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Film made in Maya, want to render in Max.

polycounter lvl 7
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Ravenok polycounter lvl 7
Heya polycounters,

This past year we've been hard at work on out first short student film...
We're all Maya users, but I'm a max user, and I'm in charge of rendering.

The film is completely made in Maya, from start to... now. All the models, rigs and animations.

I'd like to take our animation files, and somehow move them to Max for lighting, rendering and shading.

Problem is, I don't have much time, and I don't want things to get too complicated.

I tried playing around with FBX and geometry caching, but nothing I've seen so far looks too promising. Things don't work well.

I'd love to hear if any of you has an idea of how to pull this off. If it's at all recommended. It'll make my life a LOT easier if I could render it in Vray for Max, instead of Maya giving my more headaches.

I have a few Maya-specific plugins on the rigs, as well as some deformers that don't work well with FBX, which is the 2 main reasons that the animations don't transfer well for me at this time.

Well, waiting for some advice...
Thanks!

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  • Ravenok
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    Ravenok polycounter lvl 7
  • sjk
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    sjk polycounter lvl 5
    You can export all the animated models and stuff as an alembic cache and than just import that into 3ds max. You don't need any of the rigs etc just the geometry. As far as I know you don't even have to re-import the cache if the animator changes something, just override the old file (but don't forget to backup).

    Otherwise there are also other geocache formats too. I haven't tried the maya to max workflow myself but it should be possible.

    Way better than trying to export rigs. ;)
  • bugo
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    bugo polycounter lvl 17
    Umm, may I ask you why not Vray for Maya?
  • Ravenok
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    Ravenok polycounter lvl 7
    I've had some bad experience with it. It doesn't work as good for me, as far as materials go. Maya's interface always drove me crazy, everything always seems too cluttered and broken... But if I'll have no choice, I probably will render it using Vray for Maya. =\

    sjk - Thanks. I tried looking into alembic cache, and couldn't find any way to do it with Maya. There's only the good old geometry cache, which works like... well, I won't dirty my mouth here. If alembic cache simply means maya's geometry cache, well, then it doesn't work well for me.

    I have 2 characters in the scene, both with rigs that have plugins on them, FFD deformers, wrap deformers and all kinds of things.

    The models are broken into a few pieces (a head, an outfit, hands, shoes, hair, etc), and when I try to create the cache files I go with choosing all of the different models, and I make 1 file per mesh.

    I export the models using FBX or OBJ or whatever else, and then I use point cache to apply the xml files onto the models in Max.

    For the most part, it works ok. But when it comes to things that have FFD deformers, for example, it all goes to hell. It won't capture it correctly for some reason.

    Anyway, is there anything I can read to wrap my head around this? :)

    And thanks again!
  • bugo
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    bugo polycounter lvl 17
    Blaken wrote: »
    I've had some bad experience with it. It doesn't work as good for me, as far as materials go. Maya's interface always drove me crazy, everything always seems too cluttered and broken... But if I'll have no choice, I probably will render it using Vray for Maya. =\

    That's funny, I have the same feeling about Max, but I understand your feeling. I think it's way more work to switch softwares than rendering where it was done tho.
  • Ravenok
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    Ravenok polycounter lvl 7
    Well, I was hoping this is not something I'd have to go and dive into in order to pull off right. I was thinking maybe there are good tools for this sort of thing. But the more I try, the more I realize this is some serious stuff to pull off...

    Still hoping for an easy way out though. :)
  • bugo
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    bugo polycounter lvl 17
    Gotcha, but even having to send all the stuff in Max, you would have to setup all materials again anyway, right? I would assume that vray materials in Maya are about the same as in Max? So, maybe the same math is there, it's just a matter of figuring out the interface. Art wise will be the same.
  • sjk
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    sjk polycounter lvl 5
    I guess you won't have any luck exporting your rigs to Max.

    Alembic is not the Maya cache system which I agree isn't any use at all... Using other geo-cache formats to transfer animated geometry from one program to another is pretty common and shouldn't be that hard. I have only used alembic in Maya and I'm not sure if there's a good Max importer.

    If not you can try the Point Oven cache: http://www.ef9.com/ef9/PO1.5/PointOven_15.html

    I have used it in one project once to get animation from Maya to Max and it worked pretty well.


    Oh and almost forgot: Just use caches for moving objects, for everything else OBJs will do and FBX for the camera.
  • Ravenok
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    Ravenok polycounter lvl 7
    Point Oven cache looks great! Too bad it's not free, we have absolutely no funds for this project and I can't spend my own (lack of) money at the moment :)

    How do I access Alembic thought? it seems like I don't fully understand what you mean by it.

    Meanwhile, I'm trying to setup the scenes in Maya, and see where that goes. I hope it'll be a smooth ride... Maya tends to give me a ton of trouble.
  • CompanionCube
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    CompanionCube polycounter lvl 12
    max already has a point cache modifer built in, use that
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