Maya2DTS Export Checklist

A checklist of common errors when working with the Maya exporter. This is a abridged from information available in Danny Ngan's Maya Exporter Documentation.

Shapes

• all meshes must be made of polygons (Modify > Convert)
• all meshes must be triangulated (Polygons > Triangulate)
• all meshes scale transforms should be 1 for all axes
• Single-mesh characters must be deformed using joint hierarchies and smooth skin binding. Rigid binding and influence objects are not supported.

Texturing

• all meshes must have UV coordinates
• only Lambert, Phong, and Blinn materials are supported.
• All materials must use File textures in the Color channel. Procedural textures and material colors are not supported in Torque.
• Torque supports JPG, TGA, and PNG file formats.
• Image file dimensions must be powers of two (e.g. 256x256, 64x64, etc). The maximum size supported is 512x512.

Export Hierarchy

• The scene must contain a bounding box named "bounds" that surrounds all geometry to be exported
• Z axis of the bounds box should be pointing up
• The scene must contain a single DTS heirarchy which contains (see below)
• a subtree* of the scene, usually named "base"
• at least one detail marker*, its name is trailed by a number e.g. "detail 32"
• all my detail markers* are linked to the "base" subtree*
• a branch* from "base", usually named "start"
• if I am using a skin, my geometry must be unlinked from the "base" subtree* (as the bounding box is)
• I must have a version of my mesh for each detail number, its name is trailed by the same number as the detail marker. e.g. "mesh32"
• My mesh is linked to the "start" branch (unless it is a skinned mesh, in which case it is unlinked)
• If I am using skin, the bone heirarchy is linked below the "start" branch instead
• I don't have any numbers trailing object names aside from detail numbers

*subtrees, branches and markers are simply empty groups.