My situation:
I have a few files (e.g. this one) with some nice bone-animations in .max format. I want to convert them (best case: animated mesh+bones; minimum needed: animated bones) to a format blender can read.
Since I …
… didn’t get collada armature import in blender to work (dunno what’s the problem: no support from py-script, bad .dae file, etc.? I even tried to fix the script for 2.43) …
… the lwo transfer never worked for animations here …
… and I still haven’t got the md5 export in max to work with armatures …
… I’m asking all you blenderheads out there for help.
I don’t know nothing about no armatures and animation in max, so that didn’t help matters at all when i tried all that stuff
Could you save the rig as a .bvh file and save the mesh as an .obj file? You would have to re weight it in Blender, but I’m guessing you want to avoid that. Ultimatley, fbx import in Blender would be good. There’s an export script out there, but no import a.t.m. IMO, fbx is more stable than collada etc. Still, bvh should get the bones animation into Blender.
is the mesh skinned with physique or skin
if its bones+skin it should work of the bat, if its physique+biped or physique+bones u neeeed to locate a copy of the physique2skin maxscript to convert to skin+bones as no md5 exporters arround AFAIK supports physique adequately
I had a tool that could convert unreal engine format “forget name” to md5 which is well supported for max…but thats a whole lot of stuff to explain and I can’t right now
I’ll have to check if max exports .bvh (I’m at my Linux box right now)
Last time I checked I think I didn’t find an entry in the list of default exporters (EDIT: it definitely hasn’t) … maybe a script is out there somewhere.
You would have to re weight it in Blender, but I’m guessing you want to avoid that.
It would be nice to get the weighted mesh as well, but if I only get the rig it’s not that bad, I have some new models that need to be re-weighed anyway. The only thing I really want to avoid is re-doing all the existing animations.
Ultimatley, fbx import in Blender would be good. There’s an export script out there, but no import a.t.m. IMO, fbx is more stable than collada etc. Still, bvh should get the bones animation into Blender.
Yes, fbx export in max seems to be quite good as well, but since there is no import in Blender yet: dead-end
To be honest i don’t know that.
I _think there is some physique stuff in the max file (can’t check right now) so that might me my problem, but as I already mentioned I don’t know max too well nor do I understand how stuff works there
I had a tool that could convert unreal engine format “forget name” to md5 which is well supported for max…but thats a whole lot of stuff to explain and I can’t right now
A converter for unreal->md5? How would this work if the soruce is a max file? What format does unreal use?
um u… convert/export to unreal skeletal format psk mesh and psa ani files and pass it through the tool it takes the unreal mesh and associated ani files and reprocesses them to md5. I can try to dig this stuff up and instructions if you like…but it could take a while…next monday.tuesday have no idea which cd archive I stuck those on.
Thanks, if that works it would be pretty cool - it sounds pretty complex tough, especially with an existing md5 exporter for max. Where is the difference to using that one?
I suspect my main problem still isn’t the exporting itself. e.g. md5 export may have already worked if the stuff in max was set up correctly … but it didn’t. Anybody out there who tried that with success?
as I said md5 exporters that know of can’t export physique/biped systems properly, to me psk/psa — solution worked well “for me” because unreals plugin supported both of max’s skinning systems with no hassle whereas physique isn’t support at all and biped requirres a a little workarround, but u must know your way arround max a bit to find stuff…and honestly if have the tut files and help files, learning to get arround max is twenty mins of your life …which is all you need, righ!. …hopefully you’re not one those blender users that opt to “fake” the inability to grasp other 3d packages out of some weird loyalty thing
it took me damn near six months to grasp blender and now I’m comfortable…If you can retain blender you can learn anything;) …don’t even have max installed yet/anymore.
