Hello,
I’m currently using Away 4 in a compagny context and it works quite good! But I need an advice on the process we should adopt.

Our context is the following :
-  a 3D designer working on 3DS Max .
-  an actionscript dev (me) looking for assets to import.

For our 3D models, we need to keep aty least the followings after the import :
meshes, skin informations, animations, materials. (cameras, dummies, lights would be cool to but we can do without)

What file format should we adopt ? Because none of the supported ones seems to fit our needs (we used to work in Collada) :

- DAE : not supported. :(
- AWD1 :  would be nice but exporter for 3DS Max is broken
- AWD2 : would be perfect but no exporter for 3DS Max
- AC3D : no animations exported
- MD2 : not tried yet. would it fit my needs ?
- 3DS : does not seem to support animations at the time ? Heavy, not readable
- MD5 : 3DS Max exporter is akward, no materials informations ?
- OBJ : no animations

So how would you deal with this workflow? How hard would it be to link ascollada to away 4.0, can it be done by a regular developper with no 3D deep knowledges ?

I was just about to make a post with exactly the same question

In your list, you say that .obj has no animations, but did you manage to load textures / materials from .obj / .mtl files?

Is there currently any way to load a model with materials?

Currently the only way would be to use AWD2 in Maya (and maybe Blender) for animations aldo it’s in alpha state and you need to compile it yourself. Other option would be md5/md2 for animations.
Richard is working hard to get awd2 final then he will release some export bins for Maya/Blender. Cinema3d and 3DMax will hopefully follow soon after that.

For models without animations use 3DS if you can’t use awd2 yet. If you can avoid Collada do so

Cheers,
Ringo.

So for now, there is no reliable workflow between 3DS -> away 4.0 that saves animations ( md2 and md5 exporters are quite bad ). Too bad…

Thanks for the reply and the great work anyway !