Autodesk 12812-051462-9011 User Guide 3 - Page 2013

NOTE 3ds Max supports direct animation of cameras and lights. If you animate a camera or light, that animation will be exported, but an extra geometry node will be inserted into the scene during the export process. This geometry node has the animation of the camera or light applied to it, and the camera or light is made a child of this extra node. The exporter does this because the Shockwave 3D runtime engine supports keyframes only on geometric nodes. The extra node that the exporter creates is named "Dummy Animation Node xyz", where xyz is the name of the animated camera or light. This dummy geometry node also has a dummy material applied to it named Dummy Material, and the geometry is invisible. Lingo™ programmers should note that the camera or lights transform is now relative to the dummy geometry node, that is, its parent. IMPORTANT Animation export compression collapses non-bone-based hierarchies (simple linked hierarchies in 3ds Max), so only animation assigned to the root exports properly. For example, in a simple head animation where the eyes and eyelids are linked to the skull, the skull movements export but the eye and eyelid animations do not. Because 3ds Max groups do not collapse on export, you should link each element of your chain, and then group each element with its parent starting from the bottom of the chain and working to the top. Arrange each group's pivot point, and then animate only the group objects, and not their contained elements. Material resources Exports all basic materials associated with all objects supported by the exporter to the Shockwave 3D file. Materials represent the most basic properties that can be assigned to a surface, such as diffuse color, opacity, and specular color. We strongly recommend that you leave this option on when exporting any geometry, shader, or texture map resources. Turn this option off only when exporting just the animation in a scene; otherwise, the W3D file will not work correctly with Director. Texture map resources Exports all texture maps associated with all objects supported by the exporter to the Shockwave 3D file. Texture maps in Shockwave 3D are bitmap images or 2D procedural maps, such as Tile and Gradient Ramp. All bitmap images used in 3ds Max are transformed by Shockwave 3D into streaming JPEG images. 7268 | Chapter 23 Managing Scenes and Projects