topic Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good in 3ds Max Forum

The new SketchUp Importer is not good

brodiegeers — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 21:00:04 GMT

Please correct me if I'm missing something. As far as I can tell, there are two main issues with the importer.

1) There seems to be no way to import layer information from SketchUp to 3ds Max. This is a huge step back from the legacy version of the importer

2) The importer makes the triangular tessellation of the geometry visible. I understand that the tessellation was technically there in the previous importer, but it made it invisible so the geometry appeared much cleaner in the viewport which was nice. This isn't as big of a deal as #1, but it still seems unfortunate.

The ability to import new SU files is nice, but not hardly worth the issues. I could also mention that there doesn't seem to be an option to import hidden geometry but I rarely used that option anyway so I don't mind that being left out so much.

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

membrec — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 15:29:29 GMT

Hi @brodiegeers

Regarding issue #2 we are aware of this issue and working to resolve it. Regarding the Hidden Geometry, we knew that this behavior changed but thought it was for the better. If there are use cases where the Max user would need to see geometry that was explicitly hidden by the SketchUp user, let us know. I'm not sure how much effort it would be to regain this functionality but I wouldn't want to do it unless there's a real need.

Regarding issue #1, I'm not sure I fully understand the issue. With the new importer, we have an option to organize by Layers, or Groups, or Flatten. When choosing by Layer, it seems to mimic the behavior of the legacy importer, aside from object naming being different. If you can share some screenshots of before and after that would help us understand the need better that would be great.

Thanks

Chico

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

brodiegeers — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 16:44:23 GMT

Thanks for the response. Glad to see the tessellation issue is being looked into.

Our team has also occasionally had issues with the importing of hidden geometry, but since the option was sticky it was only an issue that happened once with new users. It's been handy, but very rarely. As someone who has often faulted Autodesk for building more and more redundant features without trimming out old legacy features, I'll retract my statement about the Hidden Geometry tick box. I'm fine without it and if no one else has mentioned it's removal as an issue for their workflow, I've got not issue with it being removed.

I'm attaching screenshots below. My sketchup file has 2 objects. One (brown) ungrouped object where I've applied the layer "Ungrouped" directly to the faces of the geometry. The other (green) object has the faces on Layer 0 but it is grouped and the group is placed on the layer named "Grouped".

Legacy Importer: Places the brown object into a layer named Ungrouped and the green object into a layer named Grouped (as expected/desired).

New Importer "Using Layer": Puts all geometry into a layer named after the name of the sketchup file ("2019" in this case).

New Importer "Using Group": Groups both objects into a group named after the sketchup file and places everything on layer 0.

New Importer "Flatten": Places both objects into layer 0.

I've tried this using both Sketchup 2019 and 2018 with identical results. For the legacy importer, I saved the geometry down to SketchUp v8. I'm using 3ds Max 2020.2

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

brodiegeers — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 16:45:44 GMT

Sorry, I'd intended to include a screenshot of the results of the Legacy importer rather than the settings.

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

membrec — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 19:18:29 GMT

Great, thanks for the additional information. We will investigate.

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Oct 2019 14:48:18 GMT

I also do not like the new SKP importer. Adding to what's already been mentioned, I have to say I see no way to Skip Hidden Objects. I've received a Sketchup scene from someone else that has a bunch of high poly vegetation that I do not need to import. Removing it in Sketchup isn't all that easy as they're split up amongst several layers there that are all turned off.

Also, there are three options when importing through the new dialog. None of them give you the results of the legacy importer, and frankly, I don't like any of the new results. By Layer gave me a large number of nested layers, with some hidden layers inside non-hidden layers and just a general confusion of names and hierarchy.

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

membrec — Wed, 09 Oct 2019 17:43:10 GMT

Hi @Anonymous

Thanks for the feedback. We have had several reports on the behavior of layers when translated to Max and will investigate what options we have to make this better.

Regarding hidden geometry, the new behavior should automatically ignore geometry that was hidden in sketchup. So although you don't seen an option in the import dialog, we thought it was worth making it the default behavior.

Regards,

Chico

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Oct 2019 18:00:14 GMT

Well, in my case the hidden Sketchup geometry was NOT ignored. It just came in as Hidden. I ended up importing the SKP file into 3ds Max 2019 and it came in as expected. The 2020 Max scene with the imported SKP file had over 8 million more triangles due to the hidden vegetation layers that didn't get skipped.

I've only done this with a single SKP file, so maybe there's something in that model that is causing an issue?

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

membrec — Wed, 09 Oct 2019 18:06:11 GMT

OK, let me look at this again. Maybe I was misunderstanding the desired behavior. So if I understand correctly, the hidden geometry still came it. It was hidden, which may be good visually. But the problem is that you still had to pay the performance hit of importing stuff you don't need. Correct?

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Oct 2019 18:11:33 GMT

Correct.

While in Sketchup, it is not uncommon for designers to have multiple options in the model, but hidden. These are not needed, nor wanted, in the Max scene.

We will also hide certain geometry and/or layers in Sketchup prior to importing into 3ds Max just to eliminate unwanted things like vegetation, cars, and people. Deleting them isn't always an easy operation.

So when things are hidden, or turned off, in the Sketchup file, we've grown accustomed to the option to ignore them during Import into 3ds Max. If I can't see it in the SKP file, chances are that I don't want it in my file.

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

membrec — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 18:28:27 GMT

Thanks again for the feedback. I think we understand the problem well and see that the new behavior is lacking compared to the old importer. We've logged the issue and will see what we can do about it. I can't be sure but I believe this would not be difficult to implement.

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

matt.clementson — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 23:00:33 GMT

In addition to the above points, which I completely agree with, I wanted to add that the new importer also does not import any linework/splines - only meshes. Sometimes we need to import linework from SketchUp.

Right now, in our pipeline, we have reverted to using the 2018 importer and then upgrading our files to 2020 after import. The 2020 SKP importer is unusable for us in its current state. The overhead of having to remember to save back to SketchUp 2015, is less burdensome than the issues posed by the new importer.

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

membrec — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 23:04:17 GMT

@matt.clementson

Thanks for the feedback. On the linework issue, we are also aware of this limitation and have an item in our backlog to work on it.

Regarding reverting to an older version of Max to do the import. This is not necessary. Since we knew there were limitations with the new importer compared to the old one, we deliberately did not remove the old one, so that we could respond to feedback like yours.

If you're using Max 2020, upon import, go to the file type selection and you will see two options for sketchup import. The legacy importer is there, but still only accepts SketchUp files of version 2015 and older.

I hope this helps!

Chico

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

matt.clementson — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 23:05:48 GMT

Thanks for the head-up re: the legacy importer, I was not aware that it was still available. That's good news!

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

scliffordP9RXD — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 20:28:48 GMT

The legacy importer warns that it could be removed at any time... Autodesk please do not remove the legacy importer until the new one:

1) Correctly imports objects by layer (it appears to be broken)

2) Allows importing lines as an option

Both of these issues have broken a critical workflow on one of my projects and thank goodness I can still do it the old way for now...

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

membrec — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 20:52:57 GMT

Hi @scliffordP9RXD ,

Thank you for the feedback. This is precisely why we didn't set a date for deprecation - so that we could make sure we heard from users first. We have heard this same feedback before and are looking for solutions. Our intent is to hold off on removing the old importer until we are confident there aren't any other missing features/functionalities.

So please keep us posted if you find anything else! 🙂

Thanks

Chico

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

brodie_geers — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 18:11:19 GMT

Not to beat a dead horse, but for such an expensive product, there should be more beta testing done before releasing a new version. It's become a joke in the visualization industry that you don't update to the latest version of 3ds Max at least until the first service pack is released. If there's any concern for the reputation of the brand, some changes should be made to the development cycle.

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

scliffordP9RXD — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 18:37:05 GMT

Well said. My sentiments exactly.

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 05:02:23 GMT

The new Importer is utter rubbish. the previous importer was great except for not being able to import later sketchup files. Why the hell did you change it?

Re: The new SketchUp Importer is not good

membrec — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 21:08:09 GMT

Hi @Anonymous ,

Please note, the old importer has not been removed. You can still access it by going to the file format options drop down in the import dialog. You will see 2 options for .skp.

We added the new importer for two reasons:

1. By leveraging the Autodesk Translation Framework (ATF) technology, we were able to more quickly provide support for newer sketchup files.

2. Additionally, the ATF team consistently updates their technology to support sdk changes that come from sketchup. This allows up to more easily keep the importer up to date.

When we added the new (ATF-based) importer, we were aware that there were a couple of limitations as compared to the old one, which is one of the primary reasons we didn't remove the old one right away. We have already made several improvements in order to ensure it has at least all the functionality the old one has. We are still working on a couple of smaller items as well.

If you don't mind, it would be great if you could share the specific issues you have with the new importer. That way we can add them to our list for future improvement, assuming we haven't already fixed them 🙂

Thanks

Chico