Max export to Maya failing.

interrogator_chaplain

At my wits end with this error. Trying to get one piece of my model into Maya to run a decent clean-up on it so that I can get it into xNormal for baking, but every time I export the .obj Maya says it has an error reading the file.

All my other high-poly parts work and are imported as does my Low Poly and I've run every xView filter on this piece and corrected every mistake.
I had an error called a "Rat's nest" while exporting earlier, but I seem to have fixed it. The error in xNormal is N-Sided faces, but I can fix that in Maya which is why I'm trying to get it in there.
My GameDev school group offered me some suggestion such as Send To (Only Mudbox, MotionBuilder and Softimage show up in the options.) and to export it as an FBX, but the FBX file rescales the piece and triangulates it, and I don't want it triangulated right now. The error was "Detected turned edges and has triangulated the model" or some such. (Also, not sure what turned edges are, educate me please!)

Google's got nothing for me and I don't want to re-highpoly in Maya, because that seems like a missed opportunity to learn something, but it's my back-up course of action.

Any idea's on what would make it export properly from Max, but not open in xNormal or Maya?

Thanks awesome people!

Harbinger

Maya throws an error when trying to import it? What exactly does that error say? Copy the text from the Script Editor.

As for FBX, look at both your export options from Max and your import options in Maya. You can turn off the triangulation, and there are settings for scale as well.

St.Sabath

if you have both packages installed on 1 machine,try using the send to.. option.do it every day flawless..

interrogator_chaplain

@Harbinger: "// Error: Error reading file." That's the exact message. Frustratingly vague right? I did try again and received an error when I imported the .FBX file again. (Third picture.) The mesh came out triangulated and weirdly scaled again, despite not having clicked the option to triangulate and having set the scale to Inches. (Using a custom scale that will fit properly in Unity.)

@St.Sabath: I do have them both installed yet one only appears for some strange reason.

I really want to learn something out of this and get it figured out, but if I haven't solved it by tomorrow I'm just going to take the working low-poly and high-poly it. Spent too much time banging my head against the wall with this problem.

But thanks for your help, don't get me wrong!

Harbinger

Can you open the Script Editor and see if you get any information in the lines preceding the error message? I've had some nasty .obj's come out of Zbrush that I've had to manually edit the .obj file in a text editor to fix, not fun.

For the FBX scale and triangulation, make sure you have the right options set both in Max for the export AND in Maya for the import.

interrogator_chaplain

Ahh, ok, I don't spend much time in the Script Editor. Here's the error on import:
// Error: line 0: OBJ file line 42612: index out of range for face creation. //
// Error: Error reading file. //

Interesting. Perhaps it's too far from the origin in Max?

My options for importing in Maya are:
Group: Unchecked.
Remove duplicate shading networks: Unchecked.
File Type>Best Guess
Ignore Version: Unchecked.

Preserve references: Checked.
Load Settings>Load all references.

Use namespaces: Checked
and the radio button in the namespace area is set to New Namespace (File Name)

For Max my export options checked are:
Geometry:
Flip YZ-axis (Poser-like)
Faces>Quads
Texture coordinates
Normals
Smoothing Groups
Scale>1.0

Materials:
Export materials
Create mat-library

Output:
Target>PC/Win
Precision>4

Optimize:
-vertex
-normal
-texture-coord

Write log to Export-foleder (when using #noPrompt in scripts)

Basically all the defaults when exporting OBJ's.

Harbinger

OK, you get the happy fun fix. Open your .obj in a text editor, something like Notepad++ that shows line numbers. Jump to line 42612 and make sure all the numbers on that line are different values. If I see two numbers, like 599 and 599, just add or subtract a 1 so they're different. Resave your .obj and try to open it.

I get this stuff occasionally from Zbrush after dynameshing, sometimes you get ugly vertex soup and most 3D packages won't handle it well. Fixing multiple lines like this is really a pain though. You might get lucky and just have it in one spot.

haiddasalami

To stop the turn edges you need to add a turn to poly above the stack and export.

interrogator_chaplain

Alright... How do I do those things and what's the stack?

haiddasalami