I can get a 4*4 transformation matrix for the spaceship position in every frame of the animation using 3DS Max? I have Vue 6 xStream, will it help? Many thanks...

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Thanks for saying that, I try to know as much as I can about different areas of 3d but I really only have professional experience in broadcast graphics, not so much in games.

Unfortunatley I know as much about the Vue file renderer as it says in the 3d max user reference so I can't help on that front. Ive never actually used it for anything. I do know that it has no relationship to Vue 6 the landscape software, just a coincidence on the name I'm afraid.

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Hi, Tyson,

This is Sun again. I forgot my old login details so I had to get another one...

Anyway I encountered a small problem with editing flight path in 3ds max, hope you wont mind me bothering you again.

I have the flight and flight path ready but the weird thing is everytime the flight flies pass the original point where the path starts it shakes a little bit, it look like a small glitch in the path. Do you know how to fix it?

Many thanks,

Sun

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yeah it could be a little kink in the spline or something. try adjusting the spline in that area. I've also noticed that path animation is smoother when there are many vertices in the spline path. you can add more with the refine tool in editable spline.

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Hi, Tyson,

I tried to add more vertexes with the refine tool. It made it worse. Please could you elaborate on how to edit the spline?

Many thanks,

Sun

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