I'm using wings and Blitz3D with great results. But there are a few issues that you need to be aware of.
1. When wings exports .3ds it uses the formats native orientation of the axis, thus giving you the effect of the model being rotated 90 degrees. You can of course rotate the model correspondingly in wings before exporting it but find it to be much better to use the LoaderMatrix() command to reorient the axis. Add this line to your code (before loading the .3ds files). It should do the trick:
LoaderMatrix "3ds",1,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,1
The LoaderMatrix command tells Blitz3D how it should load objects of a certain type (in this case "3ds") based on a matrix. (If you don't know what matrices are, don't worry. You can read up on it eventually :) It's a good thing to know if you plan on working in 3D.) Note that all .3ds files you load after using this command will be loaded with this matrix transformation
2. Hmmm...You say that you have problems with normals facing the wrong way and stuff. This is strange since I have never ever had a normal problem when using wings/Blitz3D. It's one of the things that I really like about wings. It handles normal problems beatifully. So I'm afraid that the culprit in this case is your modelling. You mention that you are new to 3D-modelling and this might be the answer. It is quite possible (in any 3D modelling app) to create objects whith normal problems. Here are a few things you can check in wings
Check the edges of the object. make sure that all vertices that should be conected really are.
You could also chose to triangulate the object to find problem faces in your model.
Watch out when extruding! If you are extruding multiple adjacent faces, use 'Extrude Region' and not 'Extrude', since this will result in the extrusion of faces on all edges on all of the faces being extruded, i.e. you will have faces 'inside' the model which are not visible but that still are there and will cause problems since the occupy the same space but with different normals
I really think the problem is with the model, not the exporter (although you might not see it in wings without actually knowing what to look for...)
If you like I can take a look on your models to se if I can spot any potential problems with them...
Hope this helps!
PetBom
1. When wings exports .3ds it uses the formats native orientation of the axis, thus giving you the effect of the model being rotated 90 degrees. You can of course rotate the model correspondingly in wings before exporting it but find it to be much better to use the LoaderMatrix() command to reorient the axis. Add this line to your code (before loading the .3ds files). It should do the trick:
LoaderMatrix "3ds",1,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,1
The LoaderMatrix command tells Blitz3D how it should load objects of a certain type (in this case "3ds") based on a matrix. (If you don't know what matrices are, don't worry. You can read up on it eventually :) It's a good thing to know if you plan on working in 3D.) Note that all .3ds files you load after using this command will be loaded with this matrix transformation
2. Hmmm...You say that you have problems with normals facing the wrong way and stuff. This is strange since I have never ever had a normal problem when using wings/Blitz3D. It's one of the things that I really like about wings. It handles normal problems beatifully. So I'm afraid that the culprit in this case is your modelling. You mention that you are new to 3D-modelling and this might be the answer. It is quite possible (in any 3D modelling app) to create objects whith normal problems. Here are a few things you can check in wings
Check the edges of the object. make sure that all vertices that should be conected really are.
You could also chose to triangulate the object to find problem faces in your model.
Watch out when extruding! If you are extruding multiple adjacent faces, use 'Extrude Region' and not 'Extrude', since this will result in the extrusion of faces on all edges on all of the faces being extruded, i.e. you will have faces 'inside' the model which are not visible but that still are there and will cause problems since the occupy the same space but with different normals
I really think the problem is with the model, not the exporter (although you might not see it in wings without actually knowing what to look for...)
If you like I can take a look on your models to se if I can spot any potential problems with them...
Hope this helps!
PetBom