Sketchup to Max

[gilpo]

Hey all,
Since I've seen several references to people using Sketchup in here, I was hoping someone could be able to help me. We received a large Sketchup file from from an architect and need to get it into max for rendering.

What's the best method to go about this? We've tried several different export formats but everything seems to come in really messy. What's the cleanest format and options to use?

Any help anyone could give would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[Dynedain]

It's going to be messy because of the way sketchup works.

The best solution we've found is to export to 3ds (making sure to only have faces, and not edges, otherwise you get duplicated geometry).

Like I said, the results will be messy... it's the nature of sketchup encouraging bad modeling practices. We usually import and then remodel, snapping to the sektchup. It usually doesn't take too long and we get much cleaner faster results.

[dbuchhofer]

from sketchup6: 3ds, uncheck edges, by material

comes in cleanly, only assumption is that the materials are applied in sketchup by the builder.

in max, vertex weld modifier on everything, then either collapse by material or break into layers based on facades or whatever you have as your logical divisions of space.

easily done however, since the 3ds has everything that you would think of as a max mesh 'element' as a sperate mesh.

[cgrant3d]

Re: Sketchup to Max

Hey all,
Since I've seen several references to people using Sketchup in here, I was hoping someone could be able to help me. We received a large Sketchup file from from an architect and need to get it into max for rendering.

What's the best method to go about this? We've tried several different export formats but everything seems to come in really messy. What's the cleanest format and options to use?

Any help anyone could give would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

I deal with this on every project (our Architects user SketchUp for initial design) and its gotten a LOT easier with SketchUp 6 and a sketchup script called "reverse faces" http://www.scriptspot.com/sketchup/s.../reverse-faces

The problem is that SketchUp makes it really easy for non-technical users to create reversed faces and on top of that in SU a face can have a material on both sides.

The solution is to use SketchUp and the reverse faces script to quickly reverse the faces and their material assignments (just click click click around on your model and it will reverse the normal and the material for you, usually cleanup just takes 5 minutes this way).

Step 1: install reverse faces script mentioned above (simply copy to SU plugins folder)
Step 2: enable monochrome face display - View / Face Style / Monochrome
Step 3: Do you see purple? Thats a reversed face and it needs to be fixed. Right click on something, and enable "left click reverse face tool" now just click on all your flipped faces.
Step 4: Export your model as 3ds / by material as mentioned in dbuchhofer's post above. Make sure to include texture export too, I usually tell it to preserve UV coordinates (which brings all verts in unwelded) then first thing apply a vert weld modifier to everything and collapse once in max.

Some other things to think about:
- Use the "explode sketchup" script to remove the useless hierarchy sketchup includes in the 3ds export. http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/explode-sketchup
- Use the "autoedge selected" script to get rid of any unnecessary edges that may be visible (depends on the SU user and how badly they ruined the model, lol) http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/autoedge-selected
- "Follow me" components in SketchUp will be exported looking at the currently selected view. So if you actually "want" those 2d people or something for reference or quick render / whatever. Pick a view in SU so they face the right direction, then do the export to 3ds...
- Use my "select similar" script to get some sort of easy selection of instanced components that get imported as totally separate geometry. http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/select-similar

Yikes. Thats long... Although it probably doesn't sound like it reading all that, I've actually found SU translation to be really pretty easy (in 6)... No more multi-sub materials when you export "by material" so my average project might come in with a dozen or two materials which I then convert to vray mats. Easy as can be. Even textures come in (of course they have to be replaced) but its great to have the architects decide scale / orientation of things like wood grain so I can then just replace with better ones on my end.

[flino2004]

I work with sketchup models all the time and I don't have any problem at all...it comes very clean if you build it right and tight.

Not edges, be consistent with the units...I usually export it as one object and sometimes by materials, you can apply colors to the model and replace them in max by materials.

[gilpo]

Thank you all for your very helpful suggestions. Luckily, the sketchup model was very clean and with your help, I was able to get it into Max cleanly as well.

Thanks again!