exporting an animated character to udk with fbx...does max need re-installing...

[jmatcob]

hello all,

i am trying to export a rigged character mesh (with clothes and shoe meshes too) using fbx so that i can put the character into UDK.

max wouldn't do it at first. (exporting all the meshes with the textures) that is, it did do the fbx file but udk would always crach importing it.

then i managed to export the meshes seperatly and udk would import them with the textures moslty ok.

but.... then max would not export the animations correctly. it totally ignores the 'range' you specify when doing the export. UDK would import them but they were the wrong lengths because of what max exports.  i had to go into max and delete the frames and keys of the animations i did not want exported. that worked. obviously i had to do that for all of my animation sequences.

now. once i figured out that max would only export animations that way i thought 'a-ha, now i can try exporting the character mesh with the clothes and shoes and rig with the textures. but max won't do it.  i even tried to just do the body mesh with the rig as i did before (she runs around naked in udk) but now max won't even export an fbx file that UDK recognises as having a skeletal mesh in it. UDK only sees a static mesh.

is this a know issue? is there a solution?

do i need to re-install max?  is that a hassle? or does it do a repaire?

thanks for any help

j

[paulneale]

Have you tried updating FBX?

[jmatcob]

I am a bit of a newbie as i am just a student at them moment learning max.

I am using 3ds max 2014 student version with the latest update.

How do I update the FBX component?

cheers

[paulneale]

Might be on this page. 

http://www.autodesk.com/products/fbx/overview

[jmatcob]

thanks for that but that only has older fbx's.

i am using 2014 which apparently have the latest fbx installer buitl-in.

my tutor has come up with a work around for the current problem i am experiencing but if that does not work or additional new skeletal meshes don't export properly then i may have to re-install max. which i hope is not a hassle.

thanks anyway. 🙂

[Steve_Curley]

There aren't any separate FBX updates for 2014, as that page states:-
"As of the 2014 releases of media and entertainment software, the FBX plug-ins are built directly into the installers."
Make sure you have applied the latest Service Pack for 2014 (SP3).

UDK may not be fully up to date with FBX. FBX, like Max itself, has the ability to "SaveAs" a previous version, so try earlier versions. On the FBX export dialog > Advanced Options > FBX File Format.

[mi88kel1]

http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/ActorXMaxTutorial.html#Install the Plug-In

end .............

http://www.gildor.org/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=3426c800cdbd152338cf265308b9a556&/topic,1221.0.html