Working between Max and Maya

Talbot

So for the Game-Artist.net contest I have teamed up with someone who uses Maya.... and I use 3ds max. I'm just wondering if there are plugins or general tips that anyone wants to share that might help the creation process go smoothly. We will be importing everything into UE3 in the end. I'm just looking for ways to import objects from one program to another. Something that I'm worried about are dimensions and how the units compare.

Any help would be nice. And remember that I'm wondering about going in both directions (Max -> Maya and Maya -> Max)

Thanks.

MoP

FBX is going to be the best interchange format. It preserves pretty much everything.
Make sure both of you have the latest versions of the plugins, they're available from the Autodesk website.

You shouldn't have to worry about units and dimensions as long as you both keep your import/export options consistent.

Rob Galanakis

Yeah if it is just static models, FBX should be fine. Having the latest versions of the software may help as well (in addition to the latest versions of the plugins). Spend an our or two figuring out exactly what settings work in both programs, and take screencaps and write them down. Make sure normals, vert orders, extra UV channels, vert colors, and whatever else transfer successfully.

glib

I'd also suggest keeping your meshes as clean as possible at export. I'm not sure how much of it would transfer through the FBX, but it's best to keep it as simple as possible. On the maya side, always make sure the history is cleared, transforms frozen, no cruft nodes floating around in the hypergraph. On the max side, make sure the stack is collapsed... (what else? I'm still learning to be a max guy)

Ryno

If going from Max to Maya, make sure to unlock your normals. Smoothing data gets dropped even by FBX sometimes, even though it looks fine upon initial import. If using FBX, try to make sure that both packages are using the same version.

warby

don't do it

thats the only tip i can give you !
when ever i had to port stuff between max and maya it ended in bloodshed and tears ...


that was in the days before fbx sure but ... you know ... scarred for life

Talbot

Thank you everyone for the information. I'll let you know if we encounter a problem.

MoP

I've had quite a lot of luck moving things with FBX between Max and Maya, it's pretty stable for most things by now, I've found...

I wrote a script at work for bringing stuff in from Max where in Max it'd only export the base level meshes (no Turbosmooth or any modifiers which exist in Maya as deformers like Bend, Twist etc), and only export the base mesh of any instanced geometry. This keeps the file size down nicely, and it also means I can fully reconstruct the scene in Maya using the data saved off per mesh from Max (eg. number of subdivisions, bend angles etc).
So you get a nice lightweight clean scene in Maya with all instances/layers/modifiers correctly preserved. It can probably be improved a bit but is already quite powerful.

The main thing about FBX is that it seems to butcher materials when coming into Maya, instead of creating just the number of materials needed, it creates a new ShadingGroup for every single object using each material, so in complex scenes you can end up with hundreds of materials in Maya even if you just had one or two in Max... stupid. Fairly easy to clean up in script, but still stupid.

thomasp

i'd try and keep things simple when bouncing wip scene files around. only apply freaky sub-materials and hand-edited normals and stuff at the last stage right before importing into unreal. if you'd do that, you could save yourselves from some headaches and go create stuff instead.
if you'd stick with that mantra, you might even get away with using plain old OBJ for transfers.

FBX can be quite ... cumbersome at times. just sayin'.