View source for New Vs Old Exporter

==Differences between the new and old exporter==
* The new exporter is a single .dle (a renamed DLL for exporter plugins), the old also exporter contained several supporting .dlls and a configuration file.
* The new exporter exposes ''all'' features through its UI and saves this state.  The old exporter required manual editing of a configuration text file and possibly the Windows registry.
* The new exporter ''only'' exports .IM (mesh) and .KIN (animation) files (as well as the .texture.txt texture configuration files).  The old exporter also output deprecated and obsolete .PM (Progressive Mesh) files.
* The new exporter outputs ALL mesh data in a format compatible with Hardware Accelerated animation.  The old exporter only did this in specific circumstances, so the game would use a slow Software path otherwise.  
* The new exporter ''requires'' material names to contain a 'm.' suffix with the [[Material Types]].  The old exporter tried to imply or guess the desired type based on the material properties.
* The new exporter supports more [[Material Types]] than the old exporter.
* The new exporter allows the RGB and Alpha channels to be supplied by a single 32bit texture for all supported texture maps without using an Opacity map, the Opacity slot or modifying the [[.texture.txt Files]].  The old exporter always required the alpha texture to be manually configured as a separate slot in 3ds Max material editor as a modification to the [[.texture.txt Files]].
* The new exporter exposes Mesh and Animation exporting through a single User Interface.  The old exporter required separate exports for meshes and animations.
* The new exporter logs progress, status, warnings and errors through a single logging window.  The old exporter displayed many pop up windows with status.
* The new exporter contains more validation checks to inform the user when something goes wrong.  The old exporter contained less validation.
* The new exporter allows file overwriting and other prompts to be skipped easily.  The old exporter required more pop up box interaction to skip prompts.
* The new exporter can collect and copy texture files.  The old exporter had no such feature so the user had to locate and copy files manually.
* The new exporter handles very large meshes so they can be loaded by the game.  The old exporter has a approximately 30k vertex size limit on meshes and will crash or corrupt the mesh when that limit is reached.
* The new exporter allows identical materials to be shared by all meshes stored in the same folder.  The old exporter generates unqiue material names preventing sharing.  Shared materials use less memory and increase game speed.