for those unaware autodesk has bought softimage, last year softimage bought the cat plugin, its a character animation system. that system will now be the main system in max. Ive been using cat for some time and Ive exported to awakenings with it. I doubt any major changes will be needed for the exporter

There is an exporter for 3dsmax9 now: tri & ani exporter for 3dsmax9 V0.1
You can try it. The exporter supports Physique & Skin modifier.

thats not what I was saying autodesk will be using the cat animation plugin as the animation system in max now. so your exporter may need to be reworked some to better work with this animation system. cat was already a plugin that you could buy seperately but now its going to be part of the standard install. thats good news, I kid you not when I tell you its a 1000 times better than character studio. its faster, easier and more diverse. you simply will not believe how easy it is to animate with this software. currrently when I export cat to the ani format it only exports some of the time

Thanks for your information, for sure the CAT is powerful. We'll try to improve the ani exporter. Currently, if a mesh has a Physique/Skin modifier, please ensure no modifier up the Physique/Skin.

youve stated before that the skin modifier should be off for an animation export but the only times Ive been able to get animation exported is when I leave the skin turned on and click on the mesh then export selected

It requires turn off modifier that export to .tri file, but no require to .ani file.

turns out I was exporting it wrong, thats why it only exported the catrigs some of the time. not turning the skin modifier off for the tri was causing the animation not to play right. but Im still having a problem exporting linked bones do linked objects export at all

can you add morph animation to awakenings if possible have it import a morph animation file

morph animation is an old technique, it's rarely used currently.

that doesnt mean its not viable. painting and drawing are old techniques but still usefull

thanks, we'll consider your suggestion.

one use for it, is cloth animation I have my own techique where I export the cloth animation on top of bone animation. but with a morph animation file. the cloth could be an artistic expression done in the 3d authoring evironment and not just a techinical one in the engine

There is no bone in morph animation. So the techique usually is used for simple & repeating actions, it's difficult to express complex animation.