Beating my brains out: How do you move a 3DS object in order to see it?

Question

Can someone plese explain this to me in nice detailed steps. I just can't seem to get it to work.
OK,
I can load (using the StarFire 3DS loader) 3ds images just fine like this:
Scene theScene = null;
Loader3DS loader = new Loader3DS();
theScene = loader.load("D:\\My3dsFile.3ds");
Some .3ds files I can see just fine. Others look like they need to be scaled/translated. I noticed this by creating a ScaleInterpolator and applying it to the root BranchGroup on one of the .3ds images I could not see like this:
TransformGroup objTrans = new TransformGroup( );
objTrans.setCapability( TransformGroup.ALLOW_TRANSFORM_WRITE );
Transform3D zAxis = new Transform3D( );
zAxis.set(new Vector3f(0.0f, 0.0f, 10.0f));
Alpha xAlpha = new Alpha( -1, //Loop
Alpha.DECREASING_ENABLE |
Alpha.INCREASING_ENABLE,
1000, //trigger time
1000, //phase delay duration
5000, //increasing alpha duration
1000, //increaing alpha ramp duration
1000, //alpha at one duration
1000, //decreasing alpha duration
2000, //decreasing alpha ramp duration
1000 ); //alpha at zero duration
ScaleInterpolator scale = new ScaleInterpolator(xAlpha,
objTrans,
zAxis,
-6.0f,
6.0f);
scale.setSchedulingBounds( getBoundingSphere( ) );
objTrans.addChild(scale);
bgRoot.addChild( objTrans );
objTrans.addChild(theScene.getSceneGroup()); //theScene = .3ds scene
Doing this, I can catch a glimpse of the .3ds image every now and then.
How in the world can you scale a scene and move it to the 0,0,0 position?
All I want to do is load a stinking .3ds image (any .3ds image) and be able to view it! I think if I could scale it and move it to 0, 0, 0 then I should be able to see them.
Please help.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Have you tried to scale the object uniformly at creation, before putting it in a scenegraph? this way at runtime you don't need to worry about objects being to big at runtime...
for the uniform scale:
Transform3D transform = new Transform3D();
transform.setScale(0.02); //try different values here
3ds_object_transform_group.setTransform(transform);
Another thing you could do is to use a 3D modelling program (like 3DS)
and scale the object very very small..
I had the same problem before, hope this helps