RE: 3dsmax camera's to xsi, possible??

["kim aldis" <xsi(at)kim-aldis.co.uk>]

I’ve been banging on about this seemingly forever. It’s always been cameras that have been the problem, going back to the very first dotxsi import/export, what, 3.5?. First time I ever tried it, it was a IO to Maya that was the problem, to do with upvectors. Every release since then I read something to the effect of ‘no, it really is fixed now’ but it never seems to get there. Thing is, I’d say at least 90% of the transferral you do has a camera in it. If there’s no camera you usually use obj. This so badly needs fixing.

 

From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On Behalf Of Kris Rivel
Sent: 29 November 2007 15:55
To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: Re: 3dsmax camera's to xsi, possible??

 

Yeah, I have to agree with Sam.  Camera transfer should by this point be solid with Crosswalk.  Its such a basic requirement when trying to use multiple apps in a mixed pipeline.

Kris

On Nov 29, 2007 10:40 AM, Sam Cuttriss <sam(at)janimation.com> wrote:

camera transfer needs to be seamless between apps.
i would have expected crosswalk development to progress like so:

1. null transfer                       [success]
2. animated null transfer         [success]
3. heirachy of animated nulls transfered [success]
4. animated camera transfer   [partial success]
5. cube...
6. enveloped cube
7. textured cube.... etc etc

The camera is so utterly fundamental, if nothing else but the camera was able to transfer many jobs would still ship.

For the camera transfer to be considered robust, it needs to function:

•  independent of constraints. (interest or no interest, animated constraint offsets etc)
• anywhere in a heirachy. (must not fail due to an offset camera root.)
• fov animation and roll need to transfer,

extra stuff that would be beneficial but perhaps not vital.

• optical distortion (lensshaders)
• projection plane offsets and animation

as it stands this is the technique i know wont fail:
duplicate the camera to be transfered.
remove all transform animation,
remove contraints,
move it to the scene root.
pose constrain it to the original camera.
pose contrain a null infront of the original camera
plot the animation of both
remove the pose constraints
then direction constrain the new camera to the new null. (copy roll animation if nessesary)

that will now transfer to fusion and afx without issues.
but to be quite honest i have better things to do with my life.

sure i could write a script (and probably will... eventually), but this post if for the 1000's of artist users who cant script,
and quite reasonably just expect this sort of thing to work.

Sam Cuttriss
Janimation 3D Aficionado

Alexander Hemery wrote:

Hi Rob,

how about exporting an ASCII Scene *.ASE format from MAX and then making a script in XSI parse that file and recreate a camera with those settings ?

Alex.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Rob Wuijster" <rob(at)glassworksamsterdam.nl>
To: <XSI(at)Softimage.COM>
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 4:21 PM
Subject: 3dsmax camera's to xsi, possible??

Hi all,

Even with the new crosswalk v. 2.5 it's still not possible to export your camera's from 3dsmax to xsi.

I've searched the web, found some tools (motionblur.it) but they don't work properly. I get the wrong FOV's, or the camera's are looking in the wrong direction, no interests etc.

Is there something out there that does work? I managed to get the scene in with a combination of crosswalk and fbx for the geometry, but the camera's won't come in properly, not even with fbx.

-- 

cheers,

Rob Wuijster
Glassworks Amsterdam
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