Just a quick post to see if I can generate any interest from one of the coding gurus to fix the totally frustrating 3DS file import bug. I reported it as a bug months ago, and other people had posted about it 6 months or more prior to that.
The bug is 100% reproducible even on a simple scenes, all object names are completely scrambled. Having had to just manually rename 100 imported sub-objects in a scene (not for the first time) it is no joke !
There are so many really esoteric and complex new functions going into Blender that most users wont even understand let alone use, I just dont understand why something as fundamental as the badly broken 3DS Importer just gets totally ignored ?
Its not like 3ds is an obscure file format, I just dont get it
AFAIK, Autodesk have never released official documentation on their file formats, including 3ds, and therefore any file importers / exporters have always been the result of “hacking / debugging / disassembling … wild guesses in the dark :)” as to the contents of the files, so it’s amazing if an importer works at all
So, in that case 3ds IS indeed a VERY “obscure” format.
3ds is always a very last resort as a file format for me as other formats do a far better job.
for everyday basic use OBJ is good as it keeps uvs, triangles, object names basic material settings etc and the blender exporter/importer is pretty good really. Most apps support it as an export format so it’s usually a first choice. Animation and muti uvs aren’t supported so for those look at FBX or Collada as they are widely supported formats (although blenda collada doesn’t export multi-uvs and is painfully slow compared to FBX export, blender doesn’t have FBX import yet though, so not ideal either
I know that the 3DS format was not officially documented, but it has been reverse engineered quite extensively I think. The naming of objects must be one of the most straightforward parts.
It is easy enough to prove that it is understood, as the Blender 3ds exporter works fine in respect of object naming. I have just proved that by exporting a scene and checking it in the 3D Exploration program.
If the Exporter can do it there is absolutely no reason the Importer cannot.
Yes I need to use 3DS format. I have been working on an automated method for making model LODS in Blender. It works fairly well, but it is a slightly convulted process as I am making LODS in Vizup, which I then have to get back into Blender
3ds is the only format I can come up with that doesnt screw up the UV coordinates.
Funnily enough I’ve written an importer for my game engine’s file conversion app and I noticed some weird things going on with Blender’s exporter. It seems to screw up vertices, duplicating some here and merging others there (purposefully split). I verified this by loading the 3DS file in a couple of other importers.
I’m not sure what’s going on and it’s beginning to feel like a folly. One day I’d love to hack the 3DS scripts but my importer has totally driven out any enthusiasm I previously had. Horrible format … ikky ikky yukky 3DS.
It’s not so much that our custom hacked tools are bad at loading the files. Despite the fact that Autodesk haven’t released their documentation, the format is pretty well understood by outsiders. And it’s really not nice.
