For the 3DS file format, The FACES DESCRIPTION chunk seems to support only triangle list. I haven't seen any flag to indicate strip in this chunk. Secondly, other formats I know support multiple triangle lists sharing the same vertex data, ie: triangle list one for jet engine triangle list two for jet wings so on How is this supported in the 3DS format? Multiple FACES DESCRIPTION chunks? Thanks.

I wouldn't bet on the 3DS format supporting triangle strips. Its just a transfer format so there's no reason for it to store data in a format for efficient or specialized internal use.

The 3DS format can attach different material to each individual face. So you could have a single face-set for the entire jet with different faces attached to different textures. Or if you want to split the jet into multiple objects, one for each feature of the jet, you could simply reattach the vertices at load time. But as I said above, you can't expect specialized support in a generic file format.

Thanks.

I assume by object, you mean separate OBJECT BLOCK chunks. Each such chunk would contain a subset of the entire vertices of the model. If that's the case, I don't see any need to reattach these separate groups of vertices, other than saving calls to glVertexPointer(), for example.

It's just that most free models online are in the 3DS format. Any conversion to other possibly friendlier format is error prone and additional work. I m stuck with 3DS for now.

Quote:Or if you want to split the jet into multiple objects, one for each feature of the jet, you could simply reattach the vertices at load time. But as I said above, you can't expect specialized support in a generic file format.