Issue with Importing FBX Files into Autodesk Maya: Material Settings and Animation Data Not Loading Correctly

[usmanoptimizerz]

Hello everyone,

I hope this is the right place to post, as I’m relatively new to working with FBX files and am running into a rather puzzling issue. I’m using Autodesk Maya 2024 on Windows 11 and have been exporting FBX files from Blender 3.6. While the export/import process seems straightforward, the results have been inconsistent, and I’m wondering if anyone else has encountered similar issues or might have some insight.

Here’s what’s happening:

1. Material Settings Not Carrying Over:
   When I import the FBX file into Maya, the materials don’t appear as they should. In Blender, I’ve assigned simple materials with textures (diffuse, normal maps, etc.), but Maya doesn’t seem to recognize these. Instead, the materials come in blank, with no connections to the textures. I’ve tried both exporting with and without embedding textures, but neither approach seems to fix the problem.

2. Animation Data Issues:
   I’m also exporting simple animations along with the mesh. These animations work perfectly in Blender, but when I bring the FBX into Maya, the animation curves seem either incomplete or nonexistent. The bones are imported, but it looks like they’re not linked properly to the mesh, even though the rigging appears correct in Blender.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

• Adjusting the FBX export settings in Blender (e.g., enabling “Apply Transform,” “Bake Animation,” and “Embed Textures”).
• Experimenting with older FBX versions during export (e.g., FBX 2014/2015).
• Importing the FBX into other software (e.g., Unity) to see if the issue persists. Interestingly, Unity imports the materials and animations correctly, so it seems the problem lies in the Maya import process.
• Clearing Maya’s preferences and resetting the workspace to default.

I’m wondering if there’s a specific workflow or best practices that I might be overlooking when transferring FBX files between these two software programs. For example, should I manually reapply the materials in Maya, or is there a way to automate the process? Also, are there common pitfalls when exporting animations from Blender that I should be aware of?

Finally, if anyone could recommend reliable tools or plugins for optimizing FBX file compatibility between Blender and Maya, I’d be very grateful. I’ve heard of some tools like the Open3D library for checking FBX integrity but haven’t tried them yet.

Thanks in advance for your help! Any advice, tips, or links to tutorials would be much appreciated. I’m really enjoying learning the pipeline between different tools and hope to get this sorted out soon.

Looking forward to hearing from the community.