Michael, I send you a file that has a problem when trying to export to obj or 3ds and the moi crash report. I just open it, increase the polygons a bit and then I get an error message telling me to mail the report (attached file).
1. When exporting to 3ds, the file has errors and can't be imported in MAX.
2. When exporting to obj, I get 57 unrecognized commands when importing to MAX and I loose some surfaces who can't be seen with "flip or unify normals" modifier.
3. I inserted obj file into Maxwell and it seems to work

Well, maybe the model is not the best possible but I think this is not the point here :))

Hi JTB, the crash report file should be named something like moi_report1.zip, moi_report2.zip, can you please attach that here, or e-mail it to me at moi@moi3d.com? That could help me figure out the error message.

Do you get the same .3ds errors if you export using the default density, or does it only happen if you increase it a bit? If it happens at the default density it is easier for me to debug over here since I can use the exact same setting as you.

One other thing you might try is to export with .obj, but switch it to triangles only (instead of n-gons) - does that make any difference reading the .obj into MAX?

Thanks for sending this in,

- Michael

I KNEW I FORGOT SOMETHING! I didn't send the report!

1. Yes, I get the same errors with the default density.
2. When I press the "E-mail report" button, MoI crashes.
3. The obj file is by default Triangles only
4. The report3.zip is for 3ds errors, the report5.zip is for moi crashing when trying to e-mail the error.

Hi JTB, thanks for attaching those reports! I have found the problem in the .3ds export - can you please try the attached .3ds file and see if it can be read into Max now?

For the .obj problem - is it possible for you to narrow the file down to a smaller sample that does not come through to max properly (ideally a single surface or smaller portion of the model).

If I have a narrowed down example for that it will make it easier for me to examine the .obj file to see if there is anything wrong with it. It is possible that this is a problem in Max's .obj reader though.

- Michael

Michael, thanks for the 3ds file, it looks OK now.
I send you a 3dm of one of the 3 lights hanging , I export in obj with default density. I send you 3 screen captures from MAX.
The problem can be corrected with the "normal" modifier of MAX.
001.jpg=the error dialog when I import the obj file.
002.jpg= a Max viewport
003.jpg= a simple render before applying the normal modifier

Hi JTB, I took a look at this, sorry it took me a little bit.

That error dialog is not really anything to worry about - it's not really showing an error there, just some statistics.

There are 2 different ways of labeling an object in an .obj file - one way is with "g objectname", and the other way is with "o objectname". MoI puts out both of these since some programs may use one or the other. Max is ignoring one of these, and there were 16 different objects in the file, so that's why it says "16 unsupported commands" - it's just a statistic on things that it skipped in the file which in this case is completely harmless.

As far as the normals go, the problem here is that you've got just individual surfaces there. When MoI has a bunch of individual surfaces, it doesn't know how to orient their normals so that they are all consistent. But if you join them together into a solid, then MoI will be able to make consistent normals for each surface.

Somehow some of the edges of your piece have gotten kind of a little ragged and messed up - I've attached here a version where I untrimmed the rounded pieces, and then re-trimmed them with each other and with the top and bottom piece to clean them up. Then I joined this all together into a single connected solid - this should allow it to export with nice normals.

Sometimes you may not want to spend the time to make a carefully stitched together solid, but then it will be necessary to use the normal modifier in Max in these cases. You may also be able to find some kind of "use double sided lighting" setting so the normal direction won't be so important.

- Michael

Michael, thank you very much for your time...