Mac LightWave7.5 to Mac Maya 5.0

[Oddgit]

what is the best way to go about doing this? when ever i use the .obj export it dosent load in Maya, i dont want to use .dxf because i have to tri. all 5+ polys, and that will suck.
should i just VPC LW and use the LW to Maya plug? or is there a less annoying way to go about this?

[Triple G]

You could try .fbx. Kaydara has I/O plugins for both Maya and LW on their site. There are some issues with transfering data back and forth, but most of it deals with animation data. If you're just wanting to transfer models, I think it should work fine. I've never tried it myself, mind you, but it may be worth giving a try.

[Rory_L]

I haven`t used it myself, but my friend Dodgy swears by Deep Exploration.

R

[Jimzip]

.fbx seems to be a great format. It's about time a universal export and import feature was available to the majority of 3d apps.

Jimzip :D

[Oddgit]

i dled the kdx plugins, and exported stuff from lightwave, i cant seem to find the modeler plugins and it didnt work :( i may be doing it wrong but am not sure. Are there any peoples oot there that have used these plugins?

[claw]

obj works great from LW7 to Maya 5. All you have to do is to change the file type LW exports, it's wrong on the mac, but works on a PC. Anyway, export a object from Maya in obj format. Open that file in BBedit, also open your LW obj file. Copy the content from it into the Maya obj file and save it. Then it should work!

[Triple G]

Originally posted by Oddgit
i dled the kdx plugins, and exported stuff from lightwave, i cant seem to find the modeler plugins and it didnt work :( i may be doing it wrong but am not sure. Are there any peoples oot there that have used these plugins?

There is no Modeler plugin for .fbx. You would save your object normally, as an .lwo. Bring it into Layout and export to .fbx from there. Then it should just be a simple matter of importing the .fbx into Maya. :)

[quatermain]

i'm having trouble exporting .objs from mac lw to maya (although no problems wtih the pc).

what part of the text file do i have to copy/paste? can it be done with textedit?

[claw]

LW saves out wrong filetypes for obj files on mac. Maya reads textformats that BBedit saves out. So use BBedit to copypaste the LWobj into a obj that you saved out from Maya. Then it works, have done it my self several times.

[fxgeek]

Originally posted by quatermain
i'm having trouble exporting .objs from mac lw to maya (although no problems wtih the pc).

what part of the text file do i have to copy/paste? can it be done with textedit?

You can use the "tounix" command line to convert the file as well. Also, you may need to delete the header information that LW creates in the obj format - down to where the vertex list begins.

I havent used FBX from LW but we ocassionally get max stuff to go to maya and use FBX for that. I have used OBJ from LW loads of times and it works fine, but doesn't retain any surface information.

You may also find that your models come in as one mesh, and you need to use the Modelling>Edit Polygons>Seperate command in maya to put the mesh back in it's component parts.

Also, if you want to send across sub-d surfaces, use the Tab key in LW to make your metanurbs objects use their base polygons when you export them, then convert the base mesh to Sub-D in Maya using the modify>convert>Polygons to SubD command in Maya.

Hope this helps

[Oddgit]

is there a way to bring an animated file in from Maya?

[claw]

Yes there is, but I think it only works in Windows

[monovich]

I just tried that FBX from Mac LW8 to PC Maya 5 with a fairly complex scene, and it worked fine. I can't tell because I don't know Maya, but it looks like everything is right. I think some of the objects might be moved, and the scale is weird, but that just might be a Maya thing that I don't know.

-s

[Oddgit]

i use fbx alot, well used fbx, unless they recently updated FBX it dose not work with maya 6, or i cant figure out how to make it work with maya 6.