PLEASE HELP - URGENT - export issues

silver_shadow

Hi there
I have this issue exporting 3ds max models to Maya 2011. I am trying the fabulous FBX mode everybody is raving about, but it does not want to export my textures. I thought maybe its me Machine, formatted it, re installed only max 2011, same issue. Then i thought mayeb it need an update...went to my work pc, download the update, installed it, same issue, even on a simple block made in 3ds max.
Exporting from maya as fbx, same block made in maya, it comes into max, no issues. Get this. If i then export the same block again....it goes with the texture.
I really need a format to get models out with their textures out of max to maya urgently. I have got a heavy deadline and would be really happy if someone can help me please. for instance, i got trees, simpler stuff seems easier to export and re map, but vegetation is going to take forever to re map every single leaf again. please help. If someone can give me a workaround, or help to fix my fbx issues.

Ott

The textures are still on your computer, just re-link it in your Maya file material nodes.

silver_shadow

I know this has come up more than one time for others probably on issues like this, and worked around it or found solutions.. A lot of people know what to do but do not respond because they feel they suffered to get this right, and no one wanted to help them. I would if i had the time. Please help or send me to the right direction for this, I am asking the pros and not on a site that dont know jack on what they even do with a pc. That is why i came here because i know you guys have to deal with this every day, switching between applications. Please help me.

silver_shadow

so should i just keep exporting to fbx? and then re link, what about trees? should that work too?

tristamus

Sliver, as long as the files are still on your computer, it should be fine.

The directories where your files are, according to max, might be different than what maya is expecting (where maya expects them to be). Therefore, when you re-link / direct the correct files to the correct materials and nodes etc, everything should be right as rain. And yeah, I don't see why it wouldn't work for trees. Whatever the model is, I believe, is irrelevant. The most important things are the file paths and file names.

silver_shadow

dont maya have something like max Asset tracking..
just specify the directory and it links it up by itself...
By the way... If i do a tree, import it..it just hangs...
but the obj format works...but it makes it one color then....not very usefull..

CheeseOnToast

Try this excellent script :

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/rendering/misc/c/filetexturemanager

It can redirect Maya's texture paths and even copy textures from one place to another automagically. I had a horrible outsourced scene to deal with where textures were scattered all over the place, and this automated most of the tidying up process. This is assuming that the export is keeping your shaders and correct assignment, but is screwing up the texture location.

silver_shadow

thank you very much..will give it a shot

silver_shadow

Last technical question: Maya users
i have been using for all these years Vray, and seen remarkable speeds of using the other renderer in maya, the built in one and raytrace.
Eventually i have this huuuge model, millions of polies i made in max, and want to make an animation eventually of this. I was thinking of switching to maya, using its engine to render it. is this any good to use for a final production thing or would one stay with the slow dinosaur Vray? i just like the light effects of this maya, renders really fast., but just dont want to jump into it if its not worth while using that.

In Max, you get multiscatter and proxies to render. Even if you referece a file.. the main file seems to work more easily and is fairly small. I tried this now with a tree in maya.. using it as a reference...and turned out to be a wopping 150mb file when i save it. Is there anyone with some advice on this aspect, if one can proxy, and reference like max, and even do instances?

I am brand new to maya...and would really like to move from max to that and am excited to learn it. Please advise

Warheart

If you mean the maya software renderer I'd doubt it will do everything you need it to do for a production quality render. It does do raytracing pretty quickly but what you're likely to miss if you're used to vray (which i haven't used but i'm pretty sure it does this stuff) is the ability to do indirect illumination effects e.g. AO, radiosity, caustics etc. In Maya for production quality renders I've almost exclusively used mental ray but you can also get renderman renderers for maya too if you need something more.

Regarding instancing you can do this with the duplicate options. (edit > duplicate special (options box on the right of the menu item)) in there you can set it to the "instance" option instead of copy. This will save you memory in the scene and I believe that both mental ray and maya software renderer will try to instance the geomentry with respect to this when it comes to rendering (could be wrong about that but I believe that's how it works)

silver_shadow

Thank you warheart, will check it out. See i will be eventually having a huge scene, put about 2 years aside to model this and have this whole village and want pull out all stops. Therefore i probably need to reference a lot of stuff from different files to keep it easier in the end. I just dont see a file size difference when i do reference things. Is this maybe bacuse its not really a reference model then like max. I know max references are fixed, no movement can be done...its there and fixed, keeping the main file small and easy to move around in.

Warheart

Not exactly sure what you want to achieve with your references. Why would you not want to be able to move them around?

what exactly do you mean by "file size"?
are you wanting to keep the scene clean in terms of the number of nodes etc. or are you wanting to keep memory usage down in the scene?

If you want to keep your references from cluttering up the scene you might want to look into the asset system. With this you can add all the objects in your scene to an asset and then turn on "black box" on the asset container which will hide all the stuff inside it and let you deal with everything as if it were one node.

If that's the case then have a look at this for workflow ideas:
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idDeMH5s9UI[/ame]

silver_shadow

yea i understand what you mean here. See the concept is this..
I have a main model file..probably going to be around 6 gigs big...if i had to dump every mesh in it...wich in that case will suffer to work on for moving around etc.
But if i had multiple files from different locations... its easy to manipulate em, and it will update the main model and like in max, if you save that file its a couple of megs big..
I know this is early talk, but just need to figure out what i should be heading to.
I can stay in max, leave it as is as its mostly set up, just not entirely built, and built my caracters in maya, rig them and bring them into max... and learn max animation then instead... Just need to figure out the best possible heading to go, that i know hey this can be done..or this is going to be extremely difficult to achieve jumping around in apps.
i know maya is great for animation and max is great for stills. Every time i want to use maya, cause i love its interactiveness, clean geometry etc. Max have also its great features...going vrya or mental ray, all these decisions makes me crazy.
I just dont want to re do what i do once i get into it...