Answered: 3DO does not load DDO project

DeeLan

Hey Guys,
I'm having a really annoying issue with DDO and 3DO. When I create a new DDO project, it works exactly as you'd expect. All my maps are loaded into 3DO and I can work with and preview them exactly as advertised.

The problem is when I reopen my project, all my maps get loaded into DDO as expected, but 3DO only imports the mesh and instead of using the maps I've created, it just uses a perfectly reflective material with no normals, AO or Albedo (pretty much like a chrome material). I've tried everything I can think of to get my maps loaded in but the import tab in 3DO doesn't give me the option to load either the project's xml file or the psd file it created with it.

Occasionally after a bit of editing in DDO, the 3DO preview goes completely matte (as if it had a Lambert applied to it) but still has no normals, albedo or ao on it. At the moment if I want to see what my maps look like on the model, I have to export my maps and import them into UE4, check it out, go back to DDO and repeat. 

This problem has been happening on both windows 10 and windows 7, on my laptop at home and the workstations at uni, All the computers are on the latest version of Quixel 2. If anyone could help me out I would really appreciate it

Synaesthesia

Hey Deelan - did you at any point rename your mesh group(s)? If you did, you'll unlink 3DO's materials from the mesh groups. They'll need to match the  *.PSD naming convention (e.g. Object001_AlbedoM = Object001 as a mesh group name) for 3DO to apply materials to it again.

DeeLan

Hi Synasthesia,
It would appear that at some point I have unintentionally renamed my mesh groups. I've tried renaming my groups and re-exporting but it doesn't fix it (So either I have the wrong names or something else is the issue). Is there a way to get 3DO to change which mesh group names it uses to link my materials? Or to check the names that it is currently using?

Synaesthesia

Not currently, no. The mesh group names that 3DO is expecting are the prefixes of your *.PSDs however, so it should be an easy fix. As noted earlier, if the *.PSDs are called Object001_[ChannelTypeHere].PSD, Object001 would be the name of the mesh group. By mesh group I specifically mean the mesh name within the program you're using to model, not the file you're exporting to load into DDO. That's independent of the mesh group name and can be called whatever you prefer, but the name of each mesh must match the name that 3DO is expecting.

The new SUITE updates feature a check in 3DO that will tell you if your group names don't match after you've loaded a new mesh. I specifically requested this error check to prevent this kind of problem going forward.