thanks guys!

Well i've tried doing some different file types today with mixed success. I'm trying 3ds and obj and i'm doing it on my house models.

3ds seems to work fine, but for .obj it screws up. It almost acts like the windows etc were booleans, and it basically triangulates everything, but you end up with faces where there were none, so you get some openings getting closed up in essence.

Another quickie for you....does the exporting only work with untextured models?

I've tried again, both 3ds and obj, none of which seem to retain the materials when i do the textured versions of my building.

Are you exporting these from Max using the standard plugins? It should work for textured models.

Export them into a folder that contains all the textures, to limit any errors due to texture paths. The 3DS version will need textures that follow the old dos 8.3 name format.

The Max obj exporter always seemed flakey and unpredicatble to me. On the first panel make sure you've got 'use materials' and 'create material library' ticked, also 'texture co-ords'. There's a drop-down for quads or tris. On the second panel select 'scene materials'. You should end up with a .obj and .mtl file. OBJ files often seem to have the base diffuse colour set to black, even underneath a texture this can cause problems in some apps. OBJ is likely a better way to get a model out of Max than 3DS though.

I can't pretend to be an expert in exporting from Max, as I'm mainly coming from Maya. It's not a simple subject. Best to find a method that works for you and stick to it.

Yeah its from Max itself i'm exporting.

Going through your post ive fixed some of the issues, i can now export .obj for the untextured versions, as chaging it from the default 'quads' to triangles on the options rollout done the trick. Although the mesh does look a bit of a mess though. Is it ok to have it on TS or the likes if the mesh is so messed up?



This is how it looked before, when it was set to quads, you can see it closes up the door with an odd face.



And this is what i get when i try to export with materials. Though the materials arent in the same folder as suggested but i would have thought in the worst case scenario it would just somehow say the file path cant be found. Even materials that dont use maps as such just seem to be as scrwed up. They all seem to be given random coloured materials as you can see from the material editor. Everything else is as suggested.



You maybe cant see anything from that image, photobucket resized it fairly small.


No big deal if i cant get it working but thought i'd ask.

Those look like normal problems in the 2nd image. I'll take some screen grabs of the settings I've got later on - should be possible to get this working. I'm always a bit rushed on a Tuesday as I've got my karate class.

No worries bud, i'm not in a rush.

Don't worry, I'm incapable of rushing as my legs feel they're on the wrong way this morning.

I tried exporting a simple obj from Max, and lo-and-behold got the same sort of results as you did - no textures, and some missing polys. Fortunately I don't need to export from Max very often. After some playing with the options I found some that seem to work in this case. See pic.

I was expecting 'Export maps' to . . . well, export the maps - but it didn't seem to. It did seem to be the option that made the material use the texture though. You still need to put the textures into the folder next to the obj and mtl file by hand.

Like lots of other things in Max the obj exporter seems over-complex, flakey and prone to crashes. From Maya obj's export very easily. See if those options work for you.

My setting are a little different to you, what version are you on, i'm on 2009.

But even when i try and match them i get no joy. I wonder if its something to do with the fact i use vray. Maybe it only knows how to export the standard max materials.

At least i cna offer the two file types for the untextured varieties.

that's the old exporter ... Max 9 or even an earlier version I believe.

Jock try different settings for the exporter. There's a bunch of presets you can use, if I remember correctly.

A good idea might be closing all the 'wholes' in the geometry.