[QUOTEIs it really true that you can't export a true vector based circle from 3ds?[/QUOTE]

Not sure what you mean by a 'true' vector-based circle. The .SWF file format supports shapes, whose definition can be perused in detail at http://www.openswf.org . There is no 'CIRCLE' tag.

If I recall correctly (it's been a while), the highest-degree curve supported by the .SWF format is quadratic. In Flash, you can see curves represented by tangent handles on either side of a point.

Even in the Flash development environment, a circle is not a 'true' circle. It is represented as a sequence of curves. For example, http://www.2112fx.com/image/flashcircle.gif . Create a circle yourself, then go into subselect mode (I always want to call this sub-object mode).

A vector renderer exports a perspective view of an object in a shape tag, which is a delta-encoded sequence of points and curve information, along with fill information for the shape. Most of them employ a simple approach of representing the outline of a shape as a sequence of lines (one coefficient of the quadratic is zero).

Swift 3D has the ability to render curves and control the degree of fit between straight lines and curves. So, it can get much closer to a 'smooth' representation of something like a circle.

As Bill said, much depends on the detail of your geometry. Even in Swift, it takes a pretty high-poly sphere to generate a 'smooth' outline.

I apologize if I butchered some of the explanation -- it's been quite some time since I experimented with writing directly to .SWF from C++. There is a forum devoted to this topic on FlashKit with people much more up to date than myself.


good luck!