3DsMax 2024 Legacy Sketchup importer

[bruno3DDB]

Hi,

Maybe you guys can help me. With the latest update for 3DsMax 2024 the legacy Sketchup importer is gone. And with that I'm no longer able to import also sketchup scenes as cameras. 
The current importer have the "import cameras" setting. But does nothing!

What I'm missing?

[darawork]

Hi,

From the 3DSMax 2024 help literature: 
"Cameras: When the SketchUp file contains one or more scenes, a target camera is created for each scene replicating its point of view; each camera's name derives from the respective scene name. If no scenes exists, a camera is created named skpCamera replicating the point of view in the file. If not selected, no cameras are created.

The current point of view in 3ds Max is always retained; no camera is activated automatically. Also, Zoom Extents On Import (Preference Settings > Files panel > Import Options group).

Tip: To create multiple cameras in SketchUp, use the Scenes feature available on the Window menu."

I'm not exactly sure what the undelined means, does it mean if the camera is not selected in the sketchup file it will not be imported, or if the tickbox is not selected no camera will be imported? Hrmm.

Also it states to choose to tick the 'import hidden obects' to import objects that might be hidden. Perhaps your camera is hidden and you are not ticking that box?

Do you have scenes set up in SketchUp? Maybe the 'viewport point of view' camera creation routine is not fully working yet.

And finally: "Warning: The legacy importer is no longer supported and may be removed. Please update any scripts and/or pipelines using the legacy importer to the new default importer to prevent failures." So yeah, that looks like it's unfortunately gone for good.

https://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2024/ENU/?guid=GUID-AD50EB5B-A535-431B-8066-E2F4836E42D3

Hopefully something there might help you out.

If it turns out that you are doing everything correctly, and it's still not working (not beyond the bounds of possibility), and you really need to get the cameras into the scene... I just found this 3rd Party script by Miauu:
https://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/miauus-manage-links This might work better than the native 3DSMax Skp importer.

Regards,

[bruno3DDB]

Yes. That what was working with the legacy importer...with the new, did all that...no cameras are being imported.
In sketchup you can't select camera or create one, you create scenes with the viewpoint you want...the legacy importer read this and re-creates the camera matching this viewpoint...but with the new...that's not working! 😞

It was a very important feature used in my workflow for various reasons...!!! Hope they fix this!

[darawork]

Hi,

Sorry to hear that, yeah, it's not nice when something stops working like that... or gets 'updated' and works worse than the old way. And, yes, I forgot that you can't physically 'make' cameras in SketchUp, only scenes which are essentially the same sort of thing.

Did you try to save the skp, inside sketchup, as the earliest possible version? I always save back to the earliest version in SketchUp before attempting anything involving 3DSMax. I also use SketchUps CleanUp3 Extension from the marketplace before importing skp files into 3DSMax. It usually halves their size and cleans up errors too. Although I can't see any of this helping 3DSMax not recognising SketchUp scenes/cameras. Except if it can deal with older SketchUp files better than newer ones (which I thought was supposed to be a thing of the past).

Regards,

[bruno3DDB · Accepted solution]

Well,

Already got what's happening! It's related to the "match photo" feature in sketchup...a new file without using this feature imports the viewpoint as a camera even if you dont create a "scene". When using the "match photo" it creates a scene, the scene is not being imported as a camera in the new importer!

[darawork]

Ahh, that sounds like 3DSMax 2024s new Skp importer was being developed it may have not picked up on that particular scenario. Or maybe that 'photo match' feature wasn't released at the time the new Skp importer was released.
Either way it sounds like something the dev team at 3DSMax should now be made aware of.
If you want to report it as a 'problem' you can from the Help menu in 3DSMax -> Feedback -> Report a problem.
Or open a support ticket at https://www.autodesk.eu/support or https://www.autodesk.com/support and let the person on the far end know. Hopefully it will be flagged and fixed for the next 3DSMax update rollout.

Either way, we can probably mark this thread as having an accepted solution, yours.

Regards,

[bruno3DDB]

the match photo is a feature in SketchUp since the beginning. So the chance that the developer didn't pickup on this scenario is the logic one...But it needs to be addressed for sure

[darawork]

Hi,

Yeah, for sure, and hopefully it will be fixed soon.
If you wanted to test out Miauus script, to see if it also does not sucessfully pick up on Match Photo scenes that could be an idea. I'm not exactly sure how it works, as I try to avoid SketchUp whenever possible, but if you wanted to email Miauu and see if your scenario works before purchase, I'm sure Miauu would have no problem with that. That is if it is something that you can't live without while waiting for 3DSMax to fix their end. It states that it supports 2024 and scenes in the info on this page. Miauu has been coding scripts to be used with 3DSMax for years now. 🙂

https://miauu-maxscript.com/portfolio-item/miauus-manage-links/

Regards,

[bruno3DDB]

I also have that one. I'm wating for the update. for some reason certain scripts from him, I dont received the updates! I've the 1.5.

Need to test the 1.6.1 to see if it works! But it used whatever is available in 3dsmax, so I dont believe it will work!

[darawork]

Yeah, reading through it myself that seems to be the case alright. Looks
like it's something 3DSMax devs will have to fix. No other way around it.

Regards,