Export from Fusion 360 to Mudbox

[Anonymous]

I would like to export a freeform sculpt from Fusion 360 to Mudbox, but the two apps do not share any common file formats.

Is there a workaround?

Thanks.

[taylor.stein · Accepted solution]

Hey there - great question! There is a workflow today that supports exporting an OBJ file from Fusion 360 to Mudbox. 

Here's a great video that shows the complete workflow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxjmh8CsI6o

In case you'd rather read the text instructions, they go as follows:

• Create freeform sculpt body in Fusion 360, and complete by selecting 'Finish Form'. This converts the T-spline body into a surface or solid body
• In the Model workspace, create a new Base Feature (Create -> Create Base Feature)
• Within the Base Feature, convert the solid/surface body of your choice to a mesh (Modify -> Mesh -> BRep to Mesh).
• Navigate to the newly created mesh in your Browser, right-click on it, and select "Save as OBJ".

Let me know if you have any other questions!

Taylor Stein

Fusion 360 Evangelist

@taylor_stein

[cekuhnen]

That works but it is not really ideal.

Honestly I do not know why Fusion still cannot export quad face mesh from T-Splines. That would be much more suitable for sculpting in Mudbox which can just push n pull the the original TS model and when I like a variation I reload that obj quad mesh back into Fusion and place it into a TS model.

The video you showed uses the current triangulation mesh export and that not only complicates but further makes the

[cekuhnen]

Hi Taylor,

There is one significant problem with that workflow: the end result is a nasty triangulated mesh.

For this type of work Fusion has to offer a direct quad face export from T-Splines

This has two major advantages:

1. I sculpt in Mudbox the same poly mesh like I build in Fusion TS

2. Because in Mudbox I sculpt just the quad mesh I can later bring that back into Fusion TS without any issue.

The tri mesh will also later be incompatible with TS anyway.

Must be rocket science to offer a quad OBJ exporter from T-Splines 😉

Could not resist the joke but seriously I have to be a little critical about Autodesk here.

[taylor.stein]

Hey Claas,

Completely understandable regarding the conversion from quads to triangles, to only be converted back into quads. I'll make sure to take note of this.

Best,

Taylor

[cekuhnen]

I think AD will do itself a favor by offering this.

Currently too many suggestions are hacks and workarounds that are actually not really ideal reflecting bad on the product.

And a quad export is imperative not only for serious rendering (sorry Keyshot and such are toys for real render needs) but like in this case for some serious sculpting and modeling. TS is great but not very fast and thats ok. For that Mudbox or what ever could be better be used to explore that aspect of the design sculpting.

At the end Quads will make sure all data will transfer nicely two ways!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your responses everyone. If Autodesk could implement this properly, it seems that it could make Fusion 360 a great alternative to Rhino.

[schneik-adsk]

Tsplines are not quad meshes. Quads can become tsplines but not all tsplines can become quads.
For example t joints. Tsplines differ from SubD because they do not require uniform subdivision. Tsplines only needs extra topology where fine detail is required. What would you expect to happen when you export tspline data to quad when the tspline is not uniform in detail?

[cekuhnen]

If you set TS to shade flat you see the raw polygons. All modern system support NGONs. I have no issue in Blender to model with NGONs feet that to Fusion and TS is happy. Why should the reverse be not possible?

[schneik-adsk]

Understood. We will look into it.

[cekuhnen]

RAW subD modeler mesh

SubD CatmullClark subdivision incl NGON

Fusion TS model when imported

Fusion TS model shaded raw polygones

So I see no reason why Fusion could not offer a raw Polygon export incl tri guads and NGONs.

Just yesterday I helped a client where this would have been a perfect task because we could not build a shape in Fusion

and thus needed to sculpt outside it. In this case I needed to restart from scratch outside Fusion using the tri tesselated BREP export

as a 3d blue print to match.

And later we brough the refined OBJ mesh back into the same TS feature.

[Anonymous]

I would like to add a +1 to this feature quad export would be really helpful for us.

[jluis_esad]

Hi there, to export from Alias to mudbox I used to go to maya with my wire file and convert to "poligons quad" not perfect but....