Importing from Maya - to .dif or not to .dif...
by rlevine · in Game Design and Creative Issues · 02/23/2007 (2:54 pm) · 3 replies
I've been spending the last few weeks on the forums trying to make an informed decision about how best to import my models into Torque. I must preface everything else here by saying that I'm a programmer, not an artist.
The situation is this:
I have an extensive library of high-poly models of the human body. My player needs to be able to enter and explore these models. None of the models were created with optimization for gaming in mind, so I'm pretty sure any way I got about it, the models will need to be tweaked in order to work correctly.
The first thing I saw was the maya2DTS exporter, which works great on some of my smaller less complex models, but it is having problems with a few like a model of an esophagus, and a model of a stomach with poly counts of ~10k and ~25k respectively. My first question is, will DTS exporters always choke on models of this size? I've gone through several tutorials and am able to successfully get some of my models into torque which leads me to believe something about these models is causing the problem. To give a quick recap, I am deleting history, freezing transformations, triangulating, centering the pivot point, optimizing the scene, and (I think) following all the instructions for the maya2DTS exporter and accompanying utility.
My next thought was to make an attempt at getting them into DIF format since really these are going to be interiors and should be, by and large, static geometry. I managed to get my Maya files converted to .smf (.mb->.X->.smf->.map->.dif = ouch) and loaded into 3D World Creator, but upon exporting a .map file, none of my maya-made geometry is listed (the map file is basically an empty shell). After doing a bit more reading I realized that this will probably not work due to the differences in how Maya creates meshes, and how 3D World Studio uses CSG for BSP stuffy stuff. My second question is, is it possible to get my complex (and often concave) maya meshes into .dif format, and if so, does it sound like this is the right direction to go for making a level out of the human body with the assets I already have?
All thoughts and feedback welcome.
Gavin
The situation is this:
I have an extensive library of high-poly models of the human body. My player needs to be able to enter and explore these models. None of the models were created with optimization for gaming in mind, so I'm pretty sure any way I got about it, the models will need to be tweaked in order to work correctly.
The first thing I saw was the maya2DTS exporter, which works great on some of my smaller less complex models, but it is having problems with a few like a model of an esophagus, and a model of a stomach with poly counts of ~10k and ~25k respectively. My first question is, will DTS exporters always choke on models of this size? I've gone through several tutorials and am able to successfully get some of my models into torque which leads me to believe something about these models is causing the problem. To give a quick recap, I am deleting history, freezing transformations, triangulating, centering the pivot point, optimizing the scene, and (I think) following all the instructions for the maya2DTS exporter and accompanying utility.
My next thought was to make an attempt at getting them into DIF format since really these are going to be interiors and should be, by and large, static geometry. I managed to get my Maya files converted to .smf (.mb->.X->.smf->.map->.dif = ouch) and loaded into 3D World Creator, but upon exporting a .map file, none of my maya-made geometry is listed (the map file is basically an empty shell). After doing a bit more reading I realized that this will probably not work due to the differences in how Maya creates meshes, and how 3D World Studio uses CSG for BSP stuffy stuff. My second question is, is it possible to get my complex (and often concave) maya meshes into .dif format, and if so, does it sound like this is the right direction to go for making a level out of the human body with the assets I already have?
All thoughts and feedback welcome.
Gavin
About the author
#2
02/28/2007 (8:23 am)
I am also interested in your progress. I use maya as well and am looking for high res dts and mapping dif options as well. From the sounds of it you have got farther than me. I have not purchased the engine yet so finding good information on the public forums is a struggle.
#3
First, we took our .mb maya files and exported them to .X format. The Micorsoft DirectX exporter included with the DirectX SDK worked on some of our models, but crashed on many of them. In addition, it made Maya VERY unstable and noticeably slower. We instead, tried using Deep Exploration to import our .mbs and convert them to .X. We had much more success with this.
The next step, was to get them into a modeling program that incorporates constructive space geometry. There are a few options out there, but we went with 3D World Studio which comes with a model converter. This converter turned our .X files into .smf files that could be loaded into 3DWS. Our meshes would show up in the viewports, but when we saved the level (as a .map file) Any geometry we imported from Maya was completely ignored.
That being the case, the next step would have been to use the map2dif exporter (also available in the private forums) which would create .dif files for use in-game.
As stated in my previous post, I think the problems we had with our meshes were due to them being created without CSG in mind. There is a lot of good reading on CSG out there (and more than I cared to get into). The long and short of it is, our models were not made with considerations for CSG as they have tons of concave meshes to represent the organics of a human body. From my (limited) understanding of CSG, you can get maya models to work in this fashion, but only if they follow standard CSG modeling rules.
Deep Exploration has a 30 day trial that will allow you full functionality, 3D World Studio must be purchased before .map files can be exported.
Hope this helps!!
Gavin
02/28/2007 (12:17 pm)
Maya2Dts is pretty straight forward, and well documented once you get into the private forums. It's a maya plug-in with a utility window that is user-friendly. The main limitation I have hit is the poly count (more than ~10k won't yield desirable results for us). Getting Maya into DIF format though, has been a bit crazy. I'll run down my asset pipeline for dif files, but I must precursor this by saying that the end result was completely useless to us. However, you may get different results. First, we took our .mb maya files and exported them to .X format. The Micorsoft DirectX exporter included with the DirectX SDK worked on some of our models, but crashed on many of them. In addition, it made Maya VERY unstable and noticeably slower. We instead, tried using Deep Exploration to import our .mbs and convert them to .X. We had much more success with this.
The next step, was to get them into a modeling program that incorporates constructive space geometry. There are a few options out there, but we went with 3D World Studio which comes with a model converter. This converter turned our .X files into .smf files that could be loaded into 3DWS. Our meshes would show up in the viewports, but when we saved the level (as a .map file) Any geometry we imported from Maya was completely ignored.
That being the case, the next step would have been to use the map2dif exporter (also available in the private forums) which would create .dif files for use in-game.
As stated in my previous post, I think the problems we had with our meshes were due to them being created without CSG in mind. There is a lot of good reading on CSG out there (and more than I cared to get into). The long and short of it is, our models were not made with considerations for CSG as they have tons of concave meshes to represent the organics of a human body. From my (limited) understanding of CSG, you can get maya models to work in this fashion, but only if they follow standard CSG modeling rules.
Deep Exploration has a 30 day trial that will allow you full functionality, 3D World Studio must be purchased before .map files can be exported.
Hope this helps!!
Gavin
Torque Owner rlevine
As for DIFs, I don't think they will be a viable format for us. It seems generally you need to construct them with tools that employ Constructive Space Geometry like 3D World Creator. I read that there is a way to get maya models into .map form, but found no information on how to actually accomplish this other than it was difficult. Again, I'm open to suggestions on this, but it is probably a topic for another place.
Gavin