   Exporting to 3ds and ase from MAX
  When i first started my project, i used the 3ds loader from gametutorials.com to produce my models. I extracted the vertex, polygon, text coord data into a custom file format. It worked great.Now i don''t know how to extract animation details from .3ds so for animation, i export to ase and extract the vertex coordinates for every frame. I am using frame by frame animation( I know it''s a waste of memory but that is another matter).Problem arise when i use unwrap uvw modifier on my animated models. Max exports to 3ds by splitting vertices which do not have the same texture coordinates. So it usually results in more vertices.This is what i want.But for ase, it doesnt split the vertices and exports in some other way. The problem is that i require both sets of data to have the same number of vertices. I solve this by exporting to 3ds and not preserving the MAX texture coordinates but it results in messed up texture coordinates since vertices with different texture coordinates are not split. I am running out of time and have to get this working asap. If there is any way i can make ase export preserving Max texture coordinates pls tell me how.Thx in advance. 
  Why are you using texture coordinates from a 3ds file, and vertex coordinates from an ase file? Why can't you simply take the texture coordinates out of the ase file?Well I suppose you have your reasons or I'm misunderstanding something...ASE files are much more efficient as far as memory goes They save every unique vertex (exception: two vertex in the same spot that are not welded together). So if a vertex is shared by several faces, it only saves one copy of it (ie. a cube has 4 vertex). Also note that this works per object    . (ie. if each side of the cube is a seperate object, in total there will be 24 vertex)Every unique texture coordinate is saved (TVERTLIST). Each face is given the 3 TVERT indices it needs (TFACELIST). This also goes per object.So like Max, you have only unique texture coordinates. If you duplicate the ASE verticies so that there are 3 for each face, and then recompress them the way .3ds files do (one for each texture coord) you should end up with the result you want.Hope this helps (I've been working with ASE files recently so, AFAIK it should be right... then again I haven't touched the animation data in them but I don't see how that would change anything).   [edited by - LockePick on August 1, 2003 1:45:25 AM];  The reason why i get my texture coordinates from .3ds is because i am using vertex arrays to draw my Objects. Is it possible to specify a Texture indices array for vertex array?If im not mistaken, the only way u can texture something with a vertex array is to have the same number of texture coordinates as vertices since you can only specify a index array for vertices. ;  After thinking about it, im all for using texture indices. This means that i only have unique vertices in memory and it will cut down my memory usage for animation files by 2-4 times since i am doing it frame by frame and every duplicate vertice takes up an additional 12 bytes for every frame. But then again, even if i were to use the old method, i wldnt be using more than 16mb or ram for each level, something which most PC''s today can spare.But the best part about using unique texture vertices is, i can finally use flatten mapping in 3dmax(which spreads polygons around a square space so that there is minimal white space). This means better looking textures and speeding up the texturing process during development, since me and my friends wont have to worry about inflating the number of vertices when arranging the textures to fit into 1 image.Also i would not take a performance hit since i am rendering using triangles.But what i am afraid of is that since there is no texture indices support for vertex arrays, i will have to work with immediate mode(glBegin()etc..glEnd()) instead of vertex arrays. This could cause a huge performance hit, wouldnt it?Is there any gl support for texture indices? Or does anyone have a better idea on how i could use unique texture coordinates without using immediate mode.;  If you''re going to render an object that has multiple textures using vertex arrays, you''ll want to sort the vertex array depending on material order. For example, when you load the model, look for all of the textures that use texture A and stick them at the beginning of the vertex array and then stick all of the ones that use texture B after that, and so on. Be sure to save the vertex ranges so you know how many verts to render each time. In pseudo code, it''ll look something like thisrenderObject(){bindTexture(A)drawArray(first range of verts)bindTexture(B)drawArray(second range of verts)}ect... 