I am doing my models in Maya, I used the vertices color component to store some ID data so that during export to DX I can get a handle to the data. I made a hand model and exported it without the skinning information, the total number of vertices was 700+ but after skinning it in Maya and exported, the total number of vertices dropped to 300+ Does anyone know why this happen? :(

Moved to Visual Arts as this seems to be more about the tool than the programming...

At a guess, Maya is doing some sort of indexing/welding such that it's able to eliminate (what it think's is) redundant information. In my limited experience of working with file formats from the standard packages they can (and often) do things that aren't directly compatable with Direct3D. For example, I vaguely remember hitting issues with the 3DS format where it would store a single position but 2 texture coordinates - what it actually meant was 2 vertices with different texture coordinates sharing a single position [smile]

Unfortunately, I've never used Maya so I have no idea if/how you can stop it breaking things.

hth
Jack

Hmmz another problem related to this issues that I have is..

I can assign my ID data the the polygon mesh if it is not binded with the joints.. meaning during the DX export, the MeshVerticesColor actually has some values. However if I were to assign the data after it is binded and follow by exporting the model, the MeshVerticesColor will be all 0s..

Maya and DX is driving me crazy.. :(

Sorry for double post.. and thanks for moving the thread... and answering my question..