this is a complaining thread...

[TheBadger]

...

When importing models from maya, 2 things happen that have gotten exhausting. 1, all textures come in a 0 "diffuse colour" , that is they are all black and I have to manually go into the nodes and bring up the slider to 100%. This is improved from a while back when I had to manually go in and reconnect all textures (few years ago, and different modeler output). As I understand it, this problem is .OBJ based and is the result of .OBJs being different from every program that makes them. So TG does not always know what to do with them. But I would say that Maya is pretty standard, so I am curious what .obj TG is set up to work perfectly with?

problem 2, is of course, that models not from xfrog, come in at a gigantic size, and no mater what, have to be scaled. This is especially irritating to me since I often model buildings at their real world size (depending on the building), and when I have to set up size references in TG to scale the object to never exactly the right size it is very undermining... Yes I know I can hit mm. but that only makes the model smaller it does not make the model a exact 1:1 of what I modeled, I still have to rescale it.

It is really a lot of wasted time going through all this over and over when you add it all up over a year or so.

I know at least half of this post is recomplanining about already complained things, but since that was a long time ago and its still not fixed...

Did we give up on getting FBX here?

Ok, back to the trenches.

[Tangled-Universe]

I don't know if FBX support will solve these issues, but I do hope so!

Given that many asset stores deliver in FBX, I would like to see FBX support one day.
OBJ is often also supported, but as you have pointed out, is problematic often.

[El Kabong]

M:  Hello, I want to... Ooooh!
H:   No, no, no. Hold your head like this, then go Waaah. Try it again.
M:  uuuwwhh!!
H:   Better, Better, but Waah, Waah! Put your hand there.
M:  No.
H:   Now..
M:  Waaaaah!!!
H:   Good, Good! That's it.
M:  Stop hitting me!!
H:  What?
M:  Stop hitting me!!
H:   Stop hitting you?
M:  Yes!
H:   Why did you come in here then?
M:   I wanted to complain.
H:   Oh no, that's next door. It's being-hit-on-the-head lessons in here.

[Matt]

When importing models from maya, 2 things happen that have gotten exhausting. 1, all textures come in a 0 "diffuse colour" , that is they are all black and I have to manually go into the nodes and bring up the slider to 100%.

Can you show me a .mtl where this is happening?

problem 2, is of course, that models not from xfrog, come in at a gigantic size, and no mater what, have to be scaled. This is especially irritating to me since I often model buildings at their real world size (depending on the building), and when I have to set up size references in TG to scale the object to never exactly the right size it is very undermining... Yes I know I can hit mm. but that only makes the model smaller it does not make the model a exact 1:1 of what I modeled, I still have to rescale it.

What units are you modeling in? If you make something 1 unit high it will read into Terragen as 1 metre high. If you model in some other units, then once you figure out the scaling factor you should be able to use that for every other object you bring in.

Matt

[TheBadger]

Hey matt

Here is a tester. I set the scale to feet. just in case the file will show that and in case it could be of any use to you. All sides are 6x6 feet.
Includes .obj, mtl, is uv mapped with and texture from google, in case the mtl does not tell you what you need. Just a 6 sided box, but it shows the problem.

What units are you modeling in? If you make something 1 unit high it will read into Terragen as 1 metre high. If you model in some other units, then once you figure out the scaling factor you should be able to use that for every other object you bring in.

I understand that I can convert. My point is that, that is not ideal. When using a bunch of objects it becomes tiring and a waste of time. I guess what I was sorta asking, is should that info be in the FBX and wouldn't conversion then be automatic? I had thought that was one of the benefits of FBX, is all.

Thank you for replying!


@El Kabong
Yeah, i know 

[mhaze]

The diffuse colour is set to black - therefore the object texture does not show set it to 1 in your texture editor.  Rhino measures it as 183 feet 1inch!!!!!

[Matt]

For whatever reason, the Kd (diffuse colour) line in that MTL file is showing 0:

Kd 0.00 0.00 0.00

and Terragen is simply respecting this value. So there is something wrong with the OBJ exporter you used or something wrong with the material setup.

Regarding scale, yes, FBX files should contain all the necessary scaling info. It isn't always accurate, and is still open to being set wrong by the exporter, but it's something. We might add an FBX object reader in future.

Matt

[TheBadger]

 
Well this is fun.

I downloaded my file and opened it in maya. The texture was not connected at all. So, I must of missed something when I slapped it together.

So I redid it making sure to do everything. It is below.
I also looked to see if the default defuse color in maya was less than one. It turns out that it is. 0.8. so I increased it to 1.0 and opened it in TG. Again tg says it is 0.

Would you mind looking at the "fixed" .mtl here, and tell me if it still says zero, please. I would guess that it does. But should be sure.

The thing is even if 0.8 the default defuse color in the hypershader, is not zero, it should say 0.8 in the mtl. So I really don't know how to fix it on my end, if it can be fixed.

checked the size again too, that was still 6x6. I think obj just sucks? or maya? or me? or what? 

[mhaze]

Yes mtl still reads 0 try upping the colour channel?

[Matt]

MTL files are just text files, so you can open them yourself in any text editor and see the contents. OBJ is also a text file, and if the object is fairly simple like a cube then you might be able to understand what's being written into the file. Take a look, then see what options you have in the OBJ export dialog in Maya.

[Oshyan]

Here's the thing Badger: Maya may be "standard", but that doesn't mean it *is* a standard. All it means in this context is that it is widely used. So should we try to load models from it correctly if possible? Yes, I think so. And we're looking at adjustments to the OBJ loading functionality for the future. However my understanding is that even Autodesk/Maya does not maintain consistency version-to-version! You yourself have commented on Maya's issues, and given what has so far been shown in this thread it seems reasonable to suspect that Maya may not be exporting to OBJ all that well (the fact is they may not care much about it as a format, especially since FBX is an Autodesk format). At the very least it seems like the default export setup in Maya does not produce easily parsed OBJs. So certainly we at Planetside share some responsibility for correctly reading what other applications are exporting, but I think it's a bit unfair to assume that TG is always doing the wrong thing just because the exporting package is popular.

- Oshyan

[WAS]

As a note, and from years in the past trying to use C4D and Maya at school, there are numerous articles on Maya just exporting to other programs like crap. This could be indicative of unique OBJ/MTL writing. Also, while it is true Maya is pretty well known and used, it did originally come from Lucas engineers, which are known for backwards ass programming and being "unique".

Maya, in general, was intended to bring a new "Standard" to the field as Badger said, but in the way of making a unique environment and trying to coax the user into soley using the software. For example, all of Star Wars effects were done exclusively in Maya, and the 1-3 movies were showcases for Maya. You used to be able to download the pod racing scene with Greado(sp) crashing and edit it anyway you'd like as a member and owner of Maya.