Multi/Subobject-Material for Maya (to enable compatibility with 3ds Max)

[BeneZ]

The biggest compatibility problem of 3dsMax files in Maya is, that in Maya doesn't exist this great simple Multi/Subobject-Material.

It would be great to have one as a kind of utility.
It's just the question, how Material ID's could be transferred as a VrayAttribute.

[BenWall]

Hi Benez,
You can do that in Maya by linking arrays of faces to shading engines, but I wouldn't recommend doing that as it can produce problems down the pipeline.

[BeneZ]

I know but that’s why it would need a proper material and IDsystem.
The exchange of assets from Max to Maya is one of the hardest tasks, therefore many people would appreciate a vray solution.

[yolov]

A V-Ray solution would still require Maya to have a way of assigning IDs to faces, similar to 3ds Max.
Is this for asset transfer from max to maya or for something else?

[BeneZ]

yes, like always the problem, how to get assets from Max to Maya... and still being able to edit them... at least a bit
VrayScene is great but no more editable (and sometimes a bit slowly)
Inbetween would be something like automatic baking&transfer solution.

[yolov]

I see. Well, that's a problem that everyone, including us, wants solved, and we haven't stopped looking into it.

[Morbid Angel]

The biggest compatibility problem of 3dsMax files in Maya is, that in Maya doesn't exist this great simple Multi/Subobject-Material.

It would be great to have one as a kind of utility.
It's just the question, how Material ID's could be transferred as a VrayAttribute.

This would be a personal preference, but I would recommend against using multisuboject in 3ds max, and this would solve your cross dcc compatibility. What's the need to use multisubobject in the first place? I find them messy, convoluted etc. I get that some times when you combine geo you end up with multi-subs, but its not a clean way of working. If you were staying in max 100% of the time then who cares, but if its max >> maya workflow then it makes sense to not use them all together.

For the actual solution, its what yolov already said. Maya natively does not have any way to handle face ids like max does, its a pretty big difference in how the software works and in maya generally speaking assigning things to faces is a no-no. If you end up referencing stuff with deep references (2,3,4) levels of references that stuff usually stops working.

If you need a level of control in maya over shaders/on geo, you can use vrayUserScalar attribute, which I use all the time and it helps a lot with managing shaders. The logic is similar to multisub object, but not on a face level and therefore works in references etc.

[BeneZ]

Hi Dmitry,
the topic is always about using foreign assets – and they use multi/subobject, so you can’t change that, it‘s just reality.

99% of Maya users, who are going into Max, aren‘t there because they love Max so much, instead only because there are the most and biggest libraries. And furthermore they aren’t so experienced in Max shading, they just want to get the stuff out there as fast as possible and tweak it in Maya.

[And sadly also Chaosgroup was releasing a shader-library only for Max and not Maya, which is increasing that injustice ]

[francomanko]

yeah thats what im attempting now because of the asset thing. When ever i encounter a multi/sub object in max, i use a script that separates the geo based on the material id, then export to maya and reassign materials. Its a pain, but maybe if that process was incorporated into an exporter, that auto reassigns the materials, would be handy. Also Maya is really bad at separating complex geo that has multiple materials assigned to faces...try taking a maxtree object in and see how long it takes

And yeah I dont get why the material library and object library is still not in Maya...i mean the cosmos is ported for Rhino yeah?

[BeneZ]

Hi francomanko,
yes, it would be great to have any automatization.
I can’t script in Max and it’s not my main field.
(Max is only one of 15 softwares I‘m using and I give Vray a high priority in learning, but not Max scripting, Max is only a necessity)

So in case you make a tutorial about this script, I guess many people would watch it

[francomanko]

ah, no i meant i use a script i downloaded It's called detachbyID