Re: Implementing Browsers

Syndesis Corporation ([email protected])
Mon, 05 Jun 1995 09:45:11 -0500


Rycharde Hawkes <[email protected]> writes:
>Vassilis Bourdakis wrote:
>> Rycharde Hawkes wrote:
>>
>> >Bernie mentioned that 3D studio uses triangles only.
>>
>> Actually 3DS does create multi vertex polygons... simply the way it sets the
>> normals is a bit dodgy... Thats all. It does _NOT_ work on simple individual
>> triangles!
>
>I've been working with v1.5 of the file format (!). Obviously things
>have changed since then because all that gives me is tristrips.

No, 3D Studio uses only triangles, even in release 4. However,
they do use the trick of having a flag for each edge of a triangle
that sets whether that edge is drawn in the user interface or not.

When you build say, a cube, with their built-in tools, it
sets the diagonal edges of the faces invisible, which gives you
the impression it allows >3-sided polygons. You can also
set the visibility of edges yourself if you prefer confusion.

When my company's InterChange file format translator creates
a 3D Studio file from a model in another format that supports
polygons, we set the edge visibility flags so that you see the
same "polygon" edges as the original object.