topic Re: Scene Conversion of imported Revit files disconnecting maps in 3ds Max Forum

Scene Conversion of imported Revit files disconnecting maps

grue1970 — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 19:33:35 GMT

hello. i have imported a Revit file into 3ds Max 2024. I go to Render > Scene Converter and have rules setup to convert the Revit materials to either Standard, or Physical materials. From there i go to a 3rd party.

the problem i am running into is that some materials loose the connected bitmaps! so lets say a grass material from Revit has a grass bitmap. when i convert the scene, the grass bitmap is disconnected from the diffuse color (or whatever node) and i can't reconnect them because i don't know what or where the bitmap is supposed to be.... however if i pick all original individual materials and put them in the slate material editor, one at atime, i can see the original bitmaps and then run the conversion and then manually reconnect the bitmaps to the nodes. ugh.

i talked with a co-worker and showed him 3 revit materials -- a grass, an asphalt and a concrete. i pointed out that 2 of the materials have different node names than the last one. he looked in revit and said that he found the 2 materials were "new Revit materials" (i think this is called prism?) and the one other material was an old revit material.

its the new ones that are not converting without disconnecting the nodes. also notice both the old and new materials all have the same name of "Autodesk Generic"

see screen shots. one is showing the materials and how the nodes (diffuse color etc..) are named differently than the other. also see screen shot showing my scene conversion rules.

thanks!

PS - i'm using Max 2024 and files are Revit 2023 and i'm directly importing, not exporting from Revit to FBX. The reason for this is, i can reduce number of polys using the Import > Revit dialog which I can't do use FBX import to 3ds Max.

Re: Scene Conversion of imported Revit files disconnecting maps

darawork — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:05:29 GMT

Hi,

I think I understand your problem, re the disconnected bitmaps. As for the Scene Converter, I do not use that when working with Revit Models inside 3DSMax. We prefer to replace all the Revit materials ASAP because they are usually low quality. To replace them I make sure the Revit model is imported with elements grouped by material, then using the Compact Material editor for it's singular last remaining benefit over the SME: The ability to replace instances of materials... Copying a nice new material and then pasting as instance over an old nasty Revit material. It works great for this.

Rather than provide a solution to your problem, which seems to be inhierient with your chosen workflow, I have a suggestion for two scripts which may prove useful, either by slightly altering your current technique or adopting a new workflow:

Material Texture Loader (Loads bitmaps into the usual nodes, from a folder)

and

Drop to Slate (Allows dragging and dropping multiple bitmaps to the SME, and converts to preferred rendering engine format).

Also, if you are losing the path locations of the original Revit materials.... I use Relink Bitmaps with the added search path of "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\Materials". This will usually pick up any missing Revit Bitmaps.

So, while not exactly sorting your problem, hopefully something above might prove useful?

Regards, and let me know how you get on.

Re: Scene Conversion of imported Revit files disconnecting maps

grue1970 — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 13:27:08 GMT

"then using the Compact Material editor for it's singular last remaining benefit over the SME: The ability to replace instances of materials... Copying a nice new material and then pasting as instance over an old nasty Revit material. It works great for this."

could you explain that part a little more? (is it like what i'm talking about just below?)

also, one thing i just happened to notice... see attachement... i copied as generic in the slate material editor and that seemed to turn the "prism" material into a standard autodesk generic material (i lost two of the 4 bitmaps, but retained the bump and generic_image(diffuse).

so one possible solution then, import the revit file and simply load the materials into the slate material editor > copy as generic and then finally run a scene converter that converts autodesk generic to physical or standard (legacy).

overall - it seems like all that would we would need, would be a script to identify the prism version of autodesk generic and re-map bitmaps to the diffuse color and bump. because the conversion of regular autodesk generic works pretty well for the most part.

Re: Scene Conversion of imported Revit files disconnecting maps

darawork — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 08:49:49 GMT

Hi,

Here is the process, recorded by another user. They do it in the first part of the video:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/c4b304e9-837f-4e96-b259-701d81478582?_ga=2.147862708.2090043281.1697186188-734128029.1697023149

Basically it replaces one material with another, scene wide.

Hope you manage to work out your process.
Regards,

Re: Scene Conversion of imported Revit files disconnecting maps

grue1970 — Sat, 14 Oct 2023 01:02:27 GMT

oh interesting i never thought to try that to replace the materials. thanks, will give that a go.

Re: Scene Conversion of imported Revit files disconnecting maps

grue1970 — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 21:53:52 GMT

ok thanks for the info, i like the scripts a lot actually. so i'm going to run into this problem a lot going forward. it seems you're taking a different approach and that is to get the revit file into 3ds max and just go through and change out all the materials as a first step - which is a lot of how i currently do it. that, or just remove all materials and start over with mark ups or direction from our designers. i was excitedto think i could final nail down a new process that would be simple clicks, then start rendering so i could cut out the time redoing materials.