Sketchup Pro 2019 to Maya import problems

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone. I am hoping this is mostly Mystery Science Adventures and that the problem is easily solved. I made a drawing of a stone block church using Sketchup Pro 2019.  I tried to import the drawing file into Maya 2018 via SimLab-Soft SKP to Maya Plugin v8.1    Alas, no success. I am stumped. I made a page on my website where I discuss this and include download options to download the Sketchup Pro 2019 files and the Maya 2018 files that the importer created. I made two videos describing this problem using imagery and screenshots because it is so much easier to discuss this problem with actual content displaying on the monitor. I referenced  links to those YouTube videos on the webpage. Here's my main webpage:

https://pistonrobot.com/

Here's the page where I discuss this importation issue in more detail:

https://pistonrobot.com/discussions-not-related-to-pistonrobot/forest-church-sketchup-to-maya-discus...

Here's a page where I discuss the general topic of the 3D drawing that I was trying to make:

https://pistonrobot.com/discussions-not-related-to-pistonrobot/forest-church/

Here's the YouTube that I uploaded to my YouTube account where I describe this issue.

There's Part 01 and Part 02

This is Part 01:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYqOj4LW3xk

This is Part 02: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUfpw_CkWj8&t=651s

I do have a webpage where I make some of my Maya files available for people to download if they want, I have been surprised that I get downloads and visits to this page from all over the world. Surprised me.

https://pistonrobot.com/maya-stuff/ 

I sure hope the Autodesk people can help. I've never been able to get this Forest Church to render in my Maya, even the Forest Church Maya file that is all goofed up from my most recent import attempt.

I opened the 17c Maya file that I have, you can download it from my website if you want, but note it is 550mb. I was able one time to open the show script diagnostics window under the rendering tab and it had a lot of advice that I did not totally understand, but I can't get that script diagnostics window to open again, it keeps saying the script diagnostics do not work with the Arnold renderer, but I thought I chose the hardware renderer.

Anyway, I hope someone can help. I want to use Maya, I understand its learning curve is steep, but Maya is cool, and I do plan at some point to rig the Pistonrobot so I can show off just how different the Pistonrobot is. The ranges of motions of the joints of the Pistonrobot are way way in excess of any other robot if one stipulates that the robot has to be a robot that could actually be created and exist as a real structure in the real world.  anyway, I am remaining hopeful. Dr. Gray

[Anonymous]

I think I figured out how to make this work (for me anyway).

Hey Folks, updates. I feel perhaps the software people understand that they need to allow inter-connectivity, even though it tends (I think) to decrease their income, I am sure that they find the process they’ve created to be OK, but it sure seems complicated to me.
Here's what I got to work (in a sequence of steps listed below):

1. ask Sketchup to export my Sketchup drawing as an FBX file, I found Sketchup will not export my whole drawing unless I first select the entire drawing, then choose the Sketchup FBX export option of: only export selected area, I also chose these other options: export textures, flip xy, use drawing units.
2. example, suppose that my Sketchup file is named: drawing-drawing-drawing.skp
   then Sketchup will (for FBX exports), send out two results, a file named
   drawing-drawing-drawing.fbx and also a folder named drawing-drawing-drawing.
3. In Maya, I removed all Maya non-native FBX plugins and I told Maya to load the native Maya FBX plugin (I set Maya to load this plugin automatically).
4. Then I told Maya to import an FBX file and I navigated to the place where the drawing-drawing-drawing.fbx file was located.
5. To keep myself from getting confused, I created a folder that I named superfolder-drawing-drawing-drawing. I made sure that the Sketchup created fbx file named: drawing-drawing-drawing.fbx and the Sketchup created folder named: drawing-drawing-drawing were both contained in the folder named: superfolder-drawing-drawing-drawing.
6. Maya did import this fbx file, made a Maya drawing, and placed textures on the items in the drawing.
7. Probably because this is an architectural drawing, it seems that my Forest Church is way bigger than the default Maya bounding box. So, alas, the huge size of the Forest Church, compared to the Maya bounding box size, made it almost totally impossible for me to coherently initially “see” any of the Forest Church drawing inside Maya.
8. So, in Maya, I gave Maya permission to scale the drawing, and I scaled it on all three axes by 0.01, and there the drawing was, I could see all of it at one time. Haha.... yay for me.
9. I told Maya to save this file as a Maya file. I named it drawing-drawing-drawing.mb and saved it where I put all my Maya files.
10. Oh no…! When I re-opened it in Maya, geometry=OK, textures=gone.
11. However, I discovered this: If I save the Maya file drawing-drawing-drawing.mb in the folder I named superfolder-drawing-drawing-drawing, then, if I leave Maya and re-open Maya and ask Maya to open this Maya file that is contained in the same folder as where the textures exported by Sketchup were sent to, then Maya opens the Maya file as a Maya file and it has all its textures inside Maya.
12. Whew!

This works for me at present. I may explore various combinations of where I place all these files and folders, but I doubt it, because it can get very complex trying to remember: which Sketchup file was it? What are the textures in Sketchup? What did I call this file in Maya? etc.  And with what I outlined above, even if I forget the details of all these file names, I can refresh my memory, because everything is all saved in that superfolder. And, of note, the only reason that this folder that I named: superfolder etc. etc., well this superfolder folder only exists because I created it, and it has in its name the word: superfolder because I put this word in its name. Sketchup and also Maya do not (at least for me) create and manage that overarching folder where everything is all kept together in one package. 

 Dr. Gray