So i just strarted working in a company they are making a game , we ( me ) are going to use blender for modelling and texturing . the questions is.
I just need to import models from max or maya into blender with textures if posible.
Whats the best choice ? export from max and maya to .obj ?
will i get exact copies of the models into blender, no artifatcs ? Textured ? UV mapped?
Thax.
what is collada , and does it work ?
Dude, just try it, there’s a bunch of formats to export to and import with. One of em is bound to work…
also search for goofos ase importer (or was it only an exporter?)
You have to test it… I’ve had mixed results on an object by object basis. Ensure that your maps are relative and exist in the destination folder or at least in the same folder hierarchy.
Sometimes OBJ comes in best… BUT… if you don’t have UVW maps you might be in trouble anyway.
Bottom line… FreakyDude is right… test it out and see which works best for your needs.
i am really thankfull that you took time to answer me but i need an answer from somebody that has alllready tried it and know what is the best , i dont wanna waste time trying all kinds of formats , possibly somebody has allready been in this situation, and know for sure whats best.
thanx
Try the Autodesk .fbx format. It’s a standard Autodesk format and I think it might do what you want. This seems one of the better options. .3ds and .obj don’t seem to have all of the capabilities of .fbx. Collada could also work, but for the last few Blender versions it has been neglected a bit and might not work. These 4 formats are the only ones I can think of to do this job. Which one works best is up to you to discover. It shouldn’t take more than half an hour to test them all.
Good luck.
I’ve done this from blender to maya and maya to blender.
Right now the FBX and Collada support isn’t really good enough… either through blender or maya/max fault. Use them only if you need animation support. Last i looked objects ended up bunched over the origin. also because of the y axis being up in max/maya you’ll need to “de-rotate”
For models the best bet is still OBJ. keep an eye on scale, depending on what units you use in maya you might need to scale up/down by 10 or 100. I think this exporter/importer is better foe the rotation issue.
When importing into blender make sure that “clamp scale” is set to “0” (no rescaling) otherwise you’re in for pain, you won’t no what scale factor to apply if/when you take the assets back.
If you have multiple uv sets OBJ is only going to export the active set. this means that if you want to exchange more you’ll need to do some scripting (export multiple copies of the objects with the differnt uvs in each and then copy the uvs to one object in your target app and delete the junk.
The Blender importer/exporter will call the objects by a naming convention based on how you use the group or object buttons. Perversely, OBJ import in Maya is incorrect for the spec, so you need to use “objects as groups”, Weird as OBJ is a wavefront format.
You may not need to do that with max… last I tested colada and FBX were better with max, but with different problems…
I look forward to the day where the full collada spec is imported and exported by Blender, it’ll make working in pipelines much easier.
It’s a safe bet that you’ll want to do some form of “asset conditioning” whichever path you use, so be prepared to write scripts on both ends of the pipeline…
(for renaming things, combining things setting some material properties etc…)
Oh. I just remembered… when importing an OBJ it’s favourite if the textures are in a folder below the object caled “textures”. and the .mtl file is at the same level as the obj
Don’t use the “image search” button on the importer, it just seems to search forever without finding stuff. If you have the stuff set up like I mentioned then it’ll find and assign the textures without that.
Hey thanks for taking the time to respond… but I have done this. The results vary. I’ve had OBJ work well for the most part but 3ds sometimes holds textures better. You obviously don’t seem to grasp that some objects are not going to yield the same results.
I have in the past wrote a plugin on both ends of my applications when I needed to do an output. It might be in your best interest to write yourself a middleman format if you are working for a company that is going to be doing transfers like this. Have you ever considered doing this? It may be in your best interest, if you want to carry animations over as well.
i cant program but maybe we could pay a programmer to do it , would you like to ? if not i could rent one in freelancer.com or getacoder.com
thanx , by the way in wich lenguage should it be written , python ?
I don’t grasp that because I’ve always had consistent results… if I use the same settings each time on export and import i get the same results regardless of the model.
in my experience results only vary if I do something different. ie user error. or using a different apps eg silo takes the default objs perfectly…
… or if there’s something wrong with the source eg normals not all facing out…
3ds is a terrible format with very buggy support and is never a good idea in my experience.
Michael W@
That’s what I was getting at… in an environment with different artists using different techniques, software, etc. he’s not going to be able to do the same thing everytime. If it were just him then I’d say the results should be the same.
I also dislike 3ds format, as well as the 3dsMax Mental Ray Materials, SSS, and just about everything else about it at this point… as I use other programs like Silo and Blender and see how easy exporting is. OBJ from Max doesn’t always bring the materials with it… UV coordinates sometimes fall off 
I’ve never seen this problem with other programs but I was trying to point out that it does happen.
I guess the biggest thing I have to contribute to this thread (other than de-railing it), is that yeah… 3ds is probably not the best format… go with OBJ…
For fear of further going off topic
Teaking Knobs@ are you guys using the Blender game engine? I’ve used Unreal and Gamestudio… ascii (I think) and .mdl export formats both allowed animations to be baked in… that might be helpful to you?
thanx , im usibg objs , texturing and rendering only.
I’ve moved mesh models with UV mapping back and forth between Max and Blender using obj files.
I am with michael on this one. Wavefont OBJ is the way to go. I never had problems with it, unless bones/animation is a topic.
Also the .X (directX) format works fine, never had any problems for geometry/materials/textures.