Order of nodes when exporting POD from 3ds Max

PowerVR Insider
1

Hi.



When exporting a hierarchy of objects from Max to POD, the order of those objects in the resulting POD is not the same as in the objects viewer in Max. For example, a hierarchy that looks like this in Max



https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10365187/hierarchy_max.png



might come to the POD file as this



https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10365187/hierarchy_pod.png

(please ignore the top node, it’s artificially created by my importer)



I was hoping that I could rely on the order of objects in Max, but, if the POD exporter respects some kind of ordering of the nodes, I can’t see the pattern. So, my question is, does the exporter use any reliable logic to define the final order of the objects in the resulting POD file? After all, it has to order objects that are part of a flat hierarchy.



Thanks.

2

Hi,



The POD format stores the nodes in the following order



MeshNodes

LightNodes

CameraNodes

Everything else (bones, helpers etc.)



When it comes to the order of the meshes, lights, cameras etc in their respective sections it should match the order the data was retrieved from 3DS Max’s internal API (assuming no extra nodes were created by the exporter). So, though there is some logic I don’t think you can reliably predict how the node’s in a scene will be ordered upon export.



Thanks,



Scott

3

Hi, Scott.



Thanks for the clarification. Yes, looks like I can’t do what I wanted, but I think it’s for a greater good since some people might see it as a hack anyways.



Thiago