Hello everyone. I'm hoping that I'm posting in the right place for this question. I am part of a development team working on a 2D Isometric game. I have an artist who is using 3DS Max 8.0 to create objects for the game but I'm having difficulty explaining to him how to render isometric artwork using 3DS. I figured that the Orthographic Projection setting on the camera would work and it sort of does but the angle is wrong (it appears to be 45 degrees versus ~35 degrees). I figured that a possibility would be to export to an easy-to-use model format like MD2 and just generate the graphics through a utility like that but now it's getting difficult to figure out how to export the MD2 from 3DS. I tried just importing it into Milkshape3D but the UV coordinates are not stored and so it's another roadblock. I'd like to try to streamline the process and either render the graphics directly from 3DS Max using some sort of macro that positions the camera properly and the object in 8 directions (up/down/left/right and four diagonals). Any suggestions would be very welcome as I'm not an artist myself (I'm a programmer and the project lead). The more that could be done from within 3DS the better but if there are pre-made utilities or tutorials of any sort that could help my artist better understand what I'm trying to explain these would be very helpful as well. Thanks!

Thanks for the tip. The only problem is that I myself don't have 3DS nor do I want to steal it to attempt to write a plugin for it.

Besides that method is there another way to do this? I had though about if 3DS could export XML files -- that would make it very easy to parse through and programatically build a vertex list. As this isn't for a real-time game I'm unconcerned with optimizing geometry with triangle fans and strips.

Another possibility is using a different modelling program that is more 'game friendly'. Any suggestions?

Thanks for the posts. I ultimately went with a relatively simple solution. I opted to download Blender3D and use an isometric script type blender file that the camera set in 8 different iso directions and can animate models that are imported. Blender3D is especially useful for this as it can load animated 3DS files. It's not an ideal solution but it works and I'm happy with it.