Sketch Up to Max Conversion

[sv]

Has any one had any sucessful imports from a sketch up model? I have tried doing a 3DS file import but am having problems with what appears to be from the mesh after applying vray textures?

Any help greatly recieved !!

[sv]

The model renders fine with scanline renderer, it also renders fine with a default vray material in the override slot, but when applying vray materials, this is the result:

[Candelero]

Try raising the << Secondary Ray Bias >> to 0.001
If that is the problem... what I can see from the img

Best regards,
nikki Candelero

[Dynedain]

Yeah, looks like coplanar faces.

From what I understand, when you import from sketchup, you actually bring two copies of everything into your scene. Sketchup uses one object for the faces, and another for the edge lines.

[helpdesk]

You have the option to export out only faces without lines. If you are getting coincident geometry in Sketchup, you need to fix that before exporting out to 3ds. Remember>>poor modeling in;poor modeling out!<<
Also, I have found that if you can apply some basic materials in sketchup before exporting it really helps with the uv mapping once it's into MAX. Those materials can easily be made into the better performing VRAYMAT once inside MAX.

[siliconbauhaus]

try exporting to dwg....its much better

[sv]

Try raising the << Secondary Ray Bias >> to 0.001
If that is the problem... what I can see from the img

One of the first things we did - it's not co-planar faces.

Also, the sketch-up model does have materials, but the UV's are still fucked. I think .3ds is not a great format, and it's a normal's problem. Unifying normal's doesn't work or flipping faces. It's always random each render - making no changes at all will produce two entirely different renders. Weird. Standard scanline seems to work fine, Vray override default material works fine, but no vray materials. Really weird.

[flino2004]

turn "export standalone edges" off

[sv]

Thanks to all that seems to have sorted it !

[PixelJockey]

Also make sure you have Export two-sided faces as Materials NOT Geometry. If you have Geometry selected then any two sided material in SketchUp will be exported with two faces. One pointing in each Normal direction. I took me a couple of days digging through a SketchUp model before I figured this out.

I also get better results when exporting "Objects in hierarchy" rather than "Objects in geometry". It creates more objects, but their geometry is cleaner with less flipped normals. Although I still use the "unify normal" command when editing the meshes in Max.

Here are my usual export settings.