topic Assistance Needed: Exporting Animated 3ds Max File to Maya for Texturing, Lighting, and Rendering in 3ds Max Forum

Assistance Needed: Exporting Animated 3ds Max File to Maya for Texturing, Lighting, and Rendering

CHARLESFRNC1 — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 16:52:15 GMT

Hello Autodesk Community,

I hope this message finds you well.

I am currently working on a project in 3ds Max and need to export my fully animated file to Maya for texturing, lighting, and rendering. I would greatly appreciate any guidance or tips on how to achieve this while maintaining the integrity of the animations and models.

Here are some details about my project:

Software: 3ds Max (2023)
Target Software: Maya (2025)
File Description: The project includes fully rigged and animated characters.
Specific Needs: Guidance on exporting animations and models while ensuring compatibility, including workflows or plugins for texturing, lighting, and rendering. I've heard of baking animations into geometry and exporting without the rig. Detailed steps on this process would be appreciated.

Attached are some images to provide context:

Screenshot of the animated characters in 3ds Max
Screenshot showing the export to Maya

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Best regards, Charlie Franco

Re: Assistance Needed: Exporting Animated 3ds Max File to Maya for Texturing, Lighting, and Rendering

CHARLESFRNC1 — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 17:48:13 GMT

Additionally, I am seeing this error message when exporting from 3ds Max:

"The plug-in does not support the following objects' geometry type and will convert them to editable meshes. Morph and skin deformations may be lost.
If 'Enable in Viewport' is deactivated, closed shapes are capped and open shapes are converted to dummy objects with no edges or faces.
If 'Enable in Viewport' is active, the Viewport settings are used for the mesh conversion: "

If this error is the main issue, how can I convert the geometry to an .FBX compatible type? I've already tried [Convert to > Convert to Editable Poly] and it did not solve the geometry disappearance, but it did break the animation.

Re: Assistance Needed: Exporting Animated 3ds Max File to Maya for Texturing, Lighting, and Rendering

MartinBeh — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 18:05:02 GMT

USD or Alembic come to mind as alternative to fbx...?

Re: Assistance Needed: Exporting Animated 3ds Max File to Maya for Texturing, Lighting, and Rendering

CHARLESFRNC1 — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 18:54:31 GMT

Thank you so much! Alembic worked, but now I have a shader issue that only shows up in the exported camera (linked.)

Do you know what could have happened here?

Re: Assistance Needed: Exporting Animated 3ds Max File to Maya for Texturing, Lighting, and Rendering

MartinBeh — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 20:34:38 GMT

No, I am sorry. Hard to tell without the files. Maybe someone else has seen this before?

Re: Assistance Needed: Exporting Animated 3ds Max File to Maya for Texturing, Lighting, and Rendering

spacefrog_ — Sun, 10 Nov 2024 04:36:55 GMT

looks like Z-fighting to me, i guess it only happens in the viewport ?
here's a discussion and a possible solution to try out ( by adjusting the camera's far/near clipping plane distance)

https://old.reddit.com/r/Maya/comments/18xh4b7/why_is_my_viewport_like_this/

The scale is an important factor for this too, check if the scale in Maya got imported correctly ( assuming that the scale in Max was not already awkward )