Problem importing .obj to 3ds Max

[Mellandry]

Hi

I'm having some trouble importing .obj into 3ds Max. I created a mesh with Meshroom.

I can open it fine in Blender and Microsoft 3d-viewer. But in 3ds Max i get these weird black squares.

The mesh is very poly-heavy at around 800k, so i tried to reduced the count in Mudbox, down to 20k. But the problem is the same.

Any ideas as to what is wrong, and how to fix it?

[10DSpace]

@Mellandry 

It looks like just a material issue.  To test this, in max assign a standard material to the object enable edges and see if the object appears as expected.  Also hit 7 to display statistics in the viewport to check all the geometry has come across.  But I am betting it is that max does not recognize the type of material assigned originally from the other program.   You can reconstruct a material that max will recognize if you have the bitmaps from the other program. 

[Mellandry]

Hi @10DSpace 

Thanks for the reply.

I tried to apply a default material, but that didn't seem to change anything.

I also checked the statistics, and all the geometry should be there.

[10DSpace · Accepted solution]

@Mellandry 

I tried to apply a default material, but that didn't seem to change anything.

Actually, it certainly changed the visibility of the mesh.  The first image  you showed was completely black.  Now the grey of a standard material is showing on all but a few of the faces.  The faces that are black may need to have their normals flipped.   (select the black faces and in the editable poly rollout>Edit Polygons  click "Flip" ;  if it came in as an Editable Mesh, the flip function is under Surface properties of the rollout.)

I also checked the statistics, and all the geometry should be there.

Something doesn't add up.  In your first post you said the mesh was 800K polys and you reduced the count to around 20k.   Using scene statistics, you are displaying the total number of polys for the scene as around 23 K, but the object visible in the viewport has far fewer faces/polygons than 23K.  Certainly less than 100 polygons/face total.   If you select all of the visible polygons it will tell you how many have been selected.   Alternatively, go to Views menu>Viewport Configuration>Statistics and set to "Total + Selection" and click OK. 

It looks like there is only 1 object in the scene from your scene explorer display.  So it is possible that there are hidden polygons in that one object.  To check for this possibility, select all the polygons while in polygon subobject mode and select Unhide All from the rollout.  That may reveal the hidden polygons.  

If the above does not help then I would suggest you try exporting via .fbx the mesh from Blender (since it was fine in Blender) and then importing this .fbx file in max.  Personally I like .fbx format for export/import better than .obj format as I have found it to be more forgiving across apps.    Anyway, hope something here helps. 

[Mellandry]

Hi @10DSpace 

Thank you for the help

The only thing that worked was to export it again as a .fbx as you suggested.

So i will just be doing that in the future 🙂

[10DSpace]

@Mellandry 

You are welcome.  Thanks for posting what worked and what didn't.

[pawel_kosmicki]

I have similar problem - meshes from Sketchfab come with heavily reduced polycount and seem to be made of boxes. Same meshes imported with old 3ds max 2009 are fine. I don't have FBX to use instead.

[ajohnsonD56GV]

I was having this issue as well.  I only use FBX format when I can as I find it much more usable across all the software I use.  However, in this case I exported from a software that only offers .OBJ.  When I pull the model into Infraworks, it works fine.  When I pull it into Max, nothing showed up.  Though I did notice it in my Scene explorer.  When I exported the OBJ, it also exported an unwrapped texture.  From a file explorer window, I simply drug and dropped that on the texture PNG file on the object in my Scene.

[oricharte]

When you export from zbrush you can't use fbx... someone has found the solution to fix it for having OBJ working well ?

Thanks

[10DSpace]

@oricharte 

"When you export from zbrush you can't use fbx..."

That is not correct.   Zbrush does allow you to export to .fbx format and a variety of other formats as well.  See Export dialogue dropdown below: