Mesh hierarchy lost when importing/exporting 3ds

I have designed a model with multiple objects organised in the outliner with parent and child relations. Problem is when I export the model as 3ds, there are no nodes in the resulting 3ds, inly a flat set of meshes.

Likewise when I import a 3ds object that I know has an object hierarchy, it appears in the outliner as a flat list of objects.

What am I missing?

The .3ds file format doesn’t understand what parenting is

Yes it does. Here is a screenshot from the Deep Exploration software that outlines the hierarchy of a robot arm.


Message lost again? Please accept me as a human :slight_smile:

Here is a copy of the robot arm above.

Attachments

robotarm.zip (8.25 KB)

Any news on this? Im trying to follow http://www.lightpower-files.de/Assets/MA_Tutorial_Creating_Fixtures_for_MA_3D.pdf
guide for creating models in a lighting visualizer software.

I’m having the same problems as OP, as soon as i export my model to 3ds all the parent-child hierarchy is lost, and i can’t seem to find any info on it googling my problem, this was the only thread i could find on the issue.

So… Blender doesn’t support exporting parent-child mesh hierarchys, why not just put that in the documentation? I ended up using a trial period version of 3dsmax to import my 3ds model, fix the hierarchy and export the model again.

The 3rd party software accepted the model and I’m a bit closer to my goal!