Maya to max and back again

GoK

Ok bit of a theoretical question here.. Say i have a weighted model in maya and i want to make variations of this model in max (probably only moving verts not creating new ones (although that would be useful too) so I export the model as an FBX start editing it in max and then bring it back over to maya as an FBX will it keep its rigging from maya it originally had and the weighting, If not how would i accomplish this without having to redo the rigging and weighting again in maya... ? Hope this makes sense.

Thanks in advance!

Jody

Bal

You probably want to look into some skin transfer scripts for Maya (topological if you're only moving points). Shouldn't be to problematic with the right script, check on Creativecrash.

Warheart

I think you can probably get away with using the built in "Copy Skin Weights" functionality for this actually. Just export the character mesh back into max, make edits, bring it back into maya, bind it to the same skeleton as the original and then use Copy Skin Weights to transfer the weighting.

FBX can export weights pretty well and it does support some constraints and stuff but the likelihood of getting a complex rig from maya into max and it still work correctly are close to none. It's unlikely you'd ever really need to do this anyway.

Mark Dygert

You can transfer the skin weights in max before exporting back to maya. As long as they are roughly the same shape and size you can use skinwrap on the new mesh, target the old mesh and then convert to skin and export. In this case its based off of proximity not vert numbering so it doesn't matter so you can make edits to the geometry.

I think Maya has a similar function with transfer maps, so you might be able to get it done in Maya.

Warheart

Yep, Vig, "Copy Skin Weights" in Maya does a very similar job to skinwrap. It lets you transfer weights by closest point on surface, ray cast, closeset component or in UV space. The default settings generally give you very good results. One thing Maya does nicely without having to script it

IMO you should not need to transfer any skin weighting into Max in this case since Max is only being used to modify the geometry.