Bringing Light Setups from 3DSmax to Maya

[cum. m+d]

Hey guys,

I work with a lot of artist around the world.
The one issue we have no work around is if our lighting artist uses 3DSmax.

We use Maya 2016.5 with Vray 3.40.4 & he uses Max 2016 and Vray 3.40

How can we bring light setups back and fourth? If we were to animate them as well? His background is a photographer so he isn't as technical so I am looking for smooth and easy methods.

Was thinking of using the .vrscene export and only bring the lights into Maya. but it might make things real troublesome. Is there an easier method?

[yolov]

Why would the vrscene workflow be troublesome? Have you tried it? It sounds like the thing to go with. https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/.../Scene+Manager
You can always just export the lights and nothing else, then bring it in maya using the vrscene manager, make sure "add lights" is enabled and probably turn on "flip axis" since the scene will come from 3ds max.

[cum. m+d]

Hi Yolov,

Yes, we've used it quite a bit for simple projects like turntables. However, the animation of the lights have not transferred across properly before.

It was troublesome only because it means that once our lighter starts in 3DSmax. Lighting will ALWAYS need to come from 3DSmax for that shot. So whenever we tweak something. We have to send the files to him if minor light adjustments are required. Or if he wants to adjust the shader a tad. It is probably because we are in seperate countries that is way I said "troublesome".

So three questions

- This is the best method you know of?
- Can animation of the light's position and intensity etc etc be adjusted and saved out in a .vrscene?
- As his version is Max 2016 and Vray 3.40 and ours is Max 2016 and Vray 3.40. Is there any optimization issues that we'd be losing?

Being really thorough here as we are embarking (Mid production) on a very ambitious and render intensive project.

Thank you!

[cum. m+d]

One LAST question. A long time ago, I watched a tutorial from Gnomon. The individual said for lights. You should always use the light scale functions to change the size and not just "scale" it using maya or 3dsmax scale tool as it becomes "physically" incorrect.

Is this still true? We are working with a photographer so he isn't as technical so I am trying to create a list of to-do's and nots for workflow reasons and to keep everything "linear" and physically accurate; workflow wise.

[yolov]

- This is the best method you know of?

It would work better than fbx, because it can actually transfer vray-specific objects like lights.

- Can animation of the light's position and intensity etc etc be adjusted and saved out in a .vrscene?

Yes. Any setting to the light will be exported to the vrscene, animation included. Although you might run into a bit of a problem with animated intensities because of the max export (this is something we're working on to improve).
Then there's the option to use overrides to the vrscenes once they're imported - you can directly access any plugin in them and script an override for each instance after they're imported in maya. I can provide examples and more info. We're also doing improvements on that side of things that are in the nightlies for now, but they're going into the next official release.

- As his version is Max 2016 and Vray 3.40 and ours is Max 2016 and Vray 3.40. Is there any optimization issues that we'd be losing?

As long as the vray version matches, you should not have provblems (ideally). Of course, if you run into any issues, let us know and we'll try to fix them. The important thing is for the vray core to be the same on both sides of the host app.

Then one very important note: It's always best to test this workflow with all the changes you want to make extensively before going into production. During that time, we'll be more than happy to assist with bug fixes and suggest workarounds or improvements to the workflow.

[yolov]

One LAST question. A long time ago, I watched a tutorial from Gnomon. The individual said for lights. You should always use the light scale functions to change the size and not just "scale" it using maya or 3dsmax scale tool as it becomes "physically" incorrect.

Is this still true? We are working with a photographer so he isn't as technical so I am trying to create a list of to-do's and nots for workflow reasons and to keep everything "linear" and physically accurate; workflow wise.

Usually, you won't like to change the scale of the light, but instead change its size. On the one hand, this saves you the trouble to account for the size and the scale at the same time to come to the exact surface lighting or light intensity you'd want your lights to have. On the other hand, there are some lights like the IES type where you don't want scale to affect intensity (I vray doesn't change the intensity when scale is changed for IES). Also there are light intensity modes like the watts per meter squared, where we again vray won't change intensity when scale is changed - if memory serves - I need to double-check if needed.