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Original post by TechnoHydra
I''m not sure I can be any help at all here, but in Blender there''s the ability to Parent an object to another object so that if the Parent moves the Child moves with it. No idea how that is done in 3DS.

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That''s pretty much how it works for any program that allows you to use skeleton. Without this concept you cant do FK or IK, for a start.
But like I said, I think his problem is a programming problem, not a software one.
You *should* ask in another forum, I am sure you would have more answers.

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Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

Just put them in seperate files, put the sword center at 0,0,0. Then in code, move the sword to the position of the hand AFTER you''ve moved your object around and stuff. This would make the sword in the proper location no matter which weapon or position the player is. Once you add in animation support, you will basically just apply the transforms on the hand that is holding it to the sword, that way it ends up in the same orientation as the hand does.

Ready4Dis - that works fine. I only have problems when I want to combine two 3DS files and output them to a single file.

ahw - Yeah, thanks again. I suppose it could be a software issue, but in my business life I''m just not that used to seeing a software bug show up in two totally different codebases. The common factor here has got to be the source data - the way I merged the files, their relative coordinates and the absolute coordinates the vertices take relative to one another when I export to a 3DS file.

I''m going to go figure this out with basic primitives right now and I''ll post you guys if I know something.

Thanks again!

It can be reproduced with 3rd party software and basic primitives. Here are the steps:

1) Download nuetral 3rd party freeware to test render such as Quick3D (to rule out software bugs).
2) In 3DS Max, create a standard primitive cube. Just click create primitive box and drag the mouse in one of the viewports. Save the file as box1.max
3) In 3DS Max, create a second cube using drag-and-drop. Make it roughly the same size as the first. Save as box2.max.
4) In 3DS Max, start a new scene, choose file-merge. Select box1.max''s cube. Repeat, merging box2.max''s cube.
5) Select both cubes and choose "export selected" as a 3DS file - box.3ds.
6) Open box.3ds in your nuetral 3rd party renderer. Note that the boxes do not line up exactly as they did in 3DS Max.
7) In 3DS Max select one cube, go to the IK tab and select pivot. Select the "pivot only" toggle button. Note the pivot position may not be in the object''s center. This probabgly accounts for the oddly exported local coordinates. Move the pivot point and re-export. Open the new file, and notice that the object has moved (perhaps drammatically, depending on your scale).