3dsMax -> FBX -> Noesis -> Quake (where did my UVs go?))

[ijed]

Hello, I'm having a ton of problems getting the UV's to export correctly from a mesh.

Basically it creates corrupt UVs with a size of 0 0 - so it doesn't matter what texture I apply, it comes out as a flat colour.

I've searched around and checked all the suggested fixes - community stuff being a lot more helpful, if also usually dead threads, than the FBX help doc. Which I couldn't even get to load properly.

It's set in map channel 1, the texture .bmp is in the same folder with the same name as the Max material. I tried messing around with real world coordinates and no luck, didn't change a thing.

Also, using max 2010 and the most recent FBX version.

Anyone know what I'm missing here?

EDIT: It seems Noesis is the one to blame - re-importing the FBX into max brings its texture with it.

Also, I've never seen the model textured in the Noesis preview window - just blank white.

EDIT2:

Further trawling through the various forum and it seems this is a bug in Max itself, with some sort of fup in how it does vertex normals.

Senor Casaroja / Mr Adults:

"FBX support is there. It's pissing me off though. Max seems to discard per-vertex normals when you import meshes with skin deforms on them. But those FBX files import back into Noesis just fine. As far as I can tell I'm doing exactly what they're doing for skin deforms in the FBX SDK example code. So, dunno what the problem is. I would like to know if the Maya and Motion Builder FBX 2012 importers do the same thing or not. I suspect they don't."

Going to give OpenCollada a try, since it seems this was never resolved, as far as I can tell from the changelog (and my own attempts).

[gnounc]

if you use open collada, be aware that when you export your model, the uv's may be flipped. They definately will be if you use blender. So if when you import a .dae into noesis the textures look mangled, just check the "flip uv" box in noesis when you export your model.
Open the output model in noesis to confirm they uv's are correctly positioned.

On the subject, if anyone knows how to flip uv's before export in blender 2.5+ please let me know.

[ijed]

Yeah, I've come across that before with a previous pipeline experiment - 3dsMax -> Quick3D -> Qme. That flipped the normals and the UVs.

As shitty as that sounds, it wasn't the worst. Manually exporting 200 frames (one at a time) from max via .3ds to Qme was.

EDIT:

Ok, it's got to be something I'm doing since OpenCollada fails with the exact same problem - no UVs.

What's with the images folder that appeared under my working folder? Nothing happened there, so I tried dropping in a bmp and a png - no dice.

[goldenboy]

gnounc; in Blender's UV panel, click UVs -> Mirror -> * axis?

[ceriux]

dont use fbx

, just go max>md3>noesis i left a link for an exporter somewhere here in these forums.

[ijed]

Well OpenCollada fails with the exact same problem - no UVs or texture loading into Noesis, so I doubt md3 will give a result - there must be something wrong in how the UVs are applied, or the texture itself.

I'll probably give md3 a try when I get back to this in any case.

[goldenboy]

md3 is not a skeletal format, so for exporting to IQM, if that is what one wants to do, md3 isn't really viable. md5 might be though, I remember going md5 -> noesis -> IQM before I went Blender -> IQM.

What about Max -> Blender -> IQM, without noesis.

[ijed]

Yeah I can give that a try - its about time we started with the full port over.

[ceriux]

[ijed]

Been back and forth across the model - just can't find what the issue is.

Channel, texture application, UV channel - everything seems right.

[ceriux]

what version of max do you use? if you don't mind i'll take a look at it.

[ijed]

2010 - I'll send it over.

[gnounc]

Senior Casaroja says to look at the material name of the mesh(es) in the data viewer and make sure the textures are available in the same folder as the model.

"
Noesis has to be able to find the external texture to preserve UV's when outputting to MDL, because MDL texture coordinates are in image space. If you open the data viewer, expand the model, then meshes, you can look at the material name being referenced. Make sure the appropriate texture file of that name is accessible on the same path as the model file so that Noesis can load it. (Noesis will try to load external textures by material name If it can't find them by actual diffuse/etc. texture names)

Once Noesis is able to find and load the texture, you should be able to export to MDL with no problem.

If Noesis is finding the texture but you're still seeing problems, then it sounds like something might be weird with the actual FBX/DAE. Send that to gnounc if you would and he'll get it to me.
"

[ijed]

I did, by PM on this forum, but maybe something went wrong.

I've been exporting without textures and then using Qme to generate the shitty old Quake mapping, will confirm that the path is correct, although everything is in the same folder already.

Will investigate some more before sending an updated file - I've since put together a few new monsters.

[ijed]

Ok, I'm at a loss - the data viewer shows the name, and even if I add the file extension. So either I'm using the wrong export options or the wrong exporter.

Here's the bmp, exported FBX and source max file:

http://www.4shared.com/zip/uNHD-5tm/file.html

It's wip, so the textures won't line up properly.

Might give Max -> IQM -> Quake a go.