Mudbox to Maya and back

CheeseOnToast

I'm having the same tired old problem I used to have, both with Mud and Zbrush. I'm trying to export a level 0 model from Mud to rig it and pose it in Maya, but when I export the posed obj from maya and try to import as layer in mud, there's always a vertex mismatch. It's Maya's fucking stupid obj import that screws up the vertex order I'm sure. No problems like this between Silo and Mud.

Can someone give me the correct obj settings in maya to get this to work?

MoP

I just turn everything in the OBJ settings to "off"... seems to work between ZBrush and Maya 2008 anyway.

CheeseOnToast

Cheers Mop, but no dice. Mud tells me that there's a different number of verts when I try to import as layer. Any other suggestions?

artist_cg

when importing obj in maya , open the options window for "import",
and turn off "create multiple objects" , i guess this should solve it
but not sure

CheeseOnToast

Tried that already, but thanks anyway.

ceebee

Try converting your mesh to tris and then back to quads. In max I think there was a similar problem with Max and ZBrush and the fix was to basically export the obj in max, import it into max and make it editable poly, and then export the obj again. For some reason that fixed it?

sculptfx

From what I understand Maya and Mudbox do not keep the same vertex id order. The video link below explains it in better detail. The solution to import a obj as a layer back into Mudbox is to use the UV option instead of the vertex.

http://www.pixelcg.com/blog/?p=314

CheeseOnToast

Cheers guys, I tried the import/export/import thing before, with no luck. The UV ID is good to know for the future, but I'm still boned just now as my Mud models have no UVs.

I've settled with using Zbrush's transpose for now. It's not ideal, but better than hand positioning verts in Silo

BradMyers82

CheeseOnToast: I was thinking of your problem and I believe I may have a solution, but it requires a lot of work.

1. export high poly from mudbox or zbrush to maya
2. create a low poly base mesh with uv's
3. bake a displacement map in maya
4. import low poly into mudbox
5. subdivide enough times so that the mesh can hold all the displacement map detail
6. Use mudbox's "Sculpt using displacement Map" feature.

After this, you should have all your sculpting layers intact, and you can now easily switch between mudbox and maya.

So if you export your lowest subdivision for rigging at this point, when you re-import to Mudbox you can use the displacement map to restore all the level data.

Transpose might be a better solution, but if you had to do a lot of precise posing, I figured this might help.

CheeseOnToast

Thanks Brad. I discovered last night that Maya and Zbrush can speak to each other nicely without screwing up the mesh, so I'm mucking around with reconstruct SubD in Zbrush to recover my low level divisions. It's a bit fiddly in places, and I'm re-learning Zbrush as I go (not used it much since ZB2). Gets the job done however.

I should mention that the models are initially for rapid prototyping. I've got around 60 to do in all (!) I think I might just model them "in pose" in future and cut out this stage altogether.

MM

i never had vertex mismatch between maya and mudbox. as mentioned above u need to turn off "create multiple objects" option and "groups" off in export options and obviously dont modify topology. i done this several times without any issues. also export/import one object at a time from mudbox.

btw, if your model is topologically symmetric then you can pose it inside maya and still sculpt with symmetry on in mudbox by using tangent symmetry.

CheeseOnToast

Anyone mind testing the file for me? I'll send you the first couple of SubD levels, and see if you have the same problems.