loading mesh

[ExMember001]

hi,
i'm starting a little 3d project.. first time for me..
I have trees in my scene , so far i need to load the 3ds file everytime i want a clone of this tree.

my question...
is it possible to load the 3ds 1 time and show the tree several times and at different position without reloading the mesh?

[Todd Riggins]

Hi Kript,

   Unless i missed something in the docs, there isn't an aurora3d method to "copy" a 3d object. I hadn't used aurora3d for a while now so I forget if one can actaully take the 3d mesh data from a loaded .3ds object and recreate it as many time as you want. If we can do that, I would approach it by locking the vertex and index buffers of the .3ds object and copy it's data over to a new mesh created with CreateMesh. With that, you could either create seperate mesh objects cloning the .3ds object of the tree or even create a bunch trees using just one mesh to speed up the rendering process. Without the time for me to try that out, I have no idea if that's possible. 

Since Aurora3D is based on DirectX 9, I would like to see direct shader support.  With that, one could write an instancing shader where you can copy 3d objects like how you want. But we cant do that ...yet.

Thought I would share my thoughts on that. Mabie somebody else here can share another way to do that. It would be interesting to know.

[ExMember001]

Copy 3D objects, thats what im talking about
and thats what i want to do...

thank you Todd.