Quote:Original post by Bad Maniac The more I look at the .X format, the nicer it seems. looks like it has everything we need. Has anyone used .x to an extent and could possibly consider giving us a few pointers where to find good resources on how to manually parse .x files?
You might want to take a look at this article. [smile]
When General Patton died after World War 2 he went to the gates of Heaven to talk to St. Peter. The first thing he asked is if there were any Marines in heaven. St. Peter told him no, Marines are too rowdy for heaven. He then asked why Patton wanted to know. Patton told him he was sick of the Marines overshadowing the Army because they did more with less and were all hard-core sons of bitches. St. Peter reassured him there were no Marines so Patton went into Heaven. As he was checking out his new home he rounded a corner and saw someone in Marine Dress Blues. He ran back to St. Peter and yelled "You lied to me! There are Marines in heaven!" St. Peter said "Who him? That's just God. He wishes he were a Marine."
.X format is okay... ****HOWEVER****, if you care about having your in-game models look great w/ shaders and materials, then either write your own .X exporter for Max, or find a different format.
On my last project, we ran into a whole world of trouble trying to use the Panda exporter for .X format. We could get a basic model exported, but it wasn't handling materials properly. (I don't know if this is the artist's fault for using it incorrectly, but according to him, he tried everything possible to get it to work).
I use the md2 format. It is pretty simple and fits my needs perfectly. I don't need weighted vertices or anything like that. I just need verts, texUVs and keyframe animation works fine for me. The files aren't too big, and there were many tuts when I looked. Blender has an exporter too, though I haven't tested it too much. If you need anything more complex, I'd say the md5 probably is the best from what I've heard, though I've never used it.
