Importing Vehicles From Maya to UDK

ShootandRun

Hey so does anyone know anything about importing vehicles from Maya into udk using FBX?

In the settings I keep changing the export settings it to make the z the up axis. In addition I've been trying various rotations when I'm exporting it. Everytime when I bring it into udk however the ship doesnt orient right. And the other thing thats really annoying is that they ship changing orientation from when I see it in the editor window to when I hit the "play from here button. For example I had it rest on its right side and when I tested it out it ended upright on its nose.

Oniram

id recommend using ActorX for that. it usually keeps orientation just as it is in your 3d package. if need be, you can go into the skeletalmesh editor and change the orientation there yourself. if any scripting is involved for (being usable n that), you may need to have 2 versions of the vehicle... for instance, with weapons you need 2 meshes.. 1 for 1st person and another for 3rd person, because they are read differently.

Lamont

I agree, keep using ActorX, it works. FBX hasn't been making my day.

ShootandRun

Just in case someone else reads this and is wondering how it all ended, I got it to work and in summary I was pretty stupid.

I found out that basically when u place the joint you cant move it except for translation, you have to rotate the joint -90 degrees so that it is on its side.
you have to do this BEFORE you skin the ship mesh to it.

for the ship mesh, if you don't want it moving magically you have to first make sure you orient it the right way. one you have it set up (and on 0,0) you then FREEZE TRANSFORMATION.

After all of this THEN you can skin it and then
Only after all this can you export it (up axis y in export settings)

The problems I was having is I would either forget to freeze transformation, move the ship after I bound it, not rest the joint etc. All in all when I realized this I did a huge facepalm. Thanks for the help too you guys