3ds Max -> FBX -> Maya = loosing texture or shader

[seq]

Hello,

we need to transfer several scenes (over 40) from 3ds Max V-Ray to Maya V-Ray. Some ages ago, this works reasonably via FBX: After importing the fox-file into Maya there were Phong-Shaders with the right texture connections. So you could easily convert them to V-Ray Shader.

But this way doesn't work anymore with 3ds Max and Maya 2015 and V-Ray 3. After importing the Phong shaders have no texture connections anymore. Using a vrscene-file brings back the shader with texture connections, but the assignments are lost.

Is there any other way? It's frustrating to rebuild the texture connections for every scene... I mean when you know that you use two software products from the same company!

Thanks for any tips!
Lars

[ivaylo.ivanov]

FBX, Maya and 3ds Max are all Autodesk products. Why FBX is not created to be able to hold and translate third party shaders is beyound me. This is a job for properly designed interchange format and what we can do is very limited...

[seq]

Damn AD! Thanks Ivaylo for your reply. So we will turn the heat on for AD.

[ivaylo.ivanov]

I doubt they will improve FBX any time soon, but at least importing/exporting standard material should work I think... What I can tell you is that both the export and the import are done by the FBX library, and we can't "plug" to it in any way and add suport for our materials. The FBX exporter is not even reading the information we provide to the Maya legacy viewport. In theory, it can at least export what you see there - diffuse/specular/emission + texture.

[Morbid Angel]

it could be due to fbx version, they tend to break things often. Try older fbx see if it helps. I also came across this a lot, but never was able to point my finger exactly at what the issue is.

[seq]

Thanks Ivaylo and Dmitry for your reply.

As AD seems to be indignant to improve FBX in that direction, we all should vote for making FBX open source:

http://mayafeedback.autodesk.com/for...export?query=M

My colleague had some success with the new vismat-Shader. She export all shader in 3ds Max to vismat-files and then replace the phong shader from the fbx with the VRayRmat-Shader via script. Unfortunately she afterwards needs to manually load the Material file for each shader.

By the way: The VRmat Editor doesn't exist in the OS X version, or? Or it is available via the Nightlies?

Should we write the Support team a separate email for getting access to the 3.0 nightlies?

Lars

[Svetlozar Draganov]

VRmat Editor is not supported on Mac yet even in the Nightlies.

[seq]

So there is no way to edit the VRmat Materials on OS X at the moment?

Sounds if it will not be available in the near future, or?

Thanks,
Lars

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Yes - it is not possible to edit VRmats on Mac so far.
Support for the VRmat Editor will be added in future builds but we cannot provide any time-frames for this implementation.

[seq]

Okay, thanks. So we will wait patiently

[ivaylo.ivanov]

A colleague of mine showed me some documentation about extending FBX. It has some minimal integration with Max/Maya, I will try to find some time to check this out, it may be possible to improve the FBX situation.

[seq]

That would be great! Thanks for your efforts! If you can include lights as well - I wouldn't say no