I have realized that many users prefer to use FBX file format for exporting their objects from 3ds Max. Since my knowledge is a little bit limited any other format other than 3ds, let me ask you guys.
As a new Unity user, I would like to know if FBX format is a better way of exporting compared to 3ds format.
I also read the “3ds max specific documentation” and happily see tons of supported stuff for FBX export. I just wonder if these are not possible to use on 3ds exports. Or is there any performance based issues on 3ds exports ?
As a summary, I would like to ask you guys:
“Should I always prefer FBX format to export my objects from 3ds Max?”
I am just curious if I shouldn’t use “.3ds” file format at all. I have several self prepared 3ds libraries such as 3d tile sets and various themed assets etc. Should I import them back to 3ds Max(FBX) to get the most of it?
.3ds is ancient and limited even for static meshes. For starters it only supports 1 UV channel and no vertex weighting of bone animation.
Main reason I use FBX is for better project organization. Often with max you will want to work with more than just one model at a time for any particular scene. Max layers are quite powerful and you can have things like seperate characters, skelletons in different layers, or Helper objects, light sets for lightmapping, high res and low res geom for normal mapping in the same max file all neatly organized in layers.
If you export a max file you export the the whole scene and unity doesn’t recognize layers or hidden objects. So absolutely everything is exported.
With .fbx I can hide layers, export selected as a fbx and isolate the parts of the scene I want to use in unity. It’s just simpler and I don’t have to wait for the lengthy time it takes for unity to load max in the background, convert the max file to fbx and close max again.
I used 3ds format about 20 year ago It’s a complete waste of time, has almost no modern features that make it useful in game dev.
Without any reason, I was thinking that 3ds is an enhanced file format compared to many others formats.
Jessy,
Thank you for your great help too.
I will need to export several animations for some background objects in the near future. Since I have never needed to export animations before, I wouldn’t know that could cause problems with 3ds format. Thanks
It seems that I will ask many questions. Lets hope that I can minimize that question count by effectively search the previous posts.
group your object that you want give animation to them in 3DMax, then go to schematic view, and define sub group for each group…using the button have link image on it…
come to unity…
add animation tab to screen…
select you object, click in the part in front of your object name, click on , and then click on create new clip,…
hit record button
then , add key, then move the red bar that appear, on any time you want…then set new value for any thing, like in any axis (x,y,z) of position,rotation,scale…
it will automate add new key, so just then stop the record button.
and then use your animation.
in down of animation layout, you can also set if you want it continuously play the animation or once or …
so you don’t need to do this on max and use 3ds object.
