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Old 17th December 2007, 07:33 PM   #1
Frosty555
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Smile Milkshape 3D Ascii vs. Textures

Hi everyone,

http://www.inivis.com/forum/showthre...ight=milkshape - This thread talks a little about my concern.

I am writing some OpenGL software and I wanted to use AC3D as my tool to create and manipulate models for use in the program. I was looking at using Apron's fairly full featured Milkshape 3D Ascii Loader (http://www.morrowland.com/apron/tut_gl.php - about mid-page).

However, it looks like AC3D, while it exports the texture coordinates, does not actually have any way of including the texture file associated with each mesh.

So uhm... I guess my question is why not? And how hard would it be to make it do that? Milkshape's Ascii format *does* support texture files in the materials. Is there any way to get AC3D to include the path to the texture file in the export? Maybe an alternative plugin? Geez even a programatically inserted comment above each mesh indicating the path would be fine :P.
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Old 18th December 2007, 03:14 PM   #2
Andy
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Default Re: Milkshape 3D Ascii vs. Textures

AC3D's textures are per mesh. In Milkshape, they are attached to a material. So - the mapping is not necessarily simple.

The easiest solution at the moment is to set the textures inside Milkshape.
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Old 18th December 2007, 06:11 PM   #3
lisa
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Default Re: Milkshape 3D Ascii vs. Textures

I have an alternate Milkshape exporter I wrote some time ago... it handles textures, as well as skeletons from AC3D so you don't have to re-rig, either. You may get some redundant materials, as I solved the texture problem by exporting one material per mesh, regardless. For me, this works as my models are generally set up that way anyhow.

You can download it here:
http://www.independentdeveloper.com/...ascii-exporter

FWIW, although I wrote the plug-in I'm not really in love with Milkshape. The tool has some UI issues, and despite being text the file format isn't the easiest to work with, at least if you want to load the animation data... I can see what the author was *trying* to do, but the math seems slightly botched.

I bought Milkshape before I purchased Poser to animate my AC3D models, but Poser ended up being a much better value... the small difference in price was well worth it for things like IK and a proper timeline editor, and BVH files are very easy to import and well-supported by many different tools. Milkshape certainly has it's place, but personally I find I don't use it much anymore.
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Old 18th December 2007, 06:14 PM   #4
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Default Re: Milkshape 3D Ascii vs. Textures

Oh, incidentally... the AC3D format is documented here:
http://www.inivis.com/ac3d/man/ac3dfileformat.html
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