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630 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects
• Information about any cameras, lights, and
groups in the scene. Shockwave 3D treats
cameras, lights, and groups as less important
resources, and stores information about them
only in the scenegraph.
Thescenegraphhierarchyisthegluethatbinds
most of the scene assets in the Shockwave 3D file.
If this option is turned off, only shader, texture,
model, and motion resources will be written to
the W3D file, and all the other information that
specifies how objects exist in the scene, how the
scene is laid out, how the scene is lit, and how the
scene is viewed will b e missing. For this reason,
turn this option off only when exporting libraries
of animations or texture maps.
Note: Theexporterwillrememberthissetting
fromoneexporttothenext.Besuretoturnon
this option again before trying to export an entire
scene. If you do not, the result will be unusable
(exceptasanobjectandtexturelibrary).
Geometry resources—Exports all meshes and their
associated bones to the Shockwave 3D file. If this
option is turned off, the preview window will be
completely black. All other designated resources
willbewrittentotheW3Dfile.
Animations—Writes out the animation on
all objects supported by the exporter to the
Shockwave3Dfile.Thepreviewwindowisuseful
in quickly showing which animations the exporter
is capturing.
By default, the Shockwave 3D Exporter captures
the animation of all objects in the scene in every
frame. This data is compressed into a streaming
format as the file is w ritten. There may be times,
however, when you only w ant to c apture part of an
animation, or sample it more coarsely than once a
frame. If this option is cleared, the full scene will
be displayed in the preview window without any
animations.
Note: 3ds Max supports direct animation of
cameras and li ghts. If you animate a camera or
light, that animation will be exported, but an extra
geometry node will be inserted into the scene
during the export process. This geometry node
has the animation of the camera or light applied to
it,andthecameraorlightismadeachildofthis
extra node.
TheexporterdoesthisbecausetheShockwave
3D runtime engine supports keyf r ames only on
geometric nodes. The extra node that the exporter
createsisnamed"DummyAnimationNodexyz",
wherexyzisthenameoftheanimatedcamera
orlight. Thisdummygeometrynodealsohas
a dummy material applied to it named Dummy
Material, and the geometry is invisible.
Lingo™ programmers should note that the camera
or lights transform is now relative to the dummy
geometry node, that is, its parent.
Impor tant: Animation export compression collapses
non-bone-based hierarchies (simp le linked hierarchies in
3ds Max), so only animation assigned to the root exports
properly. For example, in a simple head animation where
the eyes and eyelids are linked to the skull, the skull
movements export but the eye and eyelid animations
do not. Because 3ds Max groups do not collapse on
export, you should link each element of your chain, and
then grou p each element with its parent starting from
the bottom of the chain and working to the top. Arrange
each group’s pivot point, and then animate only the
group objects, a nd not their contained elements.
Material resources—
Exports all basic materials
associated with all objects supported by the
exporter to the Shockwave 3D file. Materials
represent the most basic properties t hat can be
assigned to a surface, such as diffuse color, opacity,
and specular color.
We strongly recommend that you leave this option
on when exporting any geometry, shader, or
texture map resources. Turn this option off only