Question for 3DSMax users

Al Hart

We are working on an interface to allow defining lights and material
properties - such as reflection - in SketchUp and then exporting them to FBX for use with 3DS Max and Maya.

Does anyone use the FBX exports for these and other products?

Is there already a way to define lights and mateirals in SketchUp and
write them to a FBX file?

If not, would this be of value?

Chris Fullmer

I generally use .3ds files for 3ds max. I don't use fbx, but I am not really a pro user of 3ds. Hopefully others would have more ability in that area.

It sounds like a useful tool to me, but I don't know.

Chris

Al Hart

It may be that the FBX toolkit we use can also create .3DS files. I'll have to check.

Is it true that you add light definitions and reflections after you export the .3DS file from SketchUp? Or is there a SketchUp plugin somewhere which helps with that.

Are there "tricks" you use to make it easy to re-apply the lights and reflections after you change the model in SketchUp and/or when you create a new SketchUp model?

juju

Podium writes light and reflection values (of geometry it has been applied to with a Podium tool) into the SU file, but I don't know if you can successfully export such a file via the FBX format to be read with the correct information in another application.

Al Hart

We are planning to read the IRender Reflectivity and Light settings an pass them to FBX.

My questions is does anybody already create 3DS or FBX files with light and reflection settings (which would make it less useful for us to do this)

Chris Fullmer

I guess I don't know what light and reflection settings are. How would I make a file like that out of SU already? it certainly doesn't do it for me. I do all this stuff in 3ds max, but probably only because its the only way to do it, unless there is another plugin out there doing it, which I have not looked in to.

Also, as for lighting. I generally use 3dsmax's daylight settings which are really powerful.

And reflectivity....It seems like materials that are partially transparent in SU come in to 3ds max as reflective material? I haven't done it for a while. Maybe I am remembering incorrectly.

Chris

Al Hart

Yes, for daylight 3DS would be easy, and transparent materials are generally also reflective.

However, you may want to have a reflective floor or mirror, or an artificial light. These can be defined in 3DS or FBX format and it would be easy to read the settings from Kerkythea, Podium or IRender settings and pass them on.

Chris Fullmer

Ahh, I' starting to get the picture.

Yeah, I guess that would be handy. I dont use podium Kerkythea or iRender like I said. I generally just set it all up in 3dsmax.

So, that is just my 1 person workflow. And I really don't know what I'm doing in 3dsmax. So I'd suggest finding more input.

Speak up people. anyone else out there that this would benefit?

Chris