MilkShape Files (solved)

[wes_h]

First, I want to give a positive comment about opening and saving MilkShape 3D files. It works very smoothly here.
However, because the index order of the bones is changed (regardless of the names and assignments following) the resaved model cannot be used in The Sims 2 game, because of the way the game engine indexes the joints and heirarchy.

Of more interest to me right now is how to retreive the "comments" data associated with each bone. I can get the obvious stuff (name, ID, location, rotation) in the SDK but I am sort of clueless about where the comment is held. I see the entry in the schema file, and in the schema panel, but I need to be able to copy the string itself.

<* Wes *>

EDIT: I managed so far to learn how to get UserObjects and Children enumerated and to find Bone->Comment and to get the Class ID from there. But I am probably more lost than ever, because there are not enough objects, although the properties count is right. How to get the multiline text per bone?

EDIT2: I have found the answers I needed. Thank you. Anyone else that wants to know, the key was when I found that you use the IUnknown::QueryInterface() method. Information on this is documented by Microsoft and readily available.

[Rex]

whatch makkin', Wes....Rex here from ChumBoards...a SIMSII plugin for fragMO? 

[wes_h]

whatch makkin', Wes....Rex here from ChumBoards...a SIMSII plugin for fragMO? 

I know you...
Well, yeah, sort of. My last project was a Sims2 AnimationExporter plugin for MilkShape.
I have a more involved project that handles a lot more attributes than can be managed in MilkShape.
So I started working on a fragmo plugin that will interface with my expanded project, in part because I an hoping I can get the IK animation feature rigged correctly for the game.

So I have been having a lot of newby programmer issues. This is the first COM based program I ever worked on, and I am struggling to get all the design concepts of that architecture in my head, to reduce the time spent trial and error. I expect to be a while longer cooking this one.

While I find fragmo exports a very nice MS3D file, we cannot use that in the game because the index order of the bones was changed. The game itself has a number of different files that link together in a scenegraph, and two of those files expect that the bone index order is a fixed standard 65-bone skeleton. Frago gets all these bones saved, with the right names and parents, but in the wrong order.

<* Wes *>