Is there any way I can tag a polygon in 3DS Max, so I can identify it using DirectX? I basically want to create polygons as refence points for hands, so my character knows where to grip an object. Is this the best way of doing it? Is this normally how it is done? Thanks Rael

(Be warned my terminology may be wrong, I use Maya myself)
You''ll probably be exporting xfiles from 3DS and xfiles don''t store names for individual polygons. Xfiles store heirarchal trees of "frames" and individual vertices will be placed in the appropriate frame that controls their location. For example, if you have a simple skeleton with a polygon body bound to it, then the ''upper_arm'' bone in Max becomes the ''upper_arm'' frame in the xfile; this is the parent of the ''lower_arm'' frame which is the parent of the ''hand'' frame. The hand frame will have the vertices which make up the hand stored inside of it because the location of the ''hand'' bone(max)/frame(xfile) is what determines the location of the hand''s vertices.

A lesson on frames can be found here

a lesson on displaying animated xfiles can be found here

Keep in mind that frames are very generic and are little more than a matrix; a solid piece of geometry will become a frame, a group of objects will become a frame, a bone will become a frame etc,etc

anyway, to attach something to the hand, just find the matrix of the frame with the hand''s name, and draw the attached object here.

This is good stuff, sounds like just what I am looking for. I have only played with bones briefly in 3DS (I will start to play with them a lot more now).

Do the bones have a length attribute as well as a position vector? I assume they also have translation and rotation matrices?

Thanks

Rael

Wow, do I really have to parse through the x-file manually? Does DX9 not provide any code to load a skinned mesh and the frame hierarchy directly from an x-file exported from 3DS max? Seems kind of strange they would not provide this since this is what 90% of people would be doing.

Am I missing something, or am I just too lazy? ;P

Regards

Ray

I also need to tag polygons in 3ds...
I thought I maybe could use the materialproperties.
(I don''t use the materials in d3d because I use lightmaps)

So I will put different materials on different polygons
which I want to have different properties in my game.

Not sure if it''s a good solution...

That sounds like a reasonable solution for tagging polygons, but I think the skinned mesh solution sounds a little more tidy for what I am trying to do. Plus I need to be able to do the skinned animation anyway

Thanks

Rael