If I were to export a rigged model with an armiture to another format, say .3ds or .obj, and then import it into the corresponding program, how many of the constraints would be lost? The ones that I’m most worried about are the IK Solver, Stretch To, and Copy Location/Rotation constraints.
Bump bump bump bump.
Okay, given that this must be a fairly common problem, there really is no reason for this to go unanswered.
AFAIK, 3ds doesn’t support constraints at all. I wrote a 3ds parser few years ago, and honestly I don’t remember a single chunk describing any kind of contraints. Most likely all your animation will be baked, and every constraint will be lost.
Not sure about *.obj, but the *.obj I’ve been working with doesn’t support anything related to animation - only vertices, materials, normals, but nothing related to animation at all. If nobody updated the format, then again, every constraint will be lost.
your best choice (but not simplest) will be probably write an exporter for blender, and importer for your other software package. Or you could try your luck with collada. Or you could search for another model format. Both formats (*.3ds, *.obj) are quite dated and aren’t suitable for data exchange.
P.S. By the way, you had enough time to try this thing yourself and see if it works or not.
(I though I responded to this, I have no idea why it didn’t show up)
Look like I’ll have to go with another format then. And regarding your supremely unhelpful wisecrack about 'having enough time to write an exporter myself, my knowledge of Python is very limited. I have no idea how to write an exporter for Blender. I am also very dubious about your remark that .obj is being out of date and unideal for transferring models, I tried using importing a Collada model once and got nothing, which makes me think that it isn’t worth crap when when it comes to importing.
A few points:
.3ds only supports basic vertex animation
.obj is a model only format and does not support any animation.
The format you choose will depend on three things. What formats can your target application import? Does blender have an exporter for these formats? Do these formats support skeletal animation?
IK, stretch etc are unlikely to be exported so you’ll probably need to bake them first no matter which format you use.
Most Blender scripts were written by people who had a need, hence the advice you were given.
Lose the attitude.
HTH