hey guys, i am exporting xfiles from 3ds max 8 for a game and am having some material issues. how does one export a multi-textured model from max into xfile format? by multi-texturing, i mean actual multi-texturing (multiple diffuse textures, specular maps, light maps, bump maps, etc), not assigning different textures to different faces. I figured that out, thank god. also, i need an xfile that derives alpha information from a 32bit png texture such that the 24bits of RGB data go to diffuse and the 8bits of alpha go to... alpha =) is that possible? i'm using the Panda Exporter for Max 8. any help anyone can provide would help a lot. finding comprehensive information on x file building in max is slim, especially beyond the basics.

I'm not sure about your first question, but I think both of those things are done via the game engine. In order to get multi-texturing (or anything beyond diffuse, for that matter), you likely have to do it via the game engine in a shader or material or something similar. Your model file will 'remember' what faces get what material applied, but you must define these materials via the engine, as far as I think, such advanced parameters are not kept in .x
As per your second question, that's also done via the game engine. An alpha channel is just another 8 bits/pixel of information that can be used an infinite amount of ways. You have to tell the game engine to use it as an opacity (I assume that's what you mean) map instead of anything else (such as a specular map).

hey prof, thanks for replying.

i think i got the alpha thing working. part of what i need to do in max is export a second set of uv coordinates into our xfile... i'm told it is possible, but no one can walk me through it and documentation is sparse. this is all using the panda exporter and max 8.

have you worked with xfiles before?

X files has a generic template called "TextureFilename" for texture maps and that's it.
Most people use it for the diffuse texture map. There's no other way to add more texture
map templates for X files unless you're a programmer.

The Panda Exporter allows you to export two sets of uv coords.