Writing a command line scene parser for 3DS Max 2010

I am trying to find out if its possible at all to write a command line scene parser for 3ds max 2010. I want t开发者_运维百科o gather some information from the max scene without having to load up the Max studio. I have been informed that its not possible to access the Max API without starting the max studio.

Possible use of my program

C:\myparser.exe "myfile.max" > bonenames.txt

Any help/suggestions/hacks are greatly appreciated :)

Thanks

Most anything is possible with enough time, experience, and resources. But what you are suggesting is generally not feasible unless you:

1. Have full documentation on the binary file format of 3ds Max 2010, or
2. Need to extract an exceptionally small amount of information from the scene.

If you are only attempting to extract bone names from the file—and only for actual bone objects instead of arbitrary geometry used as a bone—there is a chance (albeit very slim) that creating many files that differ in very minor ways might allow you perform a binary diff and deduce some patterns from the contents.

For example, save an empty Max scene, then add one bone to it and save that, then rename the bone (using the same number of characters) and save that, then rename the bone to add one character and save that, then move the bone and save that, then add another bone and save that. Then try adding modifiers, or param blocks, or hiding the bone, or moving it to another layer, etc. etc. and see what you get. With luck there might be a sensible pattern among the layers of cruft that you can parse for yourself.