Vertex animation works like this: Each frame of animation is basically a copy of the mesh..in Max you should use the Snapshot tool to make these super-imposed versions of our animated model.. The product of this is what gets exported from Max as the .3ds file. The Snapshot tool asks what frames you want super-imposed (0-15 for example), the number of copies (in our example it would be 16 since 0-15 is 16 copies), and will do all the hard work for you. The beginning and ending of each animation needs to have the same exact postioning. For instance, a firing animation sequence starts, recoils back, and comes back to rest in the exact same postion (it's "rest" postion) it started in. I hope this helps, becouse this should work perfect like robots DevilsChild using for his shadow system testing..