   getting advanced material crap from .x
  i''ve been doing some exporting junk from 3dsmax, and it''s been working pretty well, but now i''ve run into a problem... i want to be able to do advanced things in 3dsmax and import them into my directx app (like UV maps, bump maps, opacity, etc). these attributes of the materials dont seem to get loaded in... any tips or tutorials?thanks in advance.Matt 
  There are some bump mapping samples in the SDK that you can look at but I don''t think that .x files have native support for some of the more advaned modeling techniques.  You can set alpha values for materials so that you can implement transparency.  If you want to use the more advaned features of 3D Studio Max, then you may need to look at moving to a different model format.I know AutoDesk have libraries for loading .3ds models in 3D applications.  Once you''ve loaded the .3ds into the data structures from the AutoDesk libraries, you can copy the parts you need to your own internal model format and render them.neneboricua ;  No actualy you don''t! .X is an open file format that allows you to create your own material templates, or any other type of template, and export the data. You will however have to be prepared to add some code to the MAX exporter to export the data. Jim Adams book Advanced Animation in DX has a couple of very good chapters about the .x file format and creating/reading your own data. ;  That''s why I said that .x files don''t *natively* support some of the more advanced techniques.Judging from the little bit of info in the original post, it seemed to me that the OP was probably using D3DX to load his .x file models.  Going from that to basically creating your own format and writing an exporter for it is a pretty big step.  That''s why I suggested that it might be a better idea to use a different model format that had more of the features they wanted.  There is information you can find through Google on how to load pretty much any model format into your 3D app.  That way, you don''t have to worry about all the small details of writing an exporter and dealing with the .x file encoding scheme (which is by no means trivial, especially for the advanced topics).neneboricua ;  what kind of format would you recommend? .3ds?also, if you have any links to good tutorials, please send ''em my way.thanksmatt ;  Why not use your own format? That way you could customize what you want to include in your scene or mesh files. 