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This was a big controversy not just on this website but quite frankly all over the internet with various games, It is difficult to find support on this but it is quite possible to work on an object with animations and all and then export directly using Pandasoft Exporter except doing it correctly with the correct settings will export correctly and accurately

This is targetted towards the people who have a trial or full version of Autodesk 3DS MAX but really it works 100% better and quicker than a lot of free programs which I use on a day-to-day basis, Direct X Animation is difficult to work with and Autodesk really suits best for exporting DirectX animations even though I would gladly prefer Blender or FragMotion for all other aspects of modeling

Load your model with or without animations, make sure it is already UV Mapped. If you don't know how to UV map with 3DS MAX then export in a workable format and use your UV mapper, once you start animating it's very difficult to UV Map or improve a UV Map

This turorial covers DirectX Export so I have to assume you have now got the simple or full animation built, Make sure you download Pandasoft DirectX Exporter into the plugins folder of 3DS MAX

1.) You only want to export selected not export all, this may seem a little odd but when you export all it exports a bunch more information such as possible cameras, light's and in a different general format so Right Click anywhere in one of the view ports and click select

2.) Click and Highlight all of your model till it's highlighted white, It's okay to quickly do this if your not working with 2 or more models at one time which most people aren't

3.) Click the Autodesk logo beside the edit button on the main menu and Roll your mouse over export without clicking on it, When the sub-menu appears to the right click export selected

4.) Click Panda Direct X and choose a location and name

Under 3DS Max objects select all except for Save Settings In Scene which Incldes:

* Mesh Definition
* Material
* Inline
* Include animation
* Bones
* Geometric
* Dummy

But not save settings in scene

The next tab (Mesh) select all except for flip normals and custom normals, which includes

* Mesh Normals
* Mapping Cordinates
* Vertex Colors
* Optimize Mesh: Normal

The tab after (Animation)
Add in your animation length, if it's an item probably just going to have one but if it's a character it's probably going to have many

Make sure the start and end is correct like I created this animated door with 75 frames so I have start 0 and end 75, If somethings already there it's probably wrong so just double check that it meets the amount of frames you have.

Animation Method: Sampled
Key Options: Position, Scale, and Rotate
Timeline: Key Sequence (Mine was 2 seconds yours might differ)

The Texture and FX Files

* Convert Texture Map
* Scale to nearest power of 2
* TGA Format
* Do not Overwrite

Keep - Full path name and white diffused unchecked as well as Include FX File and Paremeter

XFile:
Check

* Binary with compression
* Sub Frame Hierarchy
* Left Handed Axis

Uncheck Include Animation Options

5) after export if you optionally have DirctX Viewer from Microsoft you can check to see if it's loadable into the viewer and if it plays your animation extremely fast!!

USe your favorite program for input, What I usually do is open my model in lithunwrap and without changing anything export a TGA texture file and a Wavefront OBJ version so I can paint it in 3D with Photoshop for better accuracy but the rest is up to you

Make sure that the program your using supports entity animations or your animation will not output, Entity Creation System does not support animated entities and it's a pay-for program, I prefer to use the simple Make entities from X files tool that you can download from the FPSC website