There's a bug in the current beta when using the new FBX exporter with welding enabled. The UV coordinates were all messed up which would cause Max to crash when it tried to read them at render time.

I think I've got this tuned up now, but I'm not entirely sure because I don't have Max over here to test with.

So I've attached a couple of zipped up FBX files here as TestFBXWeld.zip .

If you have Max, please give these a try and see if they work well or not. If you could post a screenshot too that would be cool so I can see if it looks like the proper vertex normal shading is coming through or not.


Also one other note - if you have an older version of Max, make sure you get the newest version of the FBX import plugin for Max, it has a lot of stuff fixed up in it.

Thanks!

- Michael

Michael

They both import fine into Max 9 (with latest FBX plugin) and render fine using Mental Ray.

Here are the renders generated. Only lights have been added to the scene & rendered the mesh or its materials were not touched in any way.

Thanks Kevin, this is excellent news, looks like this last set of tune-ups should finally settle things down for moving data from MoI into Max!

Can you possibly check one other thing, which is that UV coordinates are coming across as well? These are not going to be the most optimal UVs, but everything should at least have a UV mapping set up on it.

For example can you try putting a checkmark texture on the sphere and see if that renders as expected?

Thanks,
- Michael

When applying a 10 x 10 tiled checker pattern you get the follow results.

Thanks Kevin, that checks out with how the UVs are supposed to be with the current set up.

That UV part is not particularly great or anything, but at least all the data is going into Max properly which will be nice to have nailed down.

The biggest part is that the vertex normals from the original NURBS surfaces are going across to be used when rendering the mesh, that makes for a major reduction in shading glitches.

And then with welding set up it should hopefully be all ready to go so you don't have to apply any stuff like that manually. That would be good because sometimes when you apply vertex modifications to a mesh it could mean that the good vertex normals are discarded and new ones cooked up by averaging faces instead, which makes for a lot more potential for shading glitches.


Thanks very much for testing it, this fix up will be in the next beta hopefully I can get some of the object properties stuff that I am working on wrapped up in not too much longer and put out another beta, maybe 1-2 weeks... Of course that's kind of always what it seems like it is going to take and sometimes it stretches out a bit.

- Michael

Curiously these 2 files can't be import in Wings 3D ?
These are only test for Max?

Curiously, both the FBX files open fine, and checker nicely, in Carrara6Pro and not in 3D Coat?

I would have expected the other way around.(The 3D Coat example attached)

Brian

Hi Brian,

> Curiously, both the FBX files open fine, and checker nicely,
> in Carrara6Pro and not in 3D Coat?

It looks like 3D Coat does not like to handle the n-gons. It is probably set up more intending that your object will be diced up into smaller more evenly sized polygon bits similar to what ZBrush wants.

So that's not really too surprising, you would want to use export settings more like this:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1549.4
when going to a brush based system like 3D Coat, ZBrush, or Mudbox, and use the Quads & Triangles setting instead of n-gons - in this test I did not set up the mesh export settings to do this style of mesh.

- Michael

Hi Pilou,

> Curiously these 2 files can't be import in Wings 3D ?

Seems to work fine for me! Maybe you have an old version of Wings, or did you possibly try to use File/Open instead of File/Import/Autodesk FBX ?

Here is the result that I get when using Wings 3D, version 0.99.02 and importing that previously attached file TestFBXWeld1.fbx :



The other file, TestFBXWeld2.fbx is a high polygon count file, Wings seems to be rather slow at handling that one so that one did not work quite as smoothly for me, which looks like something that would need to be tuned up in Wings. But the first one seems fine.

- Michael

Thanks Michael

3D Coat far prefers .obj and that is what I normally export from MoI.

It's been a problem with 3DC to get things rght for LWO export ---much like FBX!

Even with the "Crosswalk" plugin on XSI I gather, still, that file format interactivity is still very problematic.\

Brian

Hi Brian, N-gons can tend to be one of the more difficult areas.

For most systems to display the n-gon will require triangulating it, and it is a pretty difficult task to make a good quality triangulator that will work correctly on complex n-gons.

Furthermore until MoI came along it was not very typical to get a whole lot of n-gons in transferred data, since there are no other CAD programs that will generate them from CAD data - that is a unique feature that has been introduced by MoI. So that means that typically programs have not been tested quite as much during their development with complex n-gons.

That can add a few wrinkles into the mix.

If you run into these problems then you can use the Quads & Triangles option to break N-gons into the more typical quad and triangle type polygon output when exporting from MoI, that is a more "well worn" and well tested type of data.

But the n-gon export is nice when the receiving program can deal with it well, since it keeps your mesh wireframe more orderly and clean.

For 3D coat's particular use though like I mentioned it probably wants to have a certain style of mesh structure with more finely diced polygons instead of big broad polygons of any type, whether n-gons or not.

- Michael

curious curious because I have all versions of Wings!
Your 0.99.02 and 0.99.04 (the last! )
Maybe Seems there is something with the name of the file
in your folder, "TestFBXWeld1.fbx" appears in the wings selection windows, but when I troncate it the .fbx, it's appears TestFBXWeld1 in the window selection and TestFBXWeld1.fbx in the wings3D message error
as you had writed in fact TestFBXWeld1.fbx.fbx ???
but even with that, that's is "Unable to read the file"
and more curious I had loaded your first FBX test in the past with success!

Hi Pilou, that's strange, I don't know why it won't work for you.

I happened to put the TestFBXWeld1.fbx file right at the c:\ root folder, maybe for some reason Wings does not like to handle a folder where you have placed this particular file. Does it make any difference if you move the file to be directly under c:\ and try to import it from there?

- Michael

YESSSSSSSSSS!
It was that! I must put the files inside the root of the folder of WINGS 3D!!! (so a bug in wings ;)
Works fine with Version 0.99.04 :)
House and plane!
A scale must be made at the import because grid is some little ;)
Scaling is possible in the Menu Import of FBX Wings3D 0.1 by default, 0.01 will be perfect! :)

< The other file, TestFBXWeld2.fbx is a high polygon count file, Wings seems to be rather slow at handling that one so that one did not work quite as smoothly for me, which looks like something that would need to be tuned up in Wings. But the first one seems fine.

No problem for me on my very old comput!
After 2 levels of Smooth :)

Hi Pilou, yes that seems like a bug with Wings.

I just tested over here, and for me it seems to actually work ok for other folders as well, like "My documents", etc...

If you would like to test it some more to give them a good bug report, I bet it has something to do with having some French language characters in the folder name that did not work.

- Michael

< French language characters in the folder name that did not work
Possible, that is the same problem with Kerkythea!
No accent in any Folder, names, path!!!
And must be in a particular Folder "Model"!

Hi Pilou, if you get a chance to give a bug report to the Wings people, it would probably help them if you could give them an example of the kind of folder name with an accent in it that does not work.

Also, one other note that you could pass on to them - let them know that the FBX library seems to want to take a file name as a UTF-8 encoded string, not one encoded with the current code page. The FBX documentation is not at all clear about this.

- Michael

Ok I will send that on the Wings3D forum ;)
Done !
Waiting the answer :)