by abenedik
24. August 2012 09:17
Recently some customers reported that they have problems with reading some 3ds files with Ab3d.Reader3ds and Viewer3ds.
After investigating the files I have found out that the material names were not correctly written - only the first character of the material name was written to the 3ds file. For example instead of "Wood" only "W" was written as material name. In 3ds file, materials are defined first. After materials 3d objects are defined. Each object defines the used material by its name. In the broken files the full name was used - for example "Wood". But because the materials were defined by wrong names, the objects did not get the materials assigned. This problem was common in all the broken files I got recently. In some of the files there were also some other problems that broke the structure of 3ds file so much that only a first few objects could be read.
Soon we have found out that all the files with the above symptoms were exported from 3ds Max 2013. Previous versions of 3ds Max created valid 3ds files, but some changes in the new version broke the exported 3ds files.
After some search on the internet, a fix for that problem was found. It can be downloaded from:
http://area.autodesk.com/forum/autodesk-3ds-max/autodesk-3ds-max--3ds-max-design-2013/max2013-3ds-importexport-modules-fixedrecompiled
Until an official fix from Autodesk, I recommend applying this fix. It was tested from some of our customers and they confirmed that the problems were gone after installing it.
The new version of Viewer3ds (published yesterday) can also detect the problematic files and based on the above symptoms can alert the user that the file was probably exported from 3ds Max and that a fix should be applied.
UPDATE:
This problem has been fixed by an official 2013 PU6 update.
See more: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-Max-3ds-Max-Design-General/Max2013-3ds-Import-Export-modules-fixed-recompiled/td-p/4254875