mesh manipulating and exporting in 3ds format

[m4tricol]

Hello everybody, can someone help me to find info for:
- join two different mesh and export in a single mesh(3ds).

Example: load mesh1.3ds, load mesh2.3ds, join (mesh3= mesh1+mesh2) then export in mesh3.3ds

Currently I'm making a character editor and i would change cloth, body parts and finally export it in a 3ds format.

thanks

[JP]

Well to combine two meshes you'd add all the vertices from one into another, all the indices, texture coords, materials etc as well.

To save you'd have to write a file exporter as i think irrlicht only saves out to irrmesh (but if you're planning on using the characters in irrlicht again anyway it doesn't matter if you export to irrmesh as irrlicht obviously supports loading that!)

Are you sure you want to combine the meshes though? possibly attaching the body parts etc would be better?

3DS also seems like a strange choice for a character model as it doesn't support animation in irrlicht...

[m4tricol]

thanks for response, anyway 3ds it's for a start, only static character, I planning to moving in another format like .x or md2. later.

[JP]

Why not use a better format now? Could save you a lot of work! With .X and .B3D formats you can use the bones/joints to attach weapons, body parts, clothes etc which avoids the need for combining 3DS meshes.

[hybrid]

Adding static meshes together is rather simple, jus go through the second one's meshbuffers and add the to the first one. Then send the first one to a mesh writer. But JP's right, we don't have a 3ds writer. You can write .irrmesh, Collada, or STL files.