Creating a Triangle Mesh with 3ds Max SDK

I have been working on developing 3ds Max plug-ins lately. Comparing to Maya API, 3ds Max SDK is a hell of a mess. Inconsistent naming styles, lots of exposed pointers, and poor documentations. It took me a while to achieve this common task: Creating a triangle mesh. The following code is what I came up with eventually. Most of it came from OpenCOLLADA. Enjoy!

TriObject *createTriangleMesh(const std::vector<Point3> &points,
                              const std::vector<Point3> &normals,
                              const std::vector<Point2> &uvs,
                              const std::vector<int> &triangleVertIndices)
{
    TriObject *triobj = CreateNewTriObject();
    if (triobj == NULL)
        return NULL;

    assert(points.size() == normals.size() && normals.size() == uvs.size());
    assert(triangleVertIndices.size() % 3 == 0);

    int numVertices = (int) points.size();
    int numTriangles = (int) triangleVertIndices.size() / 3;
    Mesh &mesh = triobj->GetMesh();

    // set vertex positions
    mesh.setNumVerts(numVertices);
    for (int i = 0; i < numVertices; i++)
        mesh.setVert(i, points[i]);
    
    // set vertex normals
    mesh.SpecifyNormals();
    MeshNormalSpec *normalSpec = mesh.GetSpecifiedNormals();
    normalSpec->ClearNormals();
    normalSpec->SetNumNormals(numVertices);
    for (int i = 0; i < numVertices; i++)
    {
        normalSpec->Normal(i) = normals[i].Normalize();
        normalSpec->SetNormalExplicit(i, true);
    }

    // set UVs
    // TODO: multiple map channels?
    // channel 0 is reserved for vertex color, channel 1 is the default texture mapping
    mesh.setNumMaps(2);
    mesh.setMapSupport(1, TRUE);  // enable map channel
    MeshMap &map = mesh.Map(1);
    map.setNumVerts(numVertices);
    for (int i = 0; i < numVertices; i++)
    {
        UVVert &texVert = map.tv[i];
        texVert.x = uvs[i].x;
        texVert.y = uvs[i].y;
        texVert.z = 0.0f;
    }

    // set triangles
    mesh.setNumFaces(numTriangles);
    normalSpec->SetNumFaces(numTriangles);
    map.setNumFaces(numTriangles);
    for (int i = 0, j = 0; i < numTriangles; i++, j += 3)
    {
        // three vertex indices of a triangle
        int v0 = triangleVertIndices[j];
        int v1 = triangleVertIndices[j+1];
        int v2 = triangleVertIndices[j+2];

        // vertex positions
        Face &face = mesh.faces[i];
        face.setMatID(1);
        face.setEdgeVisFlags(1, 1, 1);
        face.setVerts(v0, v1, v2);

        // vertex normals
        MeshNormalFace &normalFace = normalSpec->Face(i);
        normalFace.SpecifyAll();
        normalFace.SetNormalID(0, v0);
        normalFace.SetNormalID(1, v1);
        normalFace.SetNormalID(2, v2);

        // vertex UVs
        TVFace &texFace = map.tf[i];
        texFace.setTVerts(v0, v1, v2);
    }

    mesh.InvalidateGeomCache();
    mesh.InvalidateTopologyCache();

    return triobj;
}