Irrlicht Engine

Hello all, I've just started using IRRLicht and am quite excited about it. I've made a simple PlaneMesh, and I've incorporated Newton. YAY.
OK, so thats all great.

But now anytime I try and add a model that didnt come with the engine I get ugly icky weird stuffness. Basically with lots of large pieces missing.

Is there some trick I missed? Do I not understand something about exporting models out of 3DStudioMax in 3ds format?

I've tried using models I've found online, making my own, and even making ridiculously simple models out of only rectangles. But the only thing that seems to come out right when I view it in irrlicht is a single box or ball.

Help!

Thanks,
Nihal

could you post a screenshot and your loading model code?

that would help us help you better

I Had a bit of trouble too ....

My solution was to make sure the objects were Editable Meshes .... (I Was creating Editable Poly's )

If it's not a Editable Mesh, It comes out funny in Irrlicht, so if it's not a editable Mesh, just Right Click on the Object in 3DS Max, Choose Convert to: --> Editable Mesh ...

Then Export ...

Hope it works for you ...

OK, so here's what it looks like in 3DStudio Max:


And here's what happens in IRRLicht:


And here is the 3ds file I made
http://www.claim.md/ntitan/ncraft1.3ds

It looks like you have a lot of backfaces in your model.

In MAX you probably don't see a difference, but for 3D cards there is a difference between faces that are like this:
and faces that are like this:
Depending on what is defined as front-face (clockwise or counterclockwise) one of the two is a frontface (visible) and the other is a backface (invisible).

There are some settings that can be changed w.r.t. front/backface rendering by the way, but that is expensive.

It's best to reverse the faces.

Unfortunately I don't know how to do that with 3D Studio since I don't have it.

Well, I tried to make it an editable mesh, still no luck.

The backfaces thing makes sense. But I cant figure out how to turn them around. Any 3DStudio max wizards out there know how to do this?

Thanks,
Nihal

More updates:
So now its looking less like its a normals/backface problem. I told it to not show the object as to sided, and I found where to flip the normals, and I'm pretty sure all the faces are pointing the right direction.

Any other suggestions?

What is everyone else using to make their models for IRRLicht?

Nihal

I always got such results using 3DS format. Try to export your model in X format. Search "panda x" on the forum.

I Loaded your model into Anim8tor (You can find this by checking tools), then told Anim8tor to Fix Normals, Exported and it loaded fine with Irrlicht ...

What is everyone else using to make their models for IRRLicht?

So far i've been using .3ds files to load my models into Irrlicht and i had no problem at all

in my pov 3ds is fine though a little bit limited, so you can use it with Irrlicht.

my first Demo with the engine here : http://ben.kicks-ass.net/FanDemo.zip

all 3ds inside

i haven't yet looked at your model in Max but if i can i will and try to load it in Irrlicht to see what it does ....

YAY, so it looks like exporting the file into .X did the trick.
Fingers, I couldnt find Anim8tor, is that a seperate piece of software? I'd still like to find a way to 'Fix Normals' since apparently 3DSMax 7 is not 'supported' by Panda's DirectX exporter.

However, it seemed to work anyway.

Here is the link I found the exporter at, incase any one cares:
http://www.andytather.co.uk/Panda/direc ... loads.aspx

Thanks everyone for your help!

.X format will also give you support for animation and 2 levels of textures. Don't know the exact name for this, I'm not an artist...

ntitan: http://www.anim8or.com/main/index.html