Hi Friends, been having lots of fun creating scenes with Vue4. Since you all been real helpful to me before, i have another question. I have found DXF & 3DS plant files on the internet for download. However when i try and load/import them into V4 they are all black in color. The plant shape is there, but the plants themsleves are black or grey. I am not sure what i'm doing wrong. What are advantages/disadvantages of 3DS vs DXF? If i could find a quick checklist of how to load/import a Plant file into vue i would be forever thankful. Montanan

You can import both no problem into Vue but usually they have no textures and you have to retexture them. 3ds files somtimes have textures and if the textures are in the same dir as the mesh when you import them vue should bring in the textures also. Very rare with 3ds files that this works properly. So you are doing nothing wrong just make some new textures for them.

Yep, what Pete said. :) If the plant objects have multiple parts, you can open the group in the hierarchy browser (lower right) and select each sub-object individually to add a material. If the plants are a single piece, double-click each one and check the editing options. There may be a choice enabled to split them. If so, click on "Split" and then the object will have multiple parts to work with. Sometimes a 3DS object will be in a single piece but still have multiple texture areas. Check for that by opening the Material Summary and see what materials are showing. If there are multiple areas, they may all be gray or black, but they will likely have different names and be applicable to different areas of the object. A good idea is to use basic flat colors as the initial material. Doesn't matter what colors. Make one part blue, another part green, another part purple...just so you can visually tell each color apart easily. Then you will be able to get a better look at the model, seeing where each material is applied to. This'll help define each material, whether it's leaves or stem or flower petal, etc. Once you can see which is which, then you can select more appropriate materials. Another tip: when you've set up the plant with materials, save it as a VOB object. Now all the materials are already in place the next time you want to use that model. :)

Oh ya what he said. I left out some details.

I have readily imported files in 3DS and LWO (Lightwave) formats and COB files too into Vue4. Mostly worked with Star Trek meshes. Most of the time the textures, if present come along too, but I find that it is better to re-texture the meshes once in Vue. This is usually easy since the hierarchy of the mesh is preserved, not always mind you! In terms of ease of use the 3DS format seems pretty reliable, but would like to see the MAX format directly supported. Whatever format you import in, it's always best from my limited experience to redo the textures within Vue, somehow the textures that come along with some models don't always look good. Lester