Alias To Maya To Mudbox Issues

[ericgharsh]

Hey everyone,

I'm new to mudbox and I could use some help. My original model is made in alias, its a geometric form, and I brought it into Maya to convert to polygons and transfer to mudbox. Its supposed to be an origami structure and I wanted to add in some wrinkles.

After many varied attempts, the transfer isn't working properly - some faces come in apparently backwards, rendering them either invisible or completely black if I choose "show both sides."

When I try to sculpt, the faces split leaving huge gaps.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I attached images of the alias file, the mudbox import, and the splitting.

Thanks!

[MatthewDoyleArt]

This looks like an issue of needing to do some housekeeping work in Maya before sending to Mudbox.

I'd try a few of the following:

1. Select the model and go to Display->Polygons->Face Normals - be sure all the green lines are pointing out away from the model. If not, then select all faces (in face selection mode - F11), and try conforming the normals (found in the polygons menu set -> Normals -> Conform). You can also manually select backfacing faces, and use Normals->Reverse to flip those faces.

2. Make sure the model does not have any bad geometry by going to Mesh->Clean Up. I usually use these settings. If you run this and no selection is made - then your model is clean. If something gets selected, you know you need to fix that issues.

3. Finally, make sure your mesh is water tight, or at least that all vertices are merged where they should be merged. If verts aren't merged then in Mudbox when you subdivide, it will split those edged apart. So, just select each vert manually and wiggle it around to see if there are verts that need merging. If there are, then use Mesh Tools->Merge Vertex Tool, or Edit Mesh->Merge Components to fix them. The first option lets you manually merge specific verts by dragging one on top of the other. The second method lets you simply select all verts and then merge the ones that fall within a threshold that you specify.