[3DS Max] Crashing on export (ASE, FBX) [Further details inside]
I've started adding some simple mapping to my collection futuristic buildings that I've been sitting on, procrastinating for too long. I've got one building "adequately" mapped so far (I have a Mat-ID only model, for testing purposes, and a Mat-ID + UV map model for "final" use). The only problem is that with my model being all one object, I'm having to sacrifice WORLDS worth of detail, even when overlapping as many sections as I can, and despite the small size of the model, but anyway thats another problem and I know how I'll tackle that one. This crap with Max having a fit every time I try to export certain buildings is starting to do my tree RIGHT in though.
Theres nothing special about any of these models (in terms of build methods). I've used standard poly modelling for all 12 of them, no boolean, no splines, no shapes, no nurbs or ANYTHING fancy like that; not even any modifiers really. Even the "Vert" & face count isn't tremendous on most of them. The current model in question has less than 3000 of either, and it only has 4 texture channels, so it cant have ANYTHING to do with memory issues. 4gb should be AMPLE memory for something like this.
I've been trying to get this to work for nearly 2 hours now and I'm starting to get extremely wound up, so I need to take a break and humbly request some assistance from the masters of 3D!
NOTE: If you need any further details or screenshots, I'll add them as soon as I can! My specs are [XP-Pro32, 3.0GHz Dual Core, 4Gb RAM, HD4870]
Thanks in advance
Theres nothing special about any of these models (in terms of build methods). I've used standard poly modelling for all 12 of them, no boolean, no splines, no shapes, no nurbs or ANYTHING fancy like that; not even any modifiers really. Even the "Vert" & face count isn't tremendous on most of them. The current model in question has less than 3000 of either, and it only has 4 texture channels, so it cant have ANYTHING to do with memory issues. 4gb should be AMPLE memory for something like this.
I've been trying to get this to work for nearly 2 hours now and I'm starting to get extremely wound up, so I need to take a break and humbly request some assistance from the masters of 3D!
NOTE: If you need any further details or screenshots, I'll add them as soon as I can! My specs are [XP-Pro32, 3.0GHz Dual Core, 4Gb RAM, HD4870]
Thanks in advance
Replies
also - which exporters are you using?
Lol sorry man, you'll have to bare with me, I'm still a bit fresh when it comes to 3D modelling. I'm not even too sure what instanced means, or atleast in this context anyway.
Is it when an object is copied to another location, but it instead of being classed as seperate objects with their own characteristics, the engine regards the two objects as if there was only one of them?
If thats the case, then I dont THINK theres any instancing. The 1st model that gave me problems was a building that was made by copying one "kind of detailed" segment, over and over until I had the amount of stories I wanted. The thing is, I used "copy" when I "shift-dragged" the segments instead of "instance" or "reference".
Anyway I did manage to finally export this building, but I cant remember what I did, if ANYTHING which allowed it to work. I remember that I initially tried exporting as an OBJ (leaving texture coords unticked), which worked, but then I tried ASE again, without changing ANYTHING from its previous settings, and I think it just worked. I'm still getting this problem with some of the other buildings though.
I was just using the standard built-in exporters for FBX,ASE & OBJ, as part of Max 2011.
I just dont get it. The spontaneous behaviour of PC's and PC programs never fail to amaze and infuriate me; sometimes to the point where I feel like going postal with a Katana around town. Then you see me on the news. "So Mr.X, your about to serve your triple life sentence. Why did you commit these horrible crimes of petty genocide and vandalism?"..."Well, I just couldn't get 3DS max to work, it was doing my head in. I hope they have Macs in prison".
FBX and obj have always been stable for me so no obvious gotchas there
it could be entirely random and hence you'd be justified in your katana spree.
as a rule these situations are resolved by collapsing everything to it's simplest possible form (ie. a triangulated mesh), resetting xforms and exporting only the objects you're interested in.
I had it sometimes that some smoothing group data was broken (black faces, not repairable), or that a specific object would crash 3dsmax upon exporting as OBJ, others would rarely crash upon exporting FBX. I will look into my scripts folder if I can dig up a snippet for you that does that.
I am sure that newer versions of max got a bit more stable at least in regards of FBX, the OBJ exporter plugin I assume doesn't get updated anymore because it was acquired by autodesk but developed by other people.
edit: One quick hack is to create a new poly object, go into the edit poly panel delete all faces and then attach the broken model (so it gets merged into the new created object). Then export that object with max - its pretty much the same as the stuff I talked about in maxscript.