How to export .3ds file for using RenderMonkey from 3dsMax?

Question

How to export .3ds file for using RenderMonkey from 3dsMax 2010? When I look into Stream Mapping in RenderMonkey, there are POSITION, NORMAL, TEXCOORD, TANGENT, BINORMAL, TESSFACTOR etc. I want to know how that information export for sending vertex shader as streaming data. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Which streams do you want/need? A 3ds usually contains POSITION, NORMAL, and TEXCOORD. If you export from 3DSMax to an OBJ then you have more control over exactly what gets exported. TANGENT and BINORMAL are used for shaders such as bump-mapping and are generated by RenderMonkey. I don't know how to use TESSFACTOR. Just make sure that your VS input struct uses the correct semantic (pink text in rendermonkey) for each input stream and RM will populate them appropriately.

Answer 2

You can use DirectX Exporter for 3ds Max to export your scenes to a x file which contains texcoords, normal and binormal. The latest release can even convert a standard material with multiple UV coordinates to a DirectX material(.fx) and generate shader code such as tangent-space normal mapping.